Sometimes you come across them, people who trust their gut completely, and actually those people are doing quite well. Trusting your gut is not something that comes naturally to everyone, but in the end it is something that is important to everyone. If your gut is screaming very loudly that something is not a good idea and you do it anyway, of course you get a lot of stress from that.
In this blog, we take a closer look at trusting your gut. What pros and cons this has and what you can do to live more by your feelings.
Confidence while making choices
Trusting your gut is especially important when making choices. Do you do "A" or "B," for many people the choice will be made by considering which choice feels best, but by no means everyone makes the choice on that feeling.
Some people look more at the pros and cons of a particular decision. Consider, for example, how popular investing has become. While it may seem appealing to do so by feel, investment choices are better made with knowledge of the market and knowledge of the company you are investing in.
When it comes to trusting your feelings, there are actually several factors that contribute to the formation of those feelings, namely:
- Your gut feelings
- Recognitions (from previous experiences)
- Insights (through other knowledge)[1].
Benefit of trusting your gut
The interesting thing is that many top executives rely on their feelings when making big decisions. They use their emotions to filter quickly when there are many choices to be made[2]. That way you can reduce choice stress.
Disadvantages of relying on your gut
When trusting your feelings, these feelings are often based on generalizations. You then see certain patterns in life. The downside of relying on this feeling is that sometimes you can see patterns that are not there at all (source 2).
So like when you "recognize" certain things or your insights may not add up.
In the process, due to physical problems, such as an imbalance in gut flora, those feelings can also be wrong, and then going along with those feelings can even cause psychological problems.
Those bodily feelings, which is actually what you rely on when you trust your feelings, in turn affect your emotions, thoughts and mood[3].
Emotions, thoughts and mood can equally affect your physical feelings and subsequent choices.
Influence of emotions on your feelings
So how well can you trust your gut?
When it comes to relying on your feelings when making choices, it's good to know that your emotions influence how you feel. For example, if you are happy and joyful this creates more confidence.
Are you actually angry? Then this reduces the confidence you have and thus you get worse feelings when you have to make a decision. This is also why it is sometimes said that you should not make decisions when you are angry.
When you are in a bad mood, you also tend to be more skeptical of what people tell you[4].
Fortunately, research also shows that being aware of the influence of emotions causes those emotions to have less impact on your feelings and confidence than if you are not aware of them[5].
Influence of beliefs on your feelings
As mentioned above, recognizing situations and your insights matter to how you feel. Those "recognitions" and insights actually constitute your beliefs. Your beliefs are about the unconscious "rules" you once thought up about how the world works and what you think what is or is not "right."
Those beliefs may not always be true, and then your feelings won't help you move forward. So always check for yourself which belief is causing your feelings and how logical the belief actually is when you look at it from a distance.
Then, if your beliefs still make sense, it's best to trust your gut. Notice that it's still a bit of a strange belief? Then self-hypnosis or a hypnotherapist can help change the belief.
Explore your experience with your feelings
When helping people as a hypnotherapist, you quickly find out that people often do have experiences of trusting or not trusting their gut.
So you can verify those experiences. For example, during a session, it is very common to ask someone if they have had that "feeling" before.
For example, a hunch about whether or not they could trust someone. In fact, many people who have been deceived had seen some "red flags." Those red flags are actually your sense that something is not right.
If you've had that kind of warning from your gut and your gut turned out to be right. Then at least you already know the feeling is right and then in the future you only have to act on the feeling.
Not acting on that feeling then often comes from limiting beliefs. Like the belief that you should be nice, or that people deserve a chance. Those "good" beliefs then hinder you from choosing for yourself.
A hypnotherapist can help you remove limiting beliefs about your feelings.
On the other hand, if you've never seen those kinds of "red flags" and had a completely good feeling about someone who ended up cheating on you, that may be another indication that you have other limiting beliefs. Like the belief that really everyone can be trusted.
By checking experiences with your gut and seeing if your gut was right or wrong. You can properly assess for yourself whether you can trust your feelings or if, on the contrary, you need to work on your beliefs so that your feelings are correct in the future.
What you're actually doing when you review these kinds of memories (or when you help someone with them) is improving the mobility of the ego (the IC). It helps to process information in a different way for a while,[6] and that alone can do a lot to trust your feelings more. Especially if you then find out that your feelings are very often right after all, which will be the case in most cases. After all, everyone has an instinct to survive.
Self-hypnosis and trusting your feelings
One way to perform the above exercise is with self-hypnosis. With self-hypnosis, you can also learn to trust your feelings more.
During self-hypnosis, for example, you can make decisions and, in doing so, better connect with your feelings. This feeling, for example, can give you a representation of what the consequence of certain decisions will be. For example, you can visualize how taking a certain decision will affect you.
People who trust their feelings well during self-hypnosis are often characterized by a need for independence, confidence in their own abilities and trust in their feelings.
Instead, do you need structure, control and security? Then you may find it more difficult to trust your feelings during self-hypnosis and go with the flow of your thoughts or feelings[7].
Working on yourself to trust your feelings
This insight also provides inputs that you can work on to rely more on your feelings, namely your self-confidence. Self-confidence is often the basis for daring to make your own choices and daring to trust the feeling of "I can do this."
A hypnotherapist can help people with self-confidence transform impeding thoughts about themselves into helping thoughts about themselves.
This can include regression, as well as helping people repeat certain suggestions, such as during self-hypnosis.
These may include suggestions such as:
"I get to feel what I feel and do something with it."
"It's okay to do something that others don't understand," says Dr. K. K., "but it's okay to do something that others don't understand."
"I can do anything."
These are just examples. Depending on a person's issues regarding self-confidence and trusting your feelings, a hypnotherapist may offer different suggestions.
Working on trauma that disrupts your feelings
Trauma from your childhood can completely disrupt your feelings and beliefs about what is normal. Fortunately, hypnosis can also do a lot to process those traumas, so you can suffer less from depression and anxiety and trust your feelings more.
Research shows that it can help one be more optimistic, suffer less stress and have more self-confidence, in someone who suffered from abuse in childhood[8].
Trusting your gut is not always easy and has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that it can reduce choice stress; the disadvantage is that your gut isn't always right.
With hypnotherapy, you can find out whether your feelings in the past have helped you or could have helped you or not and therefore whether you can actually trust your feelings already.
In addition, hypnosis helps control and change beliefs about how the world works and how a person is supposed to function in it so that the foundation from which feelings arise is sound.
Want to learn more about hypnosis? Then come to the free online master class.
Or enroll directly in one of our training courses to help yourself or just others .
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