Trust your gut: Tips to trust

Sometimes you come across people who trust their instincts completely, and actually, those people tend to do quite well. Trusting your instincts doesn’t come naturally to everyone, but ultimately, it’s something that’s important for everyone. If your gut is screaming that something isn’t a good idea and you do it anyway, it’s naturally going to cause you a lot of stress .

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 instincts is especially important when you ’re making choices. Whether you choose “A” or “B,” for many people the decision comes down to which option feels best—but by no means does everyone base their 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:

1. Your gut feelings
2. Recognitions (from previous experiences)
3. 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 you trust your intuition, this intuition is often based on generalizations. You then see certain patterns in life. The downside of trusting this intuition is that you may sometimes see patterns that aren’t 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 physical sensations—which are, in fact, what you rely on when you trust your instincts—also influence your emotions, thoughts, and mood[3].

Emotions, thoughts, and mood can just as easily influence how you feel physically and the choices you make afterward.

Influence of emotions on your feelings

So how well can you trust your gut?

When it comes to trusting your instincts while making choices, it’s good to know that your emotions influence your instincts. For example, if you’re happy and content, this leads to greater confidence.

Are you feeling angry right now? If so, this reduces your confidence and makes you feel worse when you have to make a decision. This is also why people sometimes say you shouldn’t make decisions when you’re 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, recognizing situations and gaining insights are important for your intuition. Those “recognitions” and insights actually form your beliefs. Your beliefs are about the subconscious “rules” you once devised regarding how the world works and what you think is or isn’t “supposed” to be.

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.

If your belief still makes sense, it’s best to trust your instincts. Do you notice that it’s actually a bit of a strange belief? Then self-hypnosis or a hypnotherapist can help you change that 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 gut feeling about whether or not they could trust someone. Many people who have been deceived had actually noticed some “red flags.” Those red flags are really just your intuition telling you that something isn’t quite 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.

Failing to act on that feeling is often due to limiting beliefs. Such as the belief that you have to be nice, or that people deserve a chance. Those “good” beliefs then prevent you from choosing what’s best 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 explore these kinds of memories (or when you help someone else do so) is improving the flexibility of the ego (the “I”). It helps you process information in a different way for a moment[6], and that alone can go a long way toward helping you trust your intuition more. Especially when you realize that your intuition is actually right quite often—and that will likely be the case in most situations. After all, everyone has a survival instinct.

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.

Do you actually need structure, control, and certainty? If so, you may find it more difficult to trust your instincts during self-hypnosis and to 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 limiting thoughts about themselves into supportive ones.

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 the issues someone is facing regarding self-confidence and trusting your instincts, a hypnotherapist may offer other 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 join the free online masterclass.

Or enroll directly in one of our training courses to help yourself or just others .

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