“Trust Yourself.”

I can’t think of anything much more important than that. During each of our lives, we’ll have to make thousands and thousands of decisions. For some of those decisions, the answer will come easily; but for many of them, answers won’t always be so obvious. So, self trust is paramount as we make choices- big and small- in our lives.

Take a minute to think about a time in your life when you’ve had a gut feeling about something. What happened if you followed that intuition? What about if you didn’t?

By definition, intuition is the ability to generate keen and quick insight, independent of any reasoning process.Our intuitions are pure, untaught, non-inferential knowledge. In other words, sometimes our intuitive senses about things are irrational, unfounded, and confusing. You know, you meet someone and have a “gut feeling” that they would be good (or not good) for a relationship. You read an article about a fascinating topic or industry and just know that you have to make a career out of it. You visit a new place, and immediately, it feels like home to you.

I know in my own life, whenever I have trusted my intuition regarding any big decision I’ve had to make, it has never led me wrong. That by no means is meant to suggest that I’m perfect, that I’ve never made poor choices, or that the outcomes to my decisions have always looked the way I thought they would. But for sure, particularly as I look back on the biggest turning points in my life, trusting myself has been critical. That self trust was essential to my personal growth, as well as my ability to make decisions that would eventually lead me to where I wanted to be- and teach me the lessons I needed to learn before I got there.

When in your life have you made the best possible choice you could by not trusting yourself? I’m willing to bet that your best choices were made while you were staying true to who you are and following that brilliant intuition of yours.

Some people argue that they have gone against the way they “felt” about a situation, and the outcome was amazing. For instance, they feared starting a business, but went for it anyway- and it winded up being a huge success.

But, feelings and intuition are inherently different. Feelings are temporary, fleeting, unpredictable, and relatively uncontrollable. We feel the way we feel, until a new feeling takes over.

Intuition, on the other hand, leaves us with static, immediate, and lasting impressions about a situation. Our intuitions, if we listen to them, are relentless. Sometimes they scream at us, and sometimes they just whisper- but if we choose to listen, they are always there- and they consistently point us in the direction of our best decisions.

Intuition comes quickly…without notice or rationale. But, we are all miraculously good at talking ourselves out of listening to that intuitive voice if it’s telling us something that we don’t want to hear. We rationalize as much as possible in order to give meaning to choices that are less abrupt or painful- even if we know at our core that the easiest decision and the best decision aren’t always the same.

So how do you possibly sort out the challenging choices that you’ll have to make over the course of your life?

It’s very simple. Trust yourself. Trust that, despite your fear of what the future has in store for you or what may come out of the decisions you make, your gut- your intuition- will always lead you to where you want to go. And regardless of how it turns out or what it looks like, trust that the outcome will be exactly what you need to keep going and growing.

No fear. Just trust yourself.