Can you tell the difference between fear and your gut intuition?
With Halloween just finished, I have been contemplating fear and intuition. We know that science has proven the existence of a neural network or brain associated with our gut. Gut intuition is about perseverance. Our gut will warn us when it needs to protect us. Our heart brain is all about love and compassion and our head brain can be quite creative. So our intuition here is often clear, because it has to do with love and acceptance or showing us some creative solutions to problems. However, when you get that feeling in your gut, how do you tell the difference between fear and intuition?
I have an example of just this, when I made an appointment last week for my muscle activation guru Josh Young. I set up an appointment earlier in the week and wasn’t thinking about the date when I made it. I also had a healing done prior that created a great deal of need to relax and re-energize for a few days. What day did I make the appointment for, you ask? Mercury has been retrograde since Oct 3rd and we were in between 2 eclipses. Just as we were scheduled for our solar eclipse on Oct 23rd and mercury was about to go direct on the 25th, I booked an appointment for, yep you guessed it the 23rd! Mercury is always worst right before and during when it goes retrograde and when it goes direct, throw in the solar eclipse and… BOOM!
The day of the 22nd I considered cancelling my appointment because I wasn’t feeling very energetic. I wasn’t sure if it was my physical condition, my intuition or just apathy that was having me reconsider. When the day arrived, I still felt quite awful and my intuition was nudging me to cancel. However, I decided that my health was a priority and I was going ahead. Also, my phone only had 28% battery charge, even though this should last me half a day; I ignored my intuition again when I kept getting I should charge it before I left.
I took the subway there, as it was a pretty good route, but I planned to take advantage of my newly acquired membership with a car share program (car2go), for the way home. I knew after the treatment, I would just want to get home as quickly as I could to relax and rejuvenate, so I reserved the car in my area. After my appointment the car wasn’t where it was supposed to be. I spent 10-15 minutes trying to locate it, I found one in a different spot 5 levels lower but I couldn’t activate it (it was out of service). I called the company and spent a 15-20 minutes talking with them while trying to locate the car. As soon as I was back at the entrance, my intuition did tell me where it was; there was a lot across the street that although wasn’t a Green P parking lot, had a green sign and a green P in the sign. I got cut off from the company while exploring where the car was, as we were going further and further underground. I did finally locate it, but I had to call back to have the car put in service, as I had been the 4th person to try and locate it. This would have been an ideal time to walk away and choose a new course of action, however I was invested in moving forward and I just wanted to get home.
At this point, my phone no longer had a battery charge and I got in the car, only to have my intuition tell me once again there was something wrong. I continued, ignoring my intuition for the 3rd time that day. I quickly discovered that the radio wasn’t working (usually not a problem, except you need the radio to use the inboard call center). Within a few minutes my intuition was going on high alert, because the car just wasn’t feeling “right”. After about 10-12 minutes of driving, I unfortunately discovered why, I had a flat tire. So, now I’m stranded, in an area that is not close to anything, my phone isn’t working and neither is the inboard phone! So, I had to get out of the car, find a convenience store and plead to use their phone. Of course I get a newbie and he leaves me on the phone for over 25 minutes and I got kicked out of the store, completely stranded. I was too angry to think and ended walking home which took me 2 hours. All the great work of my treatment felt a waste as I was exhausted and in a lot of pain by the time I got home.
OK, now for the moral of the story! We have all had these kinds of crazy days that seem to just snowball no matter how much we try to salvage the developing situation. It is important to take the time to understand what was motivating our choices when these situations arise. However, it is just as important to let yourself off the hook! Judging yourself for the choices you make in life, especially when things go horribly wrong, won’t help. Learning to strengthen your ability to trust and honor your internal guidance systems can drastically improve the quality of your day to day life.
When I reflect on my crazy day I can see that I was trying to control this situation and not honoring my gut! I wasn’t centered while I was searching for a way to get home therefore ignoring my intuition because I was too attached to my original plan.
When we are in good form and something is off it is relatively easy to shift our day. However, when we aren’t feeling great and are in need of some TLC and our day takes a turn for the worse, this is when it is most important to make sure we have lots of tools at our disposal to turn things around. We need to come up with our own rituals for understanding and honoring our intuition, which can even include creating the space to just let things be until whatever is going on passes.
Learning to trust my intuition and remembering that my gut is a fierce warrior that deserves to be heard regardless of what it is saying is now important. I believe from now on I will connect in with my three brains for guidance when I am getting contradictory information. Taking the time to reflect on what was happening internally has given me the insight I need to completely shift my day next time things go wrong. What about you? What do you do when confronted with a crazy day?