Running Work Choices Through a “Gut Check".

Let me start this with caveat: this advice may not be universally applicable. People without a wealth of life experience, people completely disconnected from their emotions, people lacking any sort of spiritual grounding, and people with untreated mental health illnesses which may alter their perception of reality might not want to take this advice. For that matter, the crux of this advice is to never, ever take any advice completely without running it through your own internal emotional evaluation system, which I’m referring to as “your intuition.” If this advice runs up against your own intuition for your circumstances at the moment, ignore me and listen to yourself!

The advice I’m referring to, which is often stated but not necessarily meant or followed, is to “trust your gut.” By gut, I’m referring to intuition. While on their surface, “gut” and “intuition” seem to have nothing to do with each other, scientific study increasingly reveals that the connection between the nervous system and the digestive system is inextricable and there is an extent to which we “think” with our gut, an intelligence originating in our digestive system that transmits to our brains. If this is true, trusting our “gut” is actually a form of analysis of our emotional signals which provide important information. Putting aside such discoveries, often the response we feel to the presentation of a choice is physically felt in the area of the gut.

We give this advice to each other — trust your gut — when it comes to interpersonal relationships, but I’ve often found it missing from conversations about dynamics in the world of work. Instead, we are bombarded with prescriptive methodologies and double-edged advice like “assume good intent,” without making space for attention to the nagging voice within telling us that something is off. Social media, in particular, is rampant with “experts” and “coaches” delivering general statements as if they are gospel, telling us how to manage our career choices. Even while there is broad recognition across publications and industries that things are almost never what they seem, that people in leadership can be duplicitous and artificial, that work environments — sadly — are more often toxic and dangerous than they are authentic and supportive, professional thought leaders, coaches and others to whom we may turn for feedback continue to proffer these ill-formed opinions without encouraging us to listen to our own internal intelligence system.

There are a number of reasons a person may try to persuade you to do something that feels “off” with respect to your professional life. In some cases, people are simply codependent — rather than taking responsibility for, or perhaps in addition to taking responsibility for their own lives, they evade their own uncomfortable feelings and/or obligations by taking up your life as a “cause.” While this isn’t necessarily coming from an intentionally harmful place, it can certainly work against your best interests to listen to someone who feels driven by their own emotional deficits to exert control over your decisions, even when it’s truly what they believe to be best for you.

In other cases, people may have an agenda. Your acceptance of that project, that strategy, that tactic, may be designed to preserve a relationship they need for their own advancement, for example. They could be encouraging you to walk into and focus attention on a chaotic situation in order to deflect attention from their own behavior. They may be presenting you with something they know you aren’t qualified to do because they know you’ll decline, and your rejection triggers an outcome they want (for example, a reason to fire you). They may simply be insecure in their own positions and advise you to do something that would keep you from outshining them. I have seen all of these things manifest in my career, across organizational types and industries.

In some cases, people are genuinely offering what they think is the right path for you, but the disconnect between who they are and how they consequently are able to move in the world, and who you are and how you are able to move in the world, is so large that their advice is inapplicable. Identities definitely factor into this. What works for a white man may be dangerous advice for a Black or Latina-presenting woman, for example; you can’t rely on the person telling you what you should do with your career to take into account the particularities of your situation with any apt insight. They’re not you.

Regardless of the reason you may be asked or encouraged to do something that causes an uncomfortable stir in your gut, I’m here to tell you to STOP AND LISTEN to it. Before you lean in to “vulnerability” or the idea of “stretch goals” that might have you working 60+ hours per week, ask your gut who this advice is serving. I feel the need to write and say this because I’ve found that the thorough infiltration of white supremacy culture in the world of work results in a bias toward “logical” analysis, devoid of intuitive intelligence. Don’t get me wrong; I was trained as a lawyer and have extremely strong and nimble logical capabilities; for that reason, I understand that almost anything can be presented in a way that seems “logical,” especially where actual facts are supplanted with falsehoods. And falsehoods run rampant among “professionals.” I have been in meetings of more than twenty people when provable lies were set forth as truth, and no one said a thing to correct it (more on that dynamic in the future). I have read emails that assert confidently “this thing is not a thing,” even when its thinghood is irrefutable by anyone willing to actually look at the facts. People lie, at work. Often. Your gut can often discern when that is happening.

The point is, irrespective of a cultural distaste for the “gut check” in most professional environments in the US, it is imperative that you do one. The reasons for this are manifold:

1. It could guide you away from harmful, damaging, unethical and even illegal behavior. If there’s one thing you learn from being a teenager with a rebellious streak, it’s that the company you keep — and in the work world, the people you do business with — can get you in trouble, even if you didn’t set out with that intention.

2. Even if you choose to continue down the path that gets your hackles up (which you may have to do, depending on your financial circumstances), you can tread far more carefully, document the ways in which you are living up to your obligations, and develop an exit plan.

3. You can avoid the emotional damage — mostly shame — that inevitably results from a failure to listen to your gut. When we supplant our own intuitive intelligence for the perceptions and advice of others, and then our intuition is proven right (which in my case, it almost always is), it can lead to a deep sense of shame. “I should have known better.” “I can’t believe I let them talk me into this, I knew something was off.” “I’m an idiot.” This self-talk is never helpful or fair, but it does seem to flow quite naturally when we ignore an intuitive signal that was right all along. By at least acknowledging and listening to your gut — even if you aren’t positioned to make choices in alignment with what it’s telling you yet — you’re less apt to feel shameful when the truth comes out, and more resilient to the effects of the truth because you were prepared.

I’m going to tell you something that sounds arrogant. I stay 20 years ahead of the curve. The things that are all the rage these days, I was calling for 20 years ago — cooperative living, intersectional analyses, rejection of “professionalism” — I came to these things through a constant undercurrent of intuitive analysis of experiences throughout my earlier life.

I later went through a period whereby I was surrounded by far too many self-assured “experts,” where my innate and intuitive intelligence (along with my capabilities) were diminished, and where I was subjected to a lot of toxic gaslighting and abuse. It eroded my confidence in my own intuitive intelligence, and I made a series of choices that deeply disempowered me. I ended up in a life that looked good on paper and made me miserable. I woke up on my 40th birthday with an intuitively-birthed epiphany that rather than centering my own needs and going through life with self-determination, I was allowing my life to unfurl in response to others’ needs, desires and agendas. All because I silenced my gut and allowed others to become the “experts” on my own path, the determiners of what “success” was, and the boundary-setters on my own talents, abilities and destiny. But let me tell you: each and every self-damaging decision was in contradiction to my gut. My intuition was screaming, but not loud enough, over my excessive “pragmatism,” measuring of my progress against the outward appearance of others’ positions in the world, and the authoritative voices of those who projected that they had more wisdom than me in how to navigate my own life.

Now, I stand firm. My gut is brilliant. My gut is there to guide ME, uniquely, in a way that no other person’s perspective can (even if it’s well-formed and well-meaning). As a person with spiritual connection and practice, my gut is also informed by forces bigger than any human. I can say with full transparency that the choices I’ve made since that epiphany have been informed by intuition (proven right, every time), and have led me to circumstances more aligned with my being than I ever thought possible.

The next time someone opines on what you should do, check it against your gut. In particular, where it feels as if someone is trying to “sell” you on their proposition of your choices, take a step back. Is that path truly aligned with what you want for yourself? You can save yourself a lot of wasted time, potential harm, and disappointment by allowing your inner wisdom to guide you.