I read once that your gut feeling is the sum total of everything – everything you know, everything you’ve ever been taught and everything you’ve ever experienced – boiled down to a yes/no, right/wrong choice and impetus to act. I absolutely agree.
Recognising:
Recognising there is an issue is a critical skill.
You don’t even need to know what the issue is, you only need to recognise that there is one.
For me it’s a gut feeling of anxiety, butterflies, nerves or even sometimes a physical reaction (sweats, shaking hands, etc) to an interaction or a situation, which says “something isn’t right here”.
It’s a physical indicator of your intuition and is enormously powerful and informative. It varies dramatically in intensity – from “hmmmm – not so sure about that” to “if I don’t do something about this I’m going to explode”.
Recognition can be trained with time and practice.
Questioning:
Once you’ve recognised there is an issue, you can analyse it by questioning:
- What am I feeling nervous about?
- Why did that situation make me feel uncomfortable?
- What is it that didn’t sit well with me?
Choosing:
Based on the intensity of your gut feeling and tempered by the answers to your questioning, you can choose how you act.
This is a critical point.
You can choose how you act.
You can choose to confront, let it slide, do something, do nothing, ask for help, draw a line in the sand, run, fight, hide…
Then you can choose when to act – immediately, in an hour’s time, in a day, if it happens again.
Just remember that not choosing is a choice too.
Finding a resolution:
This is not about problem solving – that’s up to you and how you work best. It’s about the steps that lead up to it.
A genuine resolution might come immediately or it might take hours, days, weeks, months, years.
You’ll know when you find one because that very same feeling in your gut – the anxiety, nerves, butterflies, whatever it is – will vanish. You’ll know you’ve found a resolution.
With choice comes the responsibility for outcomes. Positive or negative.
But at least you got to choose.