Trusting My Intuition

The biggest lesson I've learned (and am still learning) in life is simply to trust my own intuition. I've never been very good at trusting my feelings before. I'm sure you could sit me down and psychoanalyze me to try and figure out why this is the case, but does it really even matter why? I just never paid very much attention to them. Trust me, I had feelings, and they would come out quite explosively on certain occasions, but I just never put very much stock into them. Instead, I put my trust in cold, hard facts. I would analyze situations ad nauseam trying to figure out what was "right" and what was "wrong," as if nothing in this world comes in shades of grey, only black and white. Even if my feelings were screaming that something wasn't right for me, if I couldn't find any empirical evidence to verify my feelings, I would promptly dismiss them.

I've realized through hard experience that this way of thinking can only get you so far in life. I know it's kept me from exercising my creativity to its fullest potential, left me paralyzed with fear over other peoples' opinions (because if I won't trust my own opinions, I'm left with only the opinions of others), but perhaps most of all, I'm convinced it's left me completely handicapped when it comes to dealing with relationships.

For example, I'll meet someone and analyze them as if they were a cell in a petri dish. "Is he a good person?" I'll ask myself. Well, he did "this," "this" and "this" to me. Therefore, evidence seems to suggest that he is a good person and still worth seeing. (I kid you not, this is roughly the way I would look at things.) I would look at each of the person's actions individually, deciding whether any of them were "deal breakers" or not. He talks to many different women? He appears to be extremely vain? He seems to lack a strong degree of empathy? I would focus on these types of questions without ever stopping to consider how I actually felt about the person. Did I feel good around them? Did I feel happy thinking about this person? Did I feel like I could be myself around them? Was I constantly hit with a strong sense of "No, no, no! This person is bad for you!" when I was around them or thought of them?

I think these questions are immeasurably important and can steer you in the right direction far better than analyzing what the person looks like "on paper." I believe that if someone intends to hurt you or is being in some way disingenuous with you, your gut will always let you know. It's when you look at the action without listening to your gut that you risk being manipulated.

My gut has never been wrong before, yet I've still chosen to ignore it. But, that was the past, and I have no control over it now. The important thing is I'm learning. I feel it very strongly in my gut, for example, that the person I most recently went on a date with is wrong for me. This time, instead of analyzing what he did, said or didn't do or say, I'm just going to listen to my gut and let it all go...