Trust Your Gut - by Brian Kim

Trust your gut. Trust your instincts. Trust your intuition. They’re all saying the same thing, namely “Trust your subconscious.”

We probably first experienced this in school. We would mark an answer that we somehow knew was the right one, only to change it, and then realize after we get our test back that our first answer was correct.

Interviewers have trusted their gut on hiring people, even though logic screamed otherwise. Detectives have relied on their gut feelings or “hunches” to break cases. Police officers were able to sense bad vibes from people they’ve pulled over on routine traffic stops, only to realize that they just caught a serial killer (like in the case of Ted Bundy). Firefighters have trusted their gut to know when to evacuate in the nick of time before the building collapsed.

But for some reason, many people seem to suppress this gut instinct simply because they don’t understand it, more specifically, don’t understand how it works.

Remember, your subconscious is storing vast amounts of information at lightning speeds and processing all that as well in the background. The information your conscious mind is taking in and analyzing pales in comparison with that of your subconscious. Your subconscious is picking up on body language, tone of voice, sounds, sights, smells, etc. that you don’t even register consciously half the time and it’s processing all that at enormous rates of speed and spitting back the finding that we like to label as the gut feeling.

Which conclusion would you likely trust? From a scientist with limited information and analysis or from another scientist who has access to mounds of information and the latest technology in computer analysis? Clearly, the winner is the latter, namely the subconscious.

So if the subconscious can do all that, then why is it our gut reaction is sometimes wrong?

This is where the amount of data comes into play. You’ll notice that people who utilize their subconscious (gut) coupled with vast amounts of relevant data have a greater winning percentage with it. By winning percentage, I simply mean the percentage of the time their gut was correct. As you gain more information and experience, your subconscious has more data to compare and contrast with in order to evaluate your future experiences.

For example, the more people you interact with, the more your subconscious mind can store data on human interaction, body language, conversational signs, etc. Add to that any data you read from books and articles and you get a nice big reservoir of information to analyze with. People who are people persons are people persons simply because they habitually interact with people. Their subconscious starts absorbing all the information from interactions and soon enough, that person seems to have a gut feeling signaling to them when to stop talking or when to leave a conversation, when to continue, what to say in a certain instance, what not to say, etc in order to have harmonious conversations with others. He/she instinctively knows what to say and how to say it.

You will discover in the beginning, that person finds themselves doing all the wrong things, but as they get more and more experience, the data they get from each successive interaction can be put against previous data and the results will be more accurate. More data sets to compare against leads to greater accuracy in the analysis.

So is it any wonder why veteran detectives are the ones who get the “hunches” and are able to break the cases? Is it any wonder why the firefighters who have been with the department for several years know the correct decision to make in a split second life or death situation?

Going along the lines of that, it would appear that trusting your gut on decisions where you have ample experience on the matter would be wise. For example, if you’ve been driving for quite some time (years) and you get a gut feeling that you should put some distance from the car in front of you, do it. Trust your subconscious. It would’ve probably saved you from a car accident, or more importantly, your life. I can’t tell you how many times this has helped avoid numerous accidents on the road. If you’re a programmer and you have a lot of experience in that area, and you’re torn between writing a program two different ways, trust the gut and write it the way it tells you too. If you’re a veteran salesman and you’re talking with a prospect, and you get that vibe he/she is going to buy, act on it.

So how can you tell if what you’re feeling is your gut feeling? I can’t articulate the feeling (probably because I’m trying to use my conscious mind to articulate the subconscious) but all I can say is you’ll know it when you feel it. Trust it and act on it. It’s one of the best analytical computers out there so you might as well use it. Chances are, if you have enough information and experience in the matter and you need to make a decision, your gut feeling is probably always the best one to go with.