“Gut instinct” and “intuition” are often confused

Both offer a quick sense what might actually be happening, but their physical energy and results are very different.

People often feel that “gut decisions” are a divine moment of brilliance in which all of one’s past experiences combine to provide a judgment about a matter at hand — this is actually “intuition”

When you’re channeling your divine intuition, it feels calm, like you’re connected to a higher force and it’s quite peaceful, like you’re in a flow state. Hair may stand on edge, but the heart is not racing - it’s not like you against the world.

Many self-described “gut” thinkers experience a shot of adrenaline, which heightens the visual sense, and makes them feel almost super human. They think they are operating from a place of brilliance, as their heart pounds and light of urgency furiously blinks. But these are just reactive impulses biased by that individual’s past difficult experiences. The gut is signaling the brain “we are at war” and the reptilian survival system is now driving. Like a Tom Cruise movie, these people can be thrilling to work with, even unpredictable, but are rarely effective over time.

“Gut” can be code for “reactive” or emotional. It’s informed by one’s past negative and harmful experiences. Someone with enough “war wounds” operates from a place of fear, and reacts to their adversaries accordingly.

In contrast, intuition feels connecting. It feels like drawing on all of one’s experiences to evaluate possibilities and try one opportunity over the other. There’s no sense of good/bad, right/wrong, me/you energy here. Rather, it’s a sense of feeling completely comfortable offering a working group your unvarnished sense of the situation at hand.

***We can’t predict the future. We can only make the best decision at the time using the limited information we have. So how are you existing? From the fearful gut? Or channeling your divine intuition to connect with others?

And what does your culture encourage? Many old school cultures are all about perfection and reflect the dysfunctional splitting (right/wrong polar) logic of their narcissistic founders. Other new school cultures draw out the collective intuitions of their team under the leadership of a healthy leader with an integrated ego.

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