Trust Your Instincts

Trust your Instincts

(By Suhana Ahmed) 

Image By:- Sukriti Singh

What is an Instinct?

It is a natural ability to know what to do in a particular situation. It is a natural tendency to behave in a particular way that people and animals are born with and that they abide by without knowing the reason. An instinct warns or tells you the right choice to make in a particular situation, which is dependent on your mind.

We all need to trust ourselves, have belief in ourselves, and that is one major step to achieve and learn anything; and trusting your intuition is the ultimate act of trusting yourself.

Why are instincts important?

Not everything in the world is straightforward or direct. In other words, the world is not filled with just black and white, it has n number of different shades in between. We tend to have difficulty choosing a path or making a decision for ourselves. There are uncertainty and confusion and lack of knowledge of what it will lead to, and at times like that going with your gut feeling, or better put, instinct is the best option.

Instinct is something that is inbuilt in us, so is overthinking. Most of us tend to overthink and overanalyze minute of things. Even when we know what to do and how we will do it, a small part of either insecurity or paranoia hits us and we tend to doubt everything. We need to know that nobody can know us better than ourselves, all we have to do is try. Instincts are what we know of ourselves and our capabilities.

Going with your instincts might save you from a lot of regrets because instincts mostly root from your wishes and thoughts and human wishes are strong and a driving force.

Examples:

Maternal Instinct- It is an instinct of maternal behavior. Like, we all know that a new mother tends to feel what their infant needs, and most of the time they are right, because they are the most familiar with their own kid at that point of time, and they have been connected in the strongest way.

If for instance, you have to decide between leaving your hometown for a better job and staying back for your parents, you would go with your gut feeling and pick an option that is more beneficial to you.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “Trust the instinct to the end, even though you can give no reason.” 

Instincts do not particularly have a sound argument behind them. They are run by emotions usually, but they do have our brains working on them. So, they are logical and they are emotional too, and the combination of it should be trusted. 

Trusting your Instinct

As mentioned earlier, an instinct is a gut intuition or being sure about something in a particular situation. Everyone has experienced a time when they just knew something, even if they couldn’t quite explain it, and they could not entirely understand it, but it is there, a prepared plan is built in their minds.

We can develop an intuition to better handle the uncertainties of an era of incessant change. Like, sometimes you don't actually know what you are supposed to do or how you are supposed to go about anything and you probably have no help, then just go with whatever your conscience tells you. Just trust yourself and do what you find to be the right thing.

How to trust intuitions:

• Follow your interest

• Commit yourself truly in what you do.

• Your intuition helps you make decisions quickly and allows you to adapt to rapidly changing conditions

• Pay attention to what’s going around you.

•  Be ready to let bad feelings go because negative emotions will cloud intuition, which is why when you’re angry or depressed, bad decisions can be taken so easily.

Anxiety and Intuition are different

 Intuitive thoughts, on one hand, focus on the present, and they tend to make us feel neutral or calm, or even confident.

However, on the other hand, anxious thoughts relate to the past and the future and carry a sense of dread and nervousness fills us leading to a large sense of mistrust and conflict within oneself

Your intuition, ironically, is often precisely what's giving you anxiety. Intuition comes with uncertainty. There is a thought and there is a plan in the back of your mind, but you do not know if it will work or if it is worth doing all that has to be done, and we end up overthinking and procrastinating, and worrying all the time as things don't seem to work out to a part of our brain.

Are your Intuitions always right?

Not every question in the world has either yes or no as an answer. There is a maybe that lies on a larger surface in between, and life is full of uncertainties and we have to cope up with that.

Your purest intuitions are mostly right but those tinged by your own thoughts and emotions may only be partially correct or even completely wrong.

Thoughts collide and everyone works their own and sometimes things don't work out the way we want them to, but that doesn't mean that our gut feeling was entirely wrong, maybe something within it went wrong.

With practice, you can learn to assess your intuitive experiences and identify when they are more likely to be right. Yet, there is going to be that uncertainty present and all we have to do is keep trusting ourselves and go with it, and even if we fail, we don't have to regret and just work to make things better.

Disclaimer:-

The opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of Light de Literacy and LDL does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.