Gut is the Intersection of Feeling & Data

I am so excited to dive into a topic that gets me real worked up today.

So one of the things, if you follow me on Instagram, you've probably heard me talk about how I really hate this term of downloads or intuitive hits, and it's not because I don't believe that some people are clairvoyant and have those insights, but I think it creates this really unfair hierarchy where it's like, oh, this is coming from a message from beyond, I have to listen to it.

At the same time, some of us are just people who have thoughts and ideas and are just trying to differentiate between when our gut is helping us and when our gut is working against us, right?

We've all been in those situations where our gut is pointing us in the right direction or where our gut is amplifying our fear, our insecurities, our self -doubt, and is actually working against us.

So today I want to talk about how we solve that problem. How do we build a relationship with that gut feeling, those gut messages that we get without completely getting hijacked when our gut is not serving us.

So it's really important to think about that your gut is really the intersection between feeling and data. We have our feelings, we have evidence, and our gut lives somewhere in between.

Now, when I think about gut instincts, right, one of the things that I really want you to keep in mind and think about is that your gut instincts are pulling data from around you. If you have kids, you know this. You're like, my kid is sick. And people are like, no, he seems fine. You're like, no, trust me, my kid is sick. It's not because there's anything big going on that the other person can't see, but there are nuances and micro details that are coming your way. You're just like, no, I know I've seen my kid sick a million times, so I know my kid is sick.

It is really similar with our business is that we get these kind of moments where like oh shit or oh my God and it's this moment where okay our feelings are telling us something whether it's excitement fear don't positive negative and we have evidence to either support or negate it.

So what I want you to think about when you're trying to establish is my gut helping me right are my gut instincts helping me right now or working against me? You need to be a little bit of a scientist and you need to think about, is this a feelings conversation or is this an evidence conversation?

So what I like to do, and this doesn't have to be a long winded journaling exercise, but what I like to do is identify what my gut is telling me. For example, I launched Business Genius Bootcamp for the first time in the summer of 2021. I was seven months pregnant with my second child and I just had this moment one day I woke up and I was like, I need to start a program that helps people, that teaches people this fundamental piece of how to actually think about their business, like business leaders. I need to help people understand the tools and input that they need to build their revenue strategy.

Now I have been teaching other things along the way. I'd really focused on other offers. So I had to decide, am I trying to escape or am I uncovering something really powerful?

I looked at my feelings and I was like, no, this feels really positive. This feels exciting to me. This feels like I'm building something that is finally giving space to what I actually want to build. Then I looked at the evidence and I realized that my content that was performing best, my emails that were performing best, my 1:1 clients who I was supporting, all of it was coming back to the same thing – how we work. This idea that how we work matters more than what we do.

So in that moment,that gut instinct of like, I think I need to create this new program, wasn't me trying to escape everything, but I actually had the evidence to completely validate this idea that I had. I just had my seventh launch clearly that pointed me in the right direction.

Now, similarly, a couple launches ago, Business Genius b=Bootcamp, we're going to stick with the same example here. I was like, maybe this is a darling that I need to just get rid of. I was talking to my friend about it and he was like, well, why do you say that? And I'm like, I don't know. It just feels like launching is slow and I don’t know if I can do it.

But, as I was talking to him, I actually don't have any evidence that this program is not excellent, and I don't have any evidence that this program does not help tons of people. What I have is frustration that my launches aren't as explosive as I want them to be. I am frustrated that my groups are small.

Then I realized, what if I just built my business model around that? What if I let that be and I built around that? So that's what I did. But I could have said, my gut is telling me it's time to move on. I'm going to move on.

But I looked at the evidence and I looked at the feelings and I figured out the path forward could look different than what my initial gut instinct was.

So my message to you today is not to ignore your gut. It is to listen to it and then look at the external influences that are playing into it so that you only listen to your gut when it's helping you.

Then, when your gut is maybe working against you and leading you into a little bit of self -sabotage, what you can actually do is feel really good about invalidating it like I did in the example of Business Genius Bootcamp, actually find a path that lets you live in the both end, that lets you have both outcomes that you want.

I can't wait to hear your thoughts on this. There's so much that we can unpack and uncover.

More than anything, I want to hear your stories.

• Where have you listened to your gut and gotten it right?

• What feelings and evidence came together to help you have that gut instinct?

• Where have you listened to your gut and maybe gotten it wrong?

• How can we learn from that and really unpack the feelings and the evidence that came in to lead to that instinct?

So please share your thoughts, your ideas, your stories with me on Instagram. I love to hear from you all.