How to Trust Your Gut

Your gut knows the truth before your mind catches up — here's how to listen to it.

Everyone says you should do it... but how exactly? What do you mean "trust your gut"? What am I actually doing? It's not mystical. It’s about tuning in to signals you’ve been ignoring. Listening to yourself.

Your intuition is built on experience, memory, and subconscious pattern recognition. It’s your brain picking up on subtle cues long before your conscious mind catches up.

But here’s the problem—many people confuse fear with intuition.

You might feel anxious about a new opportunity and label that as a gut warning. But anxiety often stems from uncertainty, not truth. Real intuition feels grounded. It doesn’t panic. It nudges.

The science behind the gut feeling

You have a second brain in your body—the enteric nervous system. It lives in your gut.

This “gut brain” communicates with your actual brain through the vagus nerve. That nerve sends constant feedback from your internal organs to your mind.

When you walk into a room and sense something is off, that’s not just paranoia. It’s your body registering micro-signals—tone of voice, facial expressions, tension in the air. These signals get processed in the background and show up as a gut feeling.

So when you say, “It just didn’t feel right,” you're not being irrational. You’re describing your body processing cues you didn’t even know you picked up.

The trick is to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, the fear from what your gut is actually saying - the difference is between intuitive (gut) thoughts and invasive (fear-based) thoughts.

Learn the difference

Here’s a simple breakdown of intuitive vs invasive thoughts:

If you want to hear your gut clearly, you need to get quiet.

Try:

• Sitting still for five minutes a day

• Journaling your unfiltered thoughts

• Naming what’s fear and what’s truth

• Asking your body how it feels, not just your mind

• When you're actually in a situation, try and sift the fear from your intuition about what you're feeling.

Your body holds more intelligence than you think.

Trust takes practice

Listening to your gut is an act of self-trust. It means owning your choices. Knowing you might get it wrong and trying anyway.

You don’t build intuition overnight. You build it by paying attention, one small decision at a time.

So, next time you're unsure—pause.

Ask yourself:

• Am I feeling fear or truth?

• Does this feel expansive or heavy?

• What would I choose if I fully trusted myself?

Your gut already knows.

Listen.