How to Use Your Gut Instinct Like a Superpower

0:07Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I am your host, Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so you never miss another podcast episode. And if you're out there and you live in the United States or Canada, text me right now, 512-580-9305. I will send you inspirational, motivational mindset tips and tricks throughout the week to help you learn and grow and improve yourself. Once again, that is 512-580-9305. Today, we're going to be talking about how to use your intuition and your gut feeling as your superpower. Because have you ever had a gut feeling that didn't make sense in the moment until it was too late to listen to it?

0:49Well, I want you to understand that wasn't luck. That wasn't coincidence. It was a deep wisdom inside of your body that was trying to guide you in some sort of way. And that might seem 20 years ago weird and woo-woo-y, but science now proves that your gut communicates directly to your brain. It shapes your intuition, it shapes your emotion, and it even shapes your memory. And so in today's episode, I'm going to show you how to unlock that connection so that you can use it to make better decisions faster and to make sure that all of your decisions are more aligned with what you want in your life.

1:28And just so you know, this isn't just about trusting your gut. This is about awakening this superpower that you were born with, but many of us, it just lies dormant within us. And so I'm sure you've heard the phrase to trust your gut, right? It's this, if you get a gut feeling about something, if you get a gut feeling about someone, we've all heard it before. But for me, I used to think that trusting my gut was something that was like, weird and mystical and esoteric and very unscientific approach. And it's like, you know what? I'm a very analytical person. I like facts and figures and data and numbers.

2:07I'm going to use facts and figures and data and numbers to make my decisions, not how I feel about it. And then I got my ass kicked enough by not listening to my gut feeling, not listening to my intuition, where I was like, maybe I should take a step back. And then I saw all of this recent research in neuroscience that is now showing that the gut feeling that you have isn't theory. Like it's an actual fact. In fact, they actually call your gut your second brain because there are so many neurons inside of your gut. And so, you know, it turns out that your gut feeling or your intuition may be actually one of the most powerful tools for you to make decisions.

2:46And what I actually honestly think is something that you should use. Please use facts and figures and data and analytics if you're trying to make a big business decision. But also like, take a step back, take a couple deep breaths and be like, how do I actually feel about this? You know, if you're about to bring on a business partner and it might look like the best person on paper and the data lines up and on paper, it's like, this is a home run. But something inside of you is like, I don't know if this is right. You should try to listen to it or at least bring that in as data, right? This is especially true when you're trying to assess situations, but especially other people.

3:26You know, we're taught in, we're such a cerebral society that we live in that we're often taught that we should rely solely on our intellect and make rational decisions on things. And, you know, as if our emotions or our instincts, our feelings are unreliable. Feelings cannot be trusted. And so there's a saying that's really important here that says your fears will scream at you, your inspiration will whisper. And so a lot of times when we're trying to make a big life decision, fears are going to scream at you. Your inspiration is going to whisper at you. You've got to listen to that silent voice that's inside of you and just think about it for a second.

4:03For instance, when I, back in 2015, decided to start this podcast and decided to grow my coaching business and quit my job and go all in. I had just bought a house. I had a new mortgage. I was absolutely terrified. And I was terrified for months and months and months. And it was like my fears were screaming at me. But my inspiration, like my intuition was just whispering to me. It was like there was something deep inside of me that was like, this makes sense. This is what you're supposed to do. And I was like, I have to follow this. I have to follow this thing. Now, if you fast forward over a decade, it's like, well, that makes a whole lot of sense because now I can see all the fruits of my labor.

4:45But back then I was like, this doesn't make any sense for me to leave a job where I'm really high paid. I've got, you know, benefits. I've got all of this stuff for me to leave and just start a podcast and coaching business when nobody really listened to podcasts in 2015. But now it makes a whole lot of sense because I stopped listening to the screams and I was like something inside of me that inspiration is whispering. Like another phrase that people always say is the heart knows what the mind cannot understand. And so sometimes we can't fully comprehend why we feel a certain way about a person or a situation, but the feeling is still important and worthy of our consideration as well.

5:20And so there's a lot of research now that shows that our gut feeling, our intuition is actually rooted inside of our physical bodies. And so it's actually called, I'm going to use it, I'm going to call it the ENS for the rest of this time, but it's the enteric nervous system. It's a network of neurons that are located in the walls of your digestive tract, which FYI, which is another reason why it's so important to eat healthy foods and to not eat a bunch of crap and everything, is because it's in your digestive tract and in your gut. So if you want all of those to work better, the better that you eat, the healthier that you eat, the better that your intuition, all that's going to work.

5:57And so neurologists actually refer to the ENS as the second brain, like I said. And there was a study that was published in the Journal of American Scientists in 1999 by Michael Gershon, who is a professor of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia University at the time, and found out that the gut functions as a separate, independent nervous system from your central nervous system. And your gut has over 500 million neurons. So think about this for a second. Your brain, obviously, we should trust our brain. We should trust our thoughts. We should trust data, facts, and figures. But we've also got the second brain that neurologists call our second brain, which is our gut, which is our intuition, which has over 500 million neurons.

6:41And the gut can influence our cognitive function and memory. So our gut can actually influence how our brain functions and our memory as well. And so the gut is this complex system that's capable of influencing both your physiological and your psychological processes. So your physiological, how you feel, your psychological, what's going on in your brain, both of those processes. And so this communication between the ENS and the brain is bi-directional. So what that basically means is that your gut can influence your brain and your brain can influence your gut. And so this is why we often experience physical sensations in our stomach when we're nervous or excited or anxious.

7:28You know, when people say, hey, there's butterflies, I'm feeling butterflies. The reason why you're feeling butterflies is because your gut is actually coming online and trying to talk to you in some sort of way. If you get nervous about something, your gut is trying to talk to you in some sort of way. And so your gut doesn't talk to you in words, how does it talk to you? In feelings. And so what we need to do, and this is really hard for a lot of people to do because we're all go, go, go, productivity, work, work, work, is we need to actually have moments where we're making big decisions, where we're trying to figure out what we should or shouldn't do with our business, with our partners, with our life, with everything, to take a step back and be like, what do I feel though?

8:07And this is something that I've learned to do over the past 15-ish years and get better at, is like look at things in data and figures and then take about 15 minutes and I'll do breath work. And then I'll just ask myself, how do I feel about this situation? What do I feel is the right thing that I should do right now? And there's sometimes where the data and the figures line up with my gut. And there's sometimes where the data and figures don't line up with my gut. And this is just my own personal thing is what I have found over the past 15 years or so is that the more I trust my gut, the better decisions I make and the better my life becomes.

8:46And we will be right back. And now back to the show. And so there have been very great things and opportunities presented to me on paper. And I'm like, how do I feel about this? I'm like, it doesn't feel right. I'm like, okay, if it doesn't feel right, it's an automatic no. And so what's really interesting as well is that the gut is not only connected to just your nervous system and your brain and your physiological and psychological stuff that's going on, it's actually connected to your amygdala as well. And that's the part of your brain that processes fear. And so this part of the brain processes fear, it processes emotions, and it plays a really key role in our fight or flight, the amygdala does.

9:26And so this means that our gut feeling is not just a vague sense of unease or uncertainty, but it's actually a physical response to a perceived threat or opportunity. So it's kind of the way I like to see it. And I want you to take this with a grain of salt in the way I say it. I kind of like to use my gut as like my, my, my wisdom that's inside me. It's almost like this, this time traveler, it goes into the future and tells me what's going to happen in the future if I pay attention to it. So if it's giving me some sort of fear, it's like, man, it's picking up some sort of perceived threat that I might not 100 % be aware of.

10:04And so when you get a gut feeling about someone or something, we should learn to actually pay attention to it because it may be your body's way of alerting you to a potential danger or even a potential opportunity, depending on how you feel, that our conscious mind hasn't actually registered yet. And so there's one thing that's really interesting about it. And so we look at ourselves as humans as, you know, I have the skin that's on me and all of my feelings and all of my thoughts and everything are contained within my physical skin, inside of the body, my thoughts, my feelings, emotions, all of those things are contained within me.

10:43Well, science has actually proven that that's not actually true. If you look at machines, you know, if you want to look at just your brain, for instance, right? There's EEG machines and EEG machine is where they hook electrodes, just a little, you know, these little rubber things to your head and they measure the brain waves of your brain. That's an EEG machine. And they can see, okay, what's his brain doing? It's jumping, it's going all over. You know, what's his brain waves at? Is it theta? Is it beta? Is it alpha? What's really interesting, that's an EEG machine. There's also something that's called an MEG machine.

11:14An MEG machine, if you ever see it, it's this huge dome that goes over someone's head and it measures brain waves, but it never touches their skull. And so hold on a second. What you're telling me is that an MEG machine never touches someone's head, but they can measure their brain waves without touching their head, which means that my thoughts and my feelings don't stay within my physical skin. And so one of the reasons why I'm bringing all this up is because if your gut feeling sometimes gives you a bad signal about somebody or a good signal about somebody, it is probably picking up on their waves versus your waves because it doesn't stay just inside of it.

11:57So when you actually look at waves, and these are normal waves in the ocean, but also waves that happen inside and outside of our body. When you're around somebody and you're like, this person's awesome. I don't know why I get this feeling that they're awesome. There's something about them. I feel like I've known them forever. That is their waves. And this is going to sound weird, but it's true. It's their waves coming off of their body, matching up with the waves coming off of your body. This is called constructive interference. Their waves and my waves are constructive interference, which means that our waves are actually doubling in size.

12:32So I'm feeling, oh my God, something feels really good about this person. I don't know why. There's just something that feels really good. That's called constructive interference. Now there's also destructive interference, where if you watch two waves that are coming from different directions, they can hit each other and it basically cancels out both waves. That's in the ocean. Same exact thing can happen. I'm around somebody and they're saying all the right things. They look right, all this stuff, but something doesn't feel right. My waves are matching up with their waves and something that's happening, which is causing destructive interference.

13:03So it's constructive interference and destructive interference. And so that is what our gut is actually picking up on. And so, I mean, think about how many times you've thought, man, like, I don't know if I should do this. And you do it and then it kicks you in the ass? Or how many times you thought, you know what, I think I should do this and you didn't. And then it didn't work. You know, you see massive success around something or you're like, I feel like this is right. I feel like I should do this thing. And just because you go off that feeling, it ends up being right. You know, studies have shown that people who trust their gut instincts often are better at able, better able to predict outcomes and make accurate judgments.

13:41Hold on. So what you're telling me is it's almost like they're better at predicting the future, even when they don't have all of the information. So just think about that for a second. People, like studies have shown this. Psychological and neurological studies have shown that people who trust their gut instincts often are better at predicting outcomes and making accurate judgments, even if they don't have all the information. So this isn't, I'm not saying blindly trust or follow your gut instincts all of the time without critical thinking or analysis, what I'm saying is that we should give our gut feelings and the way that we feel about something the same weight as our rational analysis and consider both in making a decision.

14:20And this is something that we should all be working to train ourselves to be better at. Our gut feeling can be honed and it can be refined through practice and self-awareness. The less that you do, the more that you slow down, that you get into your body, that you close your eyes, you stop worrying about what's going on around you and you start worrying about what's going on inside of you and paying attention to how our body responds to different situations and different people. And we can learn to recognize patterns and signals that are going on within us that might not immediately be apparent to our conscious mind.

14:53You know, like an example is we've all had it where we feel uneasy around a particular person. We can't really pinpoint why, but we take a step back and we try to figure out why. And we're like, I don't know. I just get a feeling about this person, something. And then six months down the road, you're like, oh my God, well, that's a perfect example. They did X, Y, Z. I can see now. Right? So when you take that gut feeling, I would start to actually get better at trusting it. You know, don't dismiss it as irrational or unscientific. Instead, consider it as like a valuable piece of information that can help you make better decisions.

15:28And remember that your gut feeling is not just some random emotion in some sort of way. It's a physical response that is deeply rooted in your body. And your body is picking up on something in someone else or something else that's happening around you. And so it's just not in resonance sometimes, or sometimes it is in resonance. You got to pay attention to that. And a lot of times, this is what's really interesting about it, a lot of times a gut feeling doesn't make sense logically. It usually doesn't make sense in the moment, but eventually in the future, you're like, oh, that makes sense, you know?

16:01And so use your brain and your gut together to make better decisions, business decisions, personal decisions, life decisions. You know, I personally believe that God or the universe or life, whatever it is you believe in, your higher self communicates to you through feelings. And so for me, it's important for me to take a step back and be like, what am I feeling? Because, you know, I'm not going to hear voices just booming through my office. But if I take a step back, I'm like, all right, what am I supposed to do? What am I feeling? You know, think about a time when you had a gut feeling that you didn't listen to and it backfired.

16:35I'm sure you can think of a couple of them, right? Think about a time that you had a gut feeling and you listened to it and you ended up being right. And so when we get a gut feeling about someone, something, we should at least bring it into the conversation and we can use logic and emotions with it to also make better decisions. And so that's the key part that I want to bring in here and the way that we become better at it is to stop being so damn busy. Take a few minutes, take a step back. You know, when you're working and you're being productive, everything's happening outside of you. Start bringing some attention, even if it's just 15, 20 minutes a day.

17:09You know, you could do five minutes, four different times. Bring the attention inside of you and start noticing how you're feeling around things as well. And that is how you make logical decisions with your brain and emotional decisions with your gut. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, please share it on your Instagram stories, tag me in at Rob Dial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. If you wanna learn more about coaching with me outside of this podcast, you can go to coachwithrob.com. I have programs that go from 12 weeks all the way up to 12 months. So once again, you go to coachwithrob.com.

17:41And with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way I leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.