Why You Shouldn't Always Trust Your Gut Instinct

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1:43What is up? I'm Grace Beverley and welcome back to Working Hard, the podcast-shaped guidebook on how to improve your own life and achieve what you actually dreamed of doing because life's too short for boring podcasts and bad advice.

1:56Hey guys, welcome back to Working Hard. Today it's a bonus episode, as with every Thursday, and I wanted to do this one on a little bit of a follow-up from Monday because we obviously talked a lot about decision making. So this bonus episode specifically is all about the head versus heart dilemma. So how do you know when to trust your gut or instead when to step back and go through a decision really strategically rather than just listening to how you feel about it. And I wanted to do this episode because this is the theme that came up a lot after Monday's episode with Adrienne. If you haven't listened to that, I'd highly recommend listening to that because we talked a lot about decision making frameworks and how to make sure you're making the right decisions at different parts during your life.

2:31And I've got so many messages in the few days since it's gone live. And I was doing some further reading off the back of those messages. And I came across an article that took my thoughts on this even further. So I thought we could sit down for a follow up and really get further into it so that we can all understand how we make decisions, why we make decisions and how to, I guess, be making the right decisions as we go through life so that we end up where we want to be and we're not filled with regret as none of us want to be. But as always, this bonus episode isn't necessarily about tying all of that up in a neat bow.

3:02It's more of like an honest chat and looking at different resources in terms of, you know, when our instincts can help us and also how they might be quietly sabotaging us. So let's get into it. Firstly, talking about the heart versus head dilemma. So I feel like people always talk about gut instinct as if we have a very clear like dial in our stomach that literally says yes or no but I feel like that's not always true and I feel like knowing and honing your gut instinct is such a skill because a gut instinct is actually a mix really of your gut feeling but then also mixed with your logic mixed with all kinds of biases that play into our decision making and I read about this a little bit and I found an article from James Clear so he's the author of Atomic habits, which we all know, and you would have heard every single person on their dog talking about, which basically labeled some of the reasons that we usually struggle to make clear decisions.

3:53So I thought we should go through a few of his examples that really stood out to me in terms of what comes in our way when we are making decisions and like what comes into our headspace. And I feel like when you know about these things, you can make better decisions because you're much more self-aware on what's coming into your head. So this is going through things that usually hold you back and mar your gut instinct. So number one is something called survivorship bias. This is where we're basically inspired by success stories, but we forget about all the unseen failures. So Clear uses the example of all the basketball players with the exact same strategy as LeBron James, who actually didn't make it.

4:28And this kind of demonstrates how we often make decisions solely off what has worked for others rather than what might work for ourselves. Or also using this example, not necessarily looking at all of the things that didn't work out because we have a bias towards seeing, oh, do you know what? This really worked for this one person that I can see in the public eye. So we naturally want to replicate that for ourselves without necessarily looking at all the people who tried that and it didn't necessarily work because we have this bias towards the winners. Next one, there's something called confirmation bias, which I love talking about and I feel like is a really important thing to know about generally.

5:01But confirmation bias is generally where we only notice information that supports what we already believe. So there is a lot of science behind our tendency to search for and favor information that confirms our beliefs while simultaneously ignoring or devaluing information that contradicts our beliefs. This is something that I think as a term is a really useful term to know generally and think about generally because it helps us be more self-aware. I think a lot of us have confirmation bias towards a lot of things. I know I definitely do, but it basically just makes it so much harder to make decisions that might challenge our current beliefs or encourage change.

5:33And I think this is particularly important if you are an impulsive person or you are the type of person that gets carried away with things I think it's really easy to to kind of talk yourself into things when you are that type of person I know I'm that type of person for example which is why I bring it up and I know that I need to slow things down a lot and I know that I need to be very very aware of my confirmation bias and be very very aware of like when I've got a hypothesis into my head like doing x is a good decision and then I do everything to convince myself that that is the case rather than looking at the things opposite which now when I'm making big life decisions I make sure I speak to people who do the opposite of that in kind of de-enabling me dis-enabling me de-enabling me who knows and making sure that I then still feel like okay no I now know that information but I still want to make that decision and that kind of stops me being so impulsive and having such confirmation bias but the third one I think is really relevant and I've spoken about it time and time again and it's sunk cost fallacy.

6:35So in a nutshell this is basically where we keep investing in something just because we've already invested in it. So it might be that you have studied law for three years and therefore you're going to do a whole career in law just because you studied law for that long despite the fact that you know it's not the career for you. So you have the sunk cost fallacy you're like well I've done it for three years so I might as well continue doing it for 40 fucking years which makes absolutely no sense. Same with this often happens in relationships where people go oh do you know what like I've already been with this person for four years so I might as well try and make it work which like yes try and make it work but not leaving something because you've been there for four years is not a valid reason if you already know that that relationship isn't for you so clear also calls this loss aversion and essentially he explains that you're more likely to want to continue something you're already doing rather than make a change that could be more beneficial in the long term but what's most wild to me about all of these biases is how all All of these together feel like gut instincts, but actually instead they're like misfiring logic systems or emotionally charged patterns.

7:40And I think so many of us have been taught to believe our gut instincts when sometimes our gut instinct is making us make the same mistakes over and over again. And I think that you have to be aware of these things in order to be able to actually disrupt that. So clear basically says that we shouldn't panic and see these biases as evidence that our brain is broken or something, but that we should instead just remember that not all of our brain's shortcuts are actually useful. Therefore, it's not about heart versus head, but it's about bias versus anxiety versus expectations and all of these other things.

8:11Although that obviously just doesn't have the same ring to it. But I do think it's very, very important because you might be making the same gut decision over and over again. Like it might be a gut decision about the type of person you want to be with. It might be a gut decision about the type of life you want to live. It might be a gut decision about the fact that you always find it so much easier to quit things than actually to put more effort into them. Or the opposite. You always find your gut feeling is just to stay, but it's actually you kind of trying to survive and it's a survival mechanism.

8:37them. And I think knowing about these biases is always the first step to understanding where your gut falls short and where maybe you need help from other things. Like, as I said, I know I have really strong confirmation bias and I'm the type of person who, like, if I want to make a big decision, I will, or have in the past, done everything to convince myself that that is the right decision and then will speak to every single person who would confirm that that is the right decision and kind of avoid people that wouldn't. That's such a typical example of not being necessarily self-aware about where your downfalls are and therefore not necessarily knowing how to stop yourself making poor decisions.

9:15But we will also come on to the fact that some people believe that there is no such thing as a poor decision. And I also think that if you're committed to that, then you can make that the case. But being self-aware will never not be.

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11:35So to use an example here, I think one of the biggest like definitely one-way door decisions in my career was the decision to restructure Tala, which was a huge decision and nearly killed the company and took so much work and so much money and for so much of that time I didn't necessarily doubt whether it was the right decision because it felt in my head like the right decision to the point that it was the only decision but also it absolutely could have continued the way it was like it absolutely could have continued that way it would have been much less costly to the company who knows we could have been 10 years ahead of where we are now but realistically all I knew in the moment was that it wasn't working I knew that there were certain things that I didn't like and there were certain things that basically meant that we weren't true to our core values and therefore all I needed to do was make the decision and make that decision right.

12:29So I needed to spend the time actually restructuring the company properly, getting the right advice, like making sure that we were really clear on where we were going and how we'd made mistakes in the past and how we could make sure we weren't doing that again and just push forward in that direction. But like the impact of that decision was so huge and so kind of wide-reaching and went on for so long, I think I could have spent so much time wallowing in that process just being like, oh my god, that was a terrible decision and concentrating on that rather than concentrating on the fact that this decision has now been made and therefore you just need to make it the right one.

13:07And I was so decisive and quick on making that decision and I'm so glad that I was and I think that this is one of those examples that actually you don't make the right decision you make the decision right even though yes two-way door decisions are easier to make because of course you can go back on them I think a lot of the time with one-way door decisions it really comes down to the fact that you just need to make a decision and then you need to invest everything in making sure that decision was the right one by your actions and how you follow through and how you move on from there I feel like so much of the pain of decision making comes from not making the wrong call but actually from that limbo point before making the call so i once saw for example that emma greed who is a founding partner of skims said that the best piece of advice she's received is actually just to make a decision and move on and i feel like that really applies to a lot of elements of life like if you want to keep moving and progressing make a decision and then make that decision right rather than spending all of that time in a state of indecision and in a state of limbo and a state of stasis kind of fretting making the right decision.

14:13I do think that some of the hardest decisions really can get you into a like limbo state where you get so stuck in something at the end of the day there genuinely is no right decision and I think that that can just be so disruptive. Like I know it's really stupid but for example I've been spending a lot of time over the past month basically trying to work out with my fiance like where we want to live and like what type of life we want to live as our next stage and because we're not necessarily tied by something like a kid's school or like an area that we have to live in there's like oh we could live in this place and we could have like a really amazing central london lifestyle and we're so close to things or we could live further out and we could have like a nicer garden and we could do this and like obviously this is very much a tiny violin situation but I say this to say that this decision has like ended up taking over my headspace and I have woken up from so many restless night sleeps which is hilarious because actually what I do on the day-to-day is like a lot more stressful but just because there's actually no answer like there's no right answer in this decision it has ended up taking up so much of my headspace for absolutely no reason and I've just had so many night's sleep where I've like woken up and the entire night I've just spent dreaming about this one specific area and decided I definitely don't want to live there or definitely do want to live there and then the next night it will be the next thing and actually the state of limbo is making it worse and really what I need to do is just make a decision and go from there and I think that that is a lot of the time the case.

15:45I do think that the caveat to this is if you know you're an impulsive person, you don't always need to just jump to make the decision. Like if you're an impulsive person who makes decisions maybe too quickly and with not enough information, then you have to know that about yourself and you have to take that information and work back from there and say like, okay, well, how do I make sure that I stop making such impulsive decisions? And maybe for you, you just stop making gut decisions at all because your only gut decision is jumping towards things and enabling yourself to be more impulsive. I think maybe in that moment, your advice is not necessarily just make a decision make a decision right like maybe that's the case when you get to decision making point but maybe you don't make a decision within 24 hours or 48 hours or you make sure you speak to three people who you know will have different opinions before you make every big decision i think the main thing about all of this is really self-awareness but then really on top of self-awareness it's about understanding that there's going to be a point where you make a decision and you can spend the whole rest of your life regretting that decision or you can spend the whole rest of your life making that decision the right decision and I think if we spent more time focusing on that rather than looking back and being like oh god was that the right decision you're going to live a lot richer life and a lot more kind of self-assured life and I think on top of that it gets harder and harder when with social media you can see so many different versions of everyone else's life that I think a lot of the time we spend too much time thinking oh well if I'd made this decision then I could have done this or if I'd made this decision then my life would have looked like this.

17:16And the reality is you just don't know that's the case. You have zero information that suggests that would be the case. You don't know whether that decision you made, if you made it differently, it could have been 10 times worse. Like you could have saved yourself from 10 times more pain. And like maybe the decision you made ended up in not a great outcome. And that's the point where you go, okay, what decision could I make to get me out of this situation or into a better job role or into something that I like more or into a different course or whatever it might be. And I think that realistically, we just never have enough information to say that was a bad decision.

17:50I think you can sometimes have enough information to say I continuously make decisions too quickly or I continuously make decisions with too little information. But I think you cannot constantly look back and say, oh, my life would have looked like this when realistically you have not lived that life. Like you've only lived your life. You only know what that looks like. You can take the information you think you know and try and make quote-unquote better decisions next time, but you cannot extrapolate what your life looks like now to this like brass is greener version of your life that may well not have been the case.

18:21Anyway, I always end these episodes with a quote to live by and I read this one by Brianna Weist when I was researching for this episode and I absolutely loved it. So I'm going to read the whole quote because I think you need to hear it. People delay action once they know truth and the interim between knowing and doing is the space where suffering thrives. Most of the time it's not about knowing what to do or knowing who you are it's about the resistance between what's right and what's easy what's best in the long versus short term we hear our instincts we just don't listen this is the single most common root of discomfort the space between knowing and doing we're culturally addicted to procrastination but we're also just as enamored by deflection by not acting immediately we think we're creating space for the truth to shift when we're really only creating discomfort so that we can sense it more completely and i thought that was so great And I feel like, as I said, if you're too impulsive, don't listen to everything just saying act immediately.

19:09But everyone else I do think should act more immediately and should be aware of their biases, but also just able to make decisions. Like decisiveness is such a good trait and decisiveness isn't just being quick at making decisions. It's being quick and sure and then knowing that whatever happens, you are going to make sure that that was right and you are going to be fine. anyway thank you so much for listening i hope it helps the next time you're stuck on a decision and kind of understanding your biases and having some self-awareness towards them because we all need that we all need more self-awareness and if you haven't listened to monday's episode with adrian adamie yet go and have a listen it's about all of this in real time and it's got a lot of practical takeaways and i will see you on monday We'll see you next time.

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