In earlier posts, I made reference to the Pearls of Wisdom that I have accumulated over the years.
In working with people and their problems, it is useful to have a theoretical foundation on which to base one’s approach. But it is the years of experience and the wisdom I have gained – both in living my own life and in helping others with difficulties in theirs – that have more fundamentally shaped my approach (not only to counselling but to the business of living life in general) than has any theoretical knowledge I gained at university.
One of the pearls that I have accumulated during this process is to trust my gut.
An Anecdote
When my children were small, we lived in a house on a square. In another house on the square lived a family that had a ‘reputation’. It was said that each of the four children had a different father. It was said that the mother didn’t always come home at night. It was also said that the current resident ‘father’ enjoyed beer.
Various of the children from this house used to hang around at different times on the street, looking rather ragged and with snotty noses. One Saturday afternoon, while I was reading in the garden, my daughter came in from the square, where she’d been walking our dog. She’d bumped into one of the raggedy kids and had been invited to their house to ‘play’. Could she go? she asked.
My first instinct was “No. They’re not our type of people.” My second instinct was: “Don’t be a snob.”
I gave her permission to go.
It wasn’t fifteen minutes before she came dashing back home. I heard the gate slam behind her. She landed on the bench next to me, chest heaving.
“What happened?” I asked.
“We were playing, me and all the children, in one of the bedrooms. The father came in. He smelled of beer. He shouted at all the other children to get out and to close the door. He sat on the bed next to me and started touching me. I knew that what he was doing was wrong, and I was scared. I jumped off the bed. He tried to grab my hand, but I was too fast for him.” And then she added: “I’m not going there again.”
My relief that she’d had the good sense to get out was enormous.
But even more enormous was the realisation that I had just learnt an important lesson: To trust my gut.
It’s not always easy to rationalise or articulate your gut feelings. That’s what there is about gut feelings! But I no longer feel under any obligation to explain gut feelings to anyone who challenges me on them. And when gut feelings and rationale conflict, I act on the gut feeling.
If I had overcome, that afternoon, my reticence to be a snob and had gone with my gut feelings, my daughter might have been cross with me for forbidding me to go and play at the neighbour’s house, but she would have been spared the ordeal of having to escape from that house.
In a society where we are expected to be rational and to explain and justify our actions, it is not always easy to honour inclinations that may be based on gut feelings – particularly if those inclinations happen to be contrary to what is ‘expected’ of us.
If you find that you are on the horns of a dilemma and are having difficulty in making a decision because of conflict between a gut feeling and rationale, contacting me and making arrangements to talk through your dilemma may help you resolve it.
To know more
There is more information about my approach to counselling, mentoring and life-coaching on my terms of service page.
Postscript
I realise that anyone reading the anecdote above would be concerned about the welfare of the children living in the neighbour’s house. The purpose of my telling the story was to illustrate the principle of ‘trusting your gut’ and, for this reason, and to keep this post reasonably brief, I have not detoured into a discussion about welfare issues relating to this family. But I do wish to reassure you that the children were, soon after the afternoon I described, all taken to safety.
