How to Trust Your Gut Instinct

"Trust your gut."
"Go with your instincts."
"You'll just know."

From grandmothers to CEOs, everyone tosses around this advice without a second thought. But what does it actually mean? And how much do we actually understand about the instincts we're told to trust?

Can we even trust them at all?

It’s a question that’s tugged at my curiosity for years.

One day, while wandering down a quiet side street in London, I stopped dead in my tracks. There it was — The College of Psychic Studies — tucked behind a heavy wooden door, its name etched in cobblestone.

A real college. For psychics. In the middle of the city.

Normally, I’m a pretty rational person, but intrigue got the better of me. I had to find out if there was something, anything, they could teach me about the mysteries of intuition and the gut feelings.

So, I enrolled in evening classes and workshops. Naturally, as one does. What started as a passing curiosity turned into a three-year research rabbit hole of spooky seances, shamanic rituals, tea leaf readings, and more classes than I care to admit.

Three years in, I still wasn’t entirely convinced I’d honed my intuition. But I had become oddly excellent at keeping a straight face while I sat there nodding along to a woman who said her spirit guide was a medieval goat herder who said I had the clairvoyant maturity and depth of a teaspoon — and honestly, he wasn’t wrong.

As wild as that journey was, it left me with a deeper, sharper question:

Are our gut instincts mystical, magical premonitions... or something far more practical?

Because if we’re being honest:
We all know that feeling.
The flash of certainty.
The quiet pull in one direction without a single logical reason why.

It’s easy to brush it off as coincidence or just a quirky one-off.
But is there actual science behind it?

When a gut feeling saves the day

In 1989, United Airlines Flight 232 suffered catastrophic engine failure midair.

Hydraulics? Gone.
Controls? Useless.

The plane was free falling and the manuals called the situation “unrecoverable.”

But pilot didn’t freeze.

He didn’t consult the manual.

He used the throttles — just the throttles — to steer the aircraft, something no one had ever trained him to do.

And somehow, he landed it. The plane broke apart on impact, but 185 people survived.

When asked how he knew what to do, he said:

“It was just a feeling... like I’d already seen it before.”

He hadn’t. But his unconscious had.

Our gut has memory

We like to think our best decisions come from rational thought.

But often, they don’t.

Our gut instinct isn’t just a hunch. It’s memory.

Encoded, embodied memory stored in the fast, silent parts of your brain that don’t wait for permission to act because it remembers things your mind forgot. It catches micro-signals and emotional context. It’s a second brain.

Pattern recognition in action

If I showed you a this chess board layout for 5 seconds, could you recreate it from memory?

Pretty hard, right? Unless you’re a chess master.

Studies show chess novices can only recall about 25% of it.
Chess masters? About 95%.

But when the pieces are randomly placed like this, even masters drop to 25%.

Why?

Because intuition isn’t photographic memory, it’s pattern recognition.

Masters recognize meaningful patterns they’ve seen over years of experience. Their brains saw meaning where the rest of us saw chaos.

Our gut works the same way. When you’ve lived something, even unconsciously, your nervous system notices and records the pattern long before your mind figures out what’s going on.

Our gut catches patterns you don’t even realize you’ve learned.

What do 'gut feelings' actually feel like?

Ever get a weird vibe about someone you just met even if you couldn’t explain why? Or felt a sudden wave of calm after making a tough decision, as if your body said, "Yep. That's it."

These are gut feelings. And they don’t always speak in words.

They show up in our body as:

• A flash of clarity

• Tightness in your chest or belly

• Goosebumps or nausea

• A sinking feeling in your stomach

• Sweaty palms

• Thoughts that keep circling back

• A big full-body sigh or a sudden sense of peace

Sometimes it's a whisper. Other times, a full-body alarm.

But either way, it’s your silent, but always “on” nervous system reacting before your waking mind catches up.

The body knows first

In another study, people listened to a series of voices (including their own), 75% failed to consciously recognize their own voice.

But when researchers measured skin conductance — a measure of unconscious signals like pulse, temperature, moisture, etc. — it spiked dramatically when their own voice played.

Their body knew. Even though their conscious mind couldn’t hear it.

Tbh, if someone could hook me up with a Bluetooth-enabled skin-reader that alerts me every time my subconscious figures something out before I do, I’d like to pre-order that now, thanks.

The truth about gut instincts

When I first started digging into this, I expected a clear scientific answer.
Instead, it got layered. Really layered.

Because when it comes to intuition, even the experts don’t fully agree:

• Gerd Gigerenzer calls it a quiet, fast intelligence.

• Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow) warns it can mislead us, especially in unfamiliar territory.

• Malcolm Gladwell (Blink) shows that snap judgments can be brilliant or disastrous.

• John Bargh (Before You Know It) reveals we’re often steered by unconscious forces before we even realize a decision is being made.

But despite the battle of the experts, there’s a simple truth:
Your gut isn’t magic.
But it isn’t nonsense either.

It’s data.
Just... messier data.
Quieter. Less easily quantified.

It doesn’t always shout.
Sometimes it just nudges.

The real work isn’t just hearing it, it’s learning how to slow down, notice it, and engage with it. And according to these experts, there are times when trusting your gut makes all the sense in the world.

So when do you trust it?

✅ TRUST IT WHEN:

• You’ve been in similar situations before and have lots of experience to back it up

• The feeling/nudge is calm and centered, not anxious or fearful

• When the impulse to act is persistent, not erratic or pressure-filled

• You’re grounded, not triggered or reactive

🚫 QUESTION IT WHEN:

• You’re in unfamiliar territory and it’s your first time in this kind of decision

• You’re rushing to filter for comfort over clarity, i.e. you want it to be true, so you’re ignore red flags.

• You’re exhausted, triggered, or reactive

READER POLL

Final Thought

Here’s what I want to leave you with:

Your gut isn’t a mystical oracle.
It’s more like an old compass.
It won’t hand you a detailed map. But it will start vibrating when you're heading off track.

It’s not about blind trust. It’s about building a relationship with your inner knowing.

And no, you don’t need to enroll in psychic school to learn how to hear it. Because you already do this. Every day.

You do it when you:

• Make a parenting decision that isn't in the baby books

• Feel off about a job offer that looks perfect on paper

• Decide to take the plunge on that dream home

• Or sense a shift in a meeting before anyone says a word

Because before we had words, we had instinct.
Before we understood, we noticed.
Before we knew, we felt.

The work now is to slow down. And start noticing how often your body knows something your brain hasn’t caught up to yet.

To your inner knowing,

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.