Self Sabotage 101: Why Trusting Your Gut Can Be Awful

Is that your gut speaking to you? Or are you just hungry?

In life coaching, we're often encouraged to help clients tune into their instincts, to trust their intuition. After all, intuition can serve as a powerful guide, especially when navigating personal relationships and emotional truths. However, the flip side of instinct, our "gut feelings", can sometimes lead us astray, steering us away from objective reasoning and toward patterns rooted in bias or anxiety. Understanding why gut reactions can be misleading is critical for life coaches aiming to guide clients toward meaningful, well-considered decisions.

So join us on CLCI Live while Jen Long (PCC), Anthony Lopez (MCPC), Brooke Adair Walters (ACC), Jerome LeDuff (MCLC), and Lisa Finck (MCC) explore how we can stop thinking only with our guts and start using our heads, hearts, and intuition in sync!

The Problem With Gut Feelings

Our gut feelings or instincts aren't mystical insights; they're informed by our past experiences, patterns we've observed (or imagined), and emotional states. While they can occasionally align with accurate assessments of reality, they're frequently distorted by cognitive biases and straight up false assumptions.

In the Vox article "Want to be happy? Don’t follow your gut", Seth Stephens-Davidowitz argues that our gut instincts are often mistaken precisely because they're influenced by faulty impressions or widely held misconceptions. For life coaches, this is crucial: clients often present gut decisions as infallible truths, but the reality is that these decisions might sabotage their growth if not examined critically.

Magical Thinking and the Fallacy of Gut Instinct

A significant reason gut instincts can lead us astray lies in what psychologists call "magical thinking," defined as believing in connections between events or actions without logical evidence. The Psychology Today article, "Why You Should Not Always Trust Your Intuition", highlights how common it is to hold onto such illogical connections, such as superstitions or paranormal beliefs. Clients who rely heavily on their gut may inadvertently practice a form of magical thinking, mistaking coincidence or anxiety for genuine insight.

Intuition Versus Anxiety

During a recent CLCI Live session, our hosts pointed out a crucial distinction between intuition vs anxiety. While intuition often arises from recognizing patterns developed through repeated experience and knowledge, anxiety can masquerade as intuition, especially in high-stress or emotionally charged situations. One of our team members shared their anxiety surrounding flying, explaining how every trip elicits a strong "gut feeling" not to board the plane; a clear example of anxiety mistaken for intuition.

For life coaches, distinguishing between these two is vital. Coaches must help clients recognize when gut feelings reflect genuine intuitive wisdom and when they're manifestations of fear, anxiety, or ingrained biases.

The Danger of Overconfidence

Another risk of relying on gut feelings is overconfidence. People often believe their instincts are superior precisely because they feel "natural." However, instincts frequently lead to false conclusions because they bypass critical thinking and data-driven analysis. Overconfidence can manifest powerfully in business decisions, financial investments, or personal relationships, where the illusion of certainty can prompt rash, detrimental actions.

Life coaches can support clients by encouraging critical evaluation of gut-driven decisions. Asking clients reflective questions like "What evidence supports this feeling?" or "How has trusting this instinct worked in the past?" helps uncover potential biases and encourages more balanced decision-making.

How Coaches Can Effectively Navigate Client Instincts

Clients frequently present scenarios where their gut feelings dictate their decisions. Coaches must adeptly handle these situations by:

• Encouraging deeper exploration: Prompt clients to consider the origins of their gut feelings. Is it rooted in past experience, anxiety, or external influence?

• Challenging assumptions constructively: Guide clients to assess their gut instincts objectively, comparing instinctual decisions against available data or alternative perspectives.

• Promoting measured reflection: Exploring with clients on how to allow their gut instincts time to settle rather than rushing into action. Often, clarity emerges with time and additional reflection.

Practical Strategies for Life Coaches

Life coaches can effectively handle clients who overly depend on gut reactions by introducing strategies that balance intuition with critical thinking:

• Explore the Known: Encourage clients to articulate what is certain and factual in their situation before acting on gut impulses.

• Fact-Checking Intuition: Ask clients the value of cross-referencing their intuitive insights with external sources, data, or professional opinions.

• Separate Anxiety from Insight: Develop techniques with clients to distinguish between anxiety-driven gut reactions and authentic intuitive insights. Mindfulness practices, journaling, or reflective questioning can greatly assist in this differentiation.

Gut feelings can be valuable guides, particularly in interpersonal contexts where emotional authenticity is crucial. However, unchecked reliance on gut instincts can sabotage decision-making, leading clients down paths driven by bias, anxiety, or magical thinking.

As life coaches, our role is to help clients become aware of these pitfalls, empowering them with tools and strategies to verify and reflect on their instincts. This balanced approach allows clients to leverage the strengths of their intuition without becoming victims of its potential inaccuracies.

Ultimately, teaching clients to validate their gut instincts against logic, experience, and external evidence fosters more thoughtful decisions and genuine personal growth, aligning closely with the core mission of life coaching: the clients personal and profession growth

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Thank you,

Jen Long (PCC), Anthony Lopez (MCPC), Brooke Adair Walters (ACC), Jerome LeDuff (MCLC), and Lisa Finck (MCC)

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