Today, Dear Ones, we speak with you – or, rather, write with you – on the subject of trusting your gut.

What does that mean, exactly? It means to have some sense of confidence in yourself, your apprehension, your understanding of a thing, a person, a situation, to grok it and to know it instinctively, intuitively, and to let that be the arbiter of decision. In other words, to base your choices on inner wisdom more of the time, and less often on things you can (or have to) explain, defend, logic through.

Why is this important? It is important in a number of ways. For one thing, if you are speaking to yourself and not listening, or speaking and hearing but dismissing, then you are eroding the quality of relationship and respect within your self. You know how it is when a friend says, “What shall I do?” and you offer a few choice morsels, and then they head down that self-destructive path anyway? Kind of annoying, often sad, a little bit frustrating, and, above all, it creates distance. It is one thing to watch someone when they want to self-destruct, but when they ask you and then go ahead anyway, they drag you into collusion and it doesn’t feel good. It is a set up, to feel needed and then rejected, and a crack opens up in the friendship that wasn’t there before.

So, when your most important relationship, between inner self and outer self, is orchestrated in this way, you can see that many fine lines and schisms can occur. When you disregard your own intuitive voice, dismissing your instinct as silly, oversensitive, overreacting, don’t be ridiculous etc, then you cause harm to yourself in deep and subtle ways. You know what you know, even if you can’t back it up with facts and evidence, and to behave otherwise can lead to travesty.

On the other hand, when you do believe yourself, when you take a tiny hop of faith in the suggested direction, as given by your inner voice, you might find happiness on the other side. You might find actual satisfaction. You might find increasingly better health. Or love. Or friendship. You might even find a job.

The thing about trusting yourself is that it can’t be proven – either in advance or in retrospect – to have any particular effect. That chance meeting may or may not have come about anyway. That health issue may have resolved by itself. You might follow your instinct or your gut and end up feeling worse than you did before. But is it worse than if you hadn’t listened at all? Who can say.

How to listen to myself, you might wonder. What are the steps to take? What is the formula, the daily practice, the right approach? Well, that’s just silly, isn’t it? We don’t mean to be obstructive, but really, dear, just think about it for a bit. Just feel into it. What does your gut tell you about how to proceed to listen? You see? You do know how this works. You have never stopped speaking to yourself.

No matter how many cracks have appeared, this relationship cannot be destroyed. It always exists. Maybe to get really clear on this method, you might need to experience it consciously over and over. So what? That is true of everything a person wants to learn. Memorizing a song rarely comes on the very first listen. Learning the dance moves takes repetition over time. Training an athlete, learning to bake, developing skills on the job. How does one do those things? One begins. Not always at the beginning. Sometimes it’s like raveling a thread. You pluck at the obvious bits until you see progress, and follow and follow it in.

We won’t tell you how do you listen to you, since that would be listening to us, but we will say this: give it time, give it space, give it attention, and don’t, please don’t, give up.