Making a big life decision can be agonizing: Should you quit your job and start your own business? Have a baby? Dump your partner? Even if you are shuffling your tarot cards, shaking your Magic 8 Ball, or checking your horoscope to find an answer, deep down, you know it’s all up to you. And there’s always some well-meaning person reminding you to just “trust your gut,” which isn’t always helpful—particularly if the last time you did that, your gut told you to get back with your ex, and we all know how that turned out.
But according to people who actually study decision-making, intuition is a real thing—and there’s a way to tap into it to help you make big choices in a way that’s slightly less scary than throwing the dice and taking a leap.
“Gut feelings can be an important source of evidence, in the same way that we use our eyes or our ears to gather evidence, to build beliefs about the state of affairs so that we can make the right kinds of decisions.” Karl Friston, MBBS, a professor of neuroscience at University College London, tells SELF.
What exactly is a gut feeling?
A gut feeling, also known as your intuition, is basically unconscious intelligence. While it can be empowering to believe answers simply come to you out of thin air, your intuition is actually grounded in your personal experiences, prior beliefs, or even what surrounding people tell you, Dr. Friston says. Essentially, your body might reflect your state of mind without you even being aware of it, in the form of something like a queasy feeling in the pit of your stomach. “Don’t deny your body,” he says. “That’s a really sensitive and important source of evidence.”
Put another way, intuition isn’t some sort of “magical talent or extra sensory perception,” Gary Klein, PhD, a cognitive psychologist who specializes in decision-making, tells SELF. “Expertise depends on tacit knowledge, on subtle cues, things that people didn’t even know that they knew, and something like a spidey sense.”
While it’s a good idea to make note of what your intuition is telling you, it’s also wise to question your initial “gut feeling” and look at all the factors that might be affecting it, says Dr. Klein. “The real world is complicated, it’s complex and it’s chaotic,” he says. “The information we get is ambiguous. It’s part of what makes life so exciting, but also makes it hard to know exactly what we can trust.”
The good news is, there are expert-recommended strategies for using your intuition that can better set you up for success when taking a leap into the unknown.
First, take a beat to reflect on the past. Have you made the same type of decision over and over—because it’s just what you do—and had some not-so-great outcomes? That could be a sign that it could be time to re-think your reflexive approach. “Be aware of the mechanisms of your own decision-making,” says Dr. Friston. “There is a balance between going with what you normally do, and the kind of decisions you normally engage in, versus thinking about things.”
