We all have a gut, some bigger than others and so what! The size of the gut is irrelevant here, it is what the gut is telling us that really matters. Ok, so if your gut is huge in proportion to the rest of your body then your gut is clearly telling you to stop eating and/or drinking so dam much. Simple really. That is the physical message, but I am more interested in the more subtle inner sensations and feelings we get in our gut on a constant basis. Whether we are aware of them or not is important as the gut is always talking to us. Ignoring the gut is simply dumb.

How often have you done or said something that in hindsight you knew was a mistake. Not only was it a mistake but you knew this before you even did or said it. The fact that it happened was an example of how you ignored your gut sense. We hall have access to this source of information and we can strengthen our connection to it by choosing to actively engage with it, listen to it, talk to it; this is how we build trust with the body and consequently with our gut or intuition.

Whether you believe in your gut feelings or trust them or not is always a choice you have. Those who fail to prioritise their intuition or gut feeling on things have no other option than to use their head for all decisions and choices in life. This is not good. The head is useful and we need it, but it is a calculator, a processor, a store of knowledge and data, it has not got access to the world of information constantly bombarding us, nor can it make sense of it. The brain in the gut (that’s what many scientists like Lipton, Dispenza, Pert call it) is far more powerful and clued into the world around us than the one in the head.

There is a saying I like which is “he who is good with a hammer, thinks everything is a nail”. Now I was never any good with a hammer, much less listening to my gut, but I think this sums up what I am saying nicely. The intellectuals or cerebral junkies among us (I know this t-shirt!) are more inclined to idolise or at least prioritise the head and its amazing box of tricks over the less tangible and more ethereal gut feeling or intuition. The very name gut feeling is justification for some to dismiss the whole package as feminine fantasy or psychic bol@*x.

Today I can honestly say that when I ignore or miss my gut feeling I pay a price and it is never one I enjoy paying. Here are two examples. The first one is a simple everyday one where I was rushing to leave the house for work one morning and as I walked out the door I had a feeling I was forgetting something. I glanced around the kitchen again to make sure I had what I needed, got in the car and drove off. A few miles down the road it hit me like a wet fish in the face, I had left behind my wallet – it was sitting on the kitchen counter which I had walked passed several times that morning.

The second example is a bit bigger in terms of the consequences. About 5 years ago I attended a weekend sales/internet training event in Dublin. There were several speakers from around the world at it all providing good content and pitching their products hard throughout their presentation. A couple of times I found myself getting excited by a presentation and the speaker’s product thinking this could be the answer to my problems (of which I had a multitude at that point). One guy in particular stood out as having something that I thought could be perfect for me. In spite of feeling some unease about him (his suit was too big for him to start with, and he kept forgetting his next line at points in the talk…..man what was I on to still go for it?!) I bought without taking a breath and within the next week he had been declared bankrupt and I lost almost €6.000. There is another saying coming to mind which is “a fool and his money are easily parted”. Well I am certainly being the fool when I am ignoring my gut feeling about something.

So be warned, watch out for men in ill-fitting suits and never, ever, ever ignore your gut.