MetaChat - Do you trust your gut?

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23 March 2006

Do you trust your gut? →[More:]When you have an intuition, in my case usually a bad feeling about something or someone, is your intuition usually right? I'm coming to the conclusion that, no matter how much I ignore my instinct in favor of my "reason," my gut's always right. And, Geez... I'm cynical enough already. Maybe that's why I don't listen to my instincts very often.

post by: shane at: 18:46 | 24 comments

Yes but it sure does piss me off.

posted by Lola_G 23 March | 18:47

hardly ever.

posted by small_ruminant 23 March | 18:47

I've had diarrhea for two weeks, so I don't really trust my gut right now.

posted by Spaghetti 23 March | 18:49

I do, almost exclusively, and sometimes to the detriment of my head.

posted by mudpuppie 23 March | 18:51

Yup, I do.

posted by ThePinkSuperhero 23 March | 18:58

my gut is a moron.

posted by YouCanCallMeAl 23 March | 18:59

Yes I do. It is more often right than my head.

posted by arse_hat 23 March | 19:00

I think my gut has always been right. And I've specifically ignored it for years now, maybe out of fear of seeing the world the way it really is. I've just kept myself in D-E-N-I-A-L in big capital letters.

Wow. If I have to face up to what my instinct tells me about the world, I'm suddenly going to see the ocean I've been treading water in as made of shit.

Then again, all the good things in life will shine like diamonds.

I'm sure it won't be so bad.

posted by shane 23 March | 19:03

The gut is rarely wrong. Except in those cases where it tells me to, say, finish off that box of Girl Scout Cookies - then it's just stupid.

posted by bmarkey 23 March | 19:06

Nope, I don't trust it at all. But I don't ignore it, either.

posted by amro 23 March | 19:18

yup--always.

posted by amberglow 23 March | 19:35

I trust it 100%. This equals to poor people skills. I'm not being facetious. I've always trusted my gut, that's the way I know to operate, and I've always been kind of a bitch. FWIW.

posted by rainbaby 23 March | 19:50

I trust it utterly.

posted by Specklet 23 March | 19:53

It's basically impossible for me to keep myself from overthinking everything. And when I've thought about something exhaustively enough, it's hard to tell what my gut feeling was originally. How does the whole 'trusting your gut' thing work?

posted by agropyron 23 March | 19:59

I do. I've lost count of the number of people I've met that I've gotten a bad feeling from that turned out to be dirtbags. As rainbaby says, it doesn't make for good people skills, but there is a certain smug satisfaction when other people tell me I was right all along.

posted by tommasz 23 March | 20:55

No. Nor my crotch.

posted by jrossi4r 23 March | 21:02

My gut is always so pessimistic, so I never want to trust it, but it almost always knows better than my brain.

posted by wimpdork 23 March | 22:45

I trust it about 95%. But you have to only listen to that very first flash of insight, because that is the part that is true gut instinct - the rest is the product of your instinct modified by thinking. I trust my gut about 95%, but my brain only about 10%.

Many, many times I have ignored my instinct from a sense of fairness, only to be proven right once the evidence comes in. But that 5% is the killer, so I continue to give people/things the benefit of the doubt. For a while, anyway.

posted by dg 23 March | 22:54

With something like "is this situation going to put me in physical danger?", yes. My gut is good at those kinds of questions.

With questions like "should I take a leap of faith and go for it?", no. My gut is always scared, listening to it has meant many lost opportunities. Instead I ask my gut "will this put me in physical danger?" and go from there. This is a fairly new technique and has been working extremely well for me. Hooray for learning when to trust your gut!

posted by cali 23 March | 23:33

The last strong gut reaction I had was absolutely spot on. The dude was a trainwreck.

posted by fenriq 24 March | 01:03

I've learned that I should trust me gut. If I think a situation is going to be bad, I listen to it.

posted by puke & cry 24 March | 01:24

Yes, and here's why: My grandmother, a smart, no-nonsense woman that I remember waking up at 5, or earlier, as a kid to take care of her farm, who laughed when ET died because it looked silly, etc., etc., has seen and talked to ghosts in her house. They play her piano/organ and make noise. In several houses. She tells them to stop it when they get too annoying so she can go to bed. Have I seen or heard them? No. But she believes they are there, and perception is reality, right? Therefore, if my gut tells me something, I listen. Especially to my grandma.

posted by sleepy_pete 24 March | 02:42

me too, rainbaby, me too.

posted by chewatadistance 24 March | 07:55

The only time my end-stinks kick in are when I should definitely listen to them. Usually after some chili.

posted by sciurus 24 March | 14:45

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