Can you trust your gut feeling? Find out how good your intuition is!

“Listen to your gut feeling” – You've probably heard this phrase from someone before, right? But what does it actually mean to listen to your gut feelings and is it that easy? We'll tell you what's behind your intuition and give you a final quiz to test your gut feeling.

What is intuition?

Listening to your gut feelings is nothing more than trusting your intuition. When a person acts intuitively, it is the feeling in the subconscious of knowing that he or she is making the right decision. Perhaps you could say that intuition or gut feeling is a kind of “inspiration” (sudden). This “inspiration” can guide people through life and also help them make (important) decisions.

This phenomenon is so interesting that scientists have researched it. Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung and psychologist Ruth Kuhn have conducted research on this matter. For example, Ruth Cohen believes that human gut feeling is one of the four psychological abilities of humans, along with sensation, thinking, and feeling.

Click here for the test: You can test your intuition in the clip

How does intuition manifest itself?

Intuition manifests itself in different ways. For example, have you ever met someone and thought to yourself: “I find this person likable?” Or “Should this person be treated with caution?” This is your gut feeling speaking to you.

Sometimes our subconscious mind reacts differently: Do you know the situation in which you think about someone special? And hey, do you receive a WhatsApp message from this person after a few seconds? This is also your gut feeling, that you already subconsciously knew that this exact person would write to you. There are many scenarios in our daily lives in which we let our feelings decide, even if not consciously.

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7 tips on how to learn to listen to your gut feelings

1. Calm down

Calmness plays a very important role if you want to make decisions more intuitively. Because stress can get in the way of your gut feeling or intuition. For example, you can focus on yourself through meditation or yoga exercises. This way, everything that is not important cannot distract you and can help you find inner peace.

2. Practice perception

Of course, how you feel about yourself is important too. Ask yourself questions like: How does my body feel? Do you hear an inner voice that might want to tell you something important? Negative thoughts about ourselves can affect your gut feeling. So: pay attention to them!

3. Use your gut feeling in everyday life

Admittedly, this is difficult, but it works! A good approach, for example, is to set aside a specific day for yourself and just your gut feeling. On this day you only follow your inner voice. what is she saying to you? What does your intuition tell you? Using these questions, you will gradually train your gut feeling and be able to use it more and more in daily life.

4. People skills training

Do you want to listen more to your intuition when it comes to understanding people? No problem, because you can really practice it! Next time you take the train or bus, look at the people around you. You can observe these people for a few minutes and see how much influence they have on you. Likeable or somewhat unsympathetic? Confident or not? You will see that over time you will get better at evaluating people.

5. Get rid of fears

You can make mistakes if you rely only on your gut feeling. But this is not so bad. Everyone makes mistakes. Only if we stick to it can we learn from it.

6. Make decisions intuitively

Especially in the beginning, you may find it difficult to make decisions intuitively. That's why it's important when you make life-altering decisions, to think rationally about whether the decision may have consequences for you and others.

7. Avoid perfectionism

Nobody's perfect applies here either! Our inner voice can often guide us better than we think. We have to trust that voice or our intuition more. Even if it's not the right decision in hindsight, we might have learned something new for next time. So don't be too hard on yourself!