What's with that inside voice of ours anyway? You know the one, you are listening to it right now read and process these written words in your head. When you look away, it is the same voice you hear saying, "I wonder where he is going with this? Maybe I should just stop reading now. Oh, look, a bird, how pretty."
But most people will come back to read on, because that
voice in our heads has an insatiable desire to pursue the unknown at times, or
so it seems to me, even though that most bizarre of human characteristics,
'Instinct', tells the voice to click the back button on the search engine and
return to following other links for something more enlightening. Truth be
known, enlightenment is not my aim as much as reflection is.
If one considers how often we hear from our mind's voice on
a daily basis, it surely must be appropriate from time to time to ponder a
while on what it is saying and how it is demonstrating its effectiveness to
guide our lives and the decisions in them in order to avoid dangers to our
well-being and pitfalls along the journey of life. Is it a voice we should more
often than not be listening to, or is it one that we should be wary of and seek
others' opinion on before acting on the feelings, observations and conclusions
rendered from it? You have likely heard the expression, "trust your
instinct, it won't let you down", but is that true in all cases, or even
in most cases, or are we more often deluding ourselves into bad choices by
following our gut instincts in the decisions we make while living our daily
lives?
There have been occasions in my life when I feel that my
instincts definitely saved me from personal harm or death, perhaps mixed with
some good fortune and luck as well. There are other occasions when following my
instincts has lead to uncomfortable, frustrating and physically or financially
damaging outcomes, at least in the short term and if it were not for good
fortune and a bit of luck I would likely be much worse off today than I am.
From time to time in life I have felt an instinct to
purchase a lottery ticket from a specific store on a particular day, but that
has never born financial abundance as instinct suggested it would with the idea
of purchasing the ticket. One might argue that the purchasing of a lottery
ticket is more of an impulse than an instinct. My view is that an impulse is a
spontaneous act, while instinct are driven by a sense that to do so will be
good for you or provide something good for you and involves premeditation for
specific action to achieve predetermined results, be that relatively
instantaneous or longer in duration between the mind's thought and action. The
lottery ticket is purchased on impulse after the instinct has been introduced
by the mind's voice as something that should be done today to improve one's
life and lifestyle opportunities for the future. Instinct has not been my
friend trying to strike it rich.
By contrast, from time to time in life I have had an
instinct to walk into a specific business, store or restaurant and in doing so
either found a job I was looking for, found an item I had been looking for, or
met a person that became important somehow to my journey in life. Of course I
have walked into far more businesses, stores and restaurants when that has not
happened, but the timeliness of certain occasions over the past three decades
has made me feel that my instinct was the impetus for the discovery made at
that point in my life's journey. My instinct tells me as I write to believe
that to be true, even though it knows full well that it has failed me more
frequently than it should have along the journey to now as well.
Is there a magical formula for knowing when to follow one's
instinct and when to quiet the inside voice? The straight forward answer I
believe is, no. All I think one can do is trust it for so long as you feel upon
reflection that the choices it guides you to are the outcomes you thought you
were going to achieve with the actions taken, and you are happy with the
results. If that is not the case, then stop following your instinct and spend
more time in thought and reflection, as well as doing research and seeking
advice from others who are likely to know better what is best to do in your
circumstances.
Either way, you are the one who is responsible for your
life, and the decisions you make in it. Your instinct can either be your best
friend or your worst enemy and it’s important to reflect on how well it has
been serving you periodically to make sure it is producing the intended fruit
of your actions and is serving your well-being and best interests optimally.
What is your mind's voice telling you today? Are you worthy of better? Can you
do better? Is being worthy of or doing better relevant or important to your
circumstances at all? For most of us humans, I think it likely is on any given
day.
I read once that, "High expectations equal high results
and low expectations equal no results". I have high expectations for my
mind's voice and I expect that it will never steer me wrong. I know that a few
times it has, but on the whole I am impressed with its results. So, I choose to
listen to my instincts a vast majority of the time in life, and accept the
consequences of my decisions as they come. I don't always like the outcomes,
and that's when I know for sure that my instincts were off. Or, perhaps the
instincts were right but my luck was bad. Either way, the outcomes from time to
time are not what I had planned for or hoped would be the result. It is then
that I have to begin at a new starting point and trust new instincts to guide
future decisions about what comes next in coming weeks and months beyond.
Life has its fair share of perplexities and really should
come with a much better instruction manual than it does. For all of humanity's
intelligence, inventions and advancements, one would think a "How to be a
Human for Dummies" manual would have been written long before now;
recognizing that humans are dummies more often than not. It would have been
great if I had been better prepared in my earlier years for how to manage my
instincts over the decades for optimal gains, rather than the trial and error
that has been my course on the pathway to now. It would have been time much
better spent in high school to be studying the history and intimate workings of
instinct and how to use it in my life effectively rather than to be reading and
talking for several classes Romeo & Juliet, I am pretty much certain!
Be that as it may, the years of living with that voice have
certainly taught me that it is not perfect. My analogy with Golf is that one's
Instinct is like one's Driver. If you know how to play it, it can be a valuable
tool to have in life's bag, but sometimes the fairway you are facing is more
wisely traversed with a 3 Wood, 5 Wood or a Hybrid from the tee. So, when you
are standing on the tee box and are about to grab the Driver in life, before
you start your back swing just take that extra second to ask yourself whether
the terrain you can see before you is forgiving enough to allow for some degree
of error, or whether it might be wiser to choose a more reliable and certain
club from your available arsenal. If it still feels right, then grip it 'n rip
it! With risks there are opportunities for reward, but the most important
factor is keeping your ball in play.
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