Go With Your Gut Instincts: Trust Yourself

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Virtuali

13 min readOct 16, 2022

As a freelancer, you’ll often encounter situations that require trust in yourself. Trust your instincts about people and projects.

Go With Your Gut

Have you ever heard the expression, “Go with your gut?” It means to trust your instincts.

We are all born with an innate ability to sense when something is wrong. Perhaps this is the fruit of millions of years of evolution when our senses grew finely tuned to the environment, listening for the rustle of a wild animal about to make us its dinner. Most of us can relate to an incident in which we felt uneasy: perhaps walking into a room and sensing something is wrong, walking through a parking lot and feeling uncomfortable with the person in the parked car in the far corner…

All of these are examples of our senses telling us that something is amiss in our environment. When it comes to business, we all have a gut instinct too. These instincts, like our others, develop over time. We have to learn how to use them and when to trust them. Each of us develops a unique way of sensing when something is amiss in our environment, and that includes the business environment.

Here are several examples of what I mean by trusting your instincts or going with your gut in business.

The Award That Wasn’t

Earlier this year, I was contacted via LinkedIn by a woman who said she represented a marketing conference and that I had been nominated for a marketing leadership award. I was so excited. I kept asking who had nominated me for the award, but she dodged the question.

Over a period of several weeks, this woman and a business associate painted a glowing picture of a marketing conference and award that would be sure to propel my agency to the top.

But something about their approach and how they dodged my questions made me uneasy. I searched and searched online to find evidence that my senses were leading me to the correct conclusion, but couldn’t find anything amiss.

It took me several weeks to ferret out the reasons for my gut instincts to be screaming “don’t pursue this” but when I did, I was appalled to discover I had almost fallen victim to a marketing agency award scam. My gut instinct had been to be quite skeptical of the whole thing and I was right, but the polished approach to the process had me fooled for quite a while.

Although the conference itself is real, the award is meaningless, and called a ‘vanity award.’ It is often used by small agencies to fool clients into thinking they are bigger and better than they are. Well, my motto is “veritas and viriditas” — veritas means truth. Truth in all things. If I am just getting this award because I am willing to pay a fee of several thousand dollars to attend a conference, it isn’t worth one penny to me. It is a lie and only a badge of vanity, not a badge of honor.

I turned it down and asked the conference organizers to stop contacting me. They kept pestering me for weeks, demanding several thousands of dollars so that I could receive my “award” at the conference, then moved on to someone else.

Unfortunately, since being embroiled at least in the early stages of the scam and meeting with the people behind it, my email offers up at least one or two other similar offers from various ‘agencies and conferences’. It’s a sad testament to the need for award badges as validation for our work and even sadder that some stoop to that level to try to make money, but fake award scams are out there and my gut sensed it before I did.

The Plagiarist Accuses Me of Plagiarism

My instincts flared the second I heard the voice of this client on the telephone. Something in the person’s voice made all my senses come alive with flight or fight. But why? The people in this project seemed quite nice, lovely actually, and were offering me a good project.

This client came to me when I was actively providing writing and digital marketing services to alternative healthcare companies. I had completed several website projects for coaches in the alternative health space and these coaches wanted me to edit their book. They asked me to edit the textbook they were using with their clients. They taught large classes using photocopies of this book, and they wanted me to edit it before they were going to self-publish it for purchase by their students.

Something about their conversation with me made me uneasy. I felt odd sensations in my stomach — literally, my gut clenched at the voice on the phone. Instead of sending them a quote, I asked them to send me a copy of the book to ensure my quotation was accurate.

When the book arrived, I was appalled. It was made up of photocopied pages from other books! The entire book was simply a compilation of pages from other peoples’ work. They had asked me for a ‘light edit’ to make the chapters flow together, and to rewrite other sections, but they had been using a completely copied work as their own textbook for months on end. Instead of asking students to purchase the original texts, they had thought nothing of copying the chapters they liked from a variety of published sources and binding them into their own books.

I sent the sample back, declined the work, and continued to write for other alternative health coaches. Something about my interactions with these coaches, however, made me uneasy. My “gut” was telling me something was wrong.

The next thing I knew, the owners of the company threatened me with a lawsuit! They had seen my writing for another alternative health coach and accused me of taking their book (which was completely plagiarized and photocopied from other authors in the industry) and using these ideas for my other work.

Considering that I was writing about a vegan diet and citing well-known facts about its health benefits, their claims were laughable. Yet they were very serious and said some threatening things to me over the phone and by email.

I finally told them to go away, pointing out that everything I was writing about was simply factual information available to anyone. It was not proprietary information related to their coaching business. It was well-researched, industry-standard information written in my own words. Nothing about what I wrote was copied from their “book project” nor even remotely related to their business.

They finally went away, but it was an unpleasant and uncomfortable experience that taught me to listen to my gut instincts. My “gut” had said to decline this project right there on the phone during our first call but I really wanted to grow my business and yes, I wanted the money they offered. I regretted for a long time my interactions with this business and even now writing this story I cringe inside, feeling uneasy that they will threaten me again even though there is nothing in this story that can remotely identify their business. They were so unreasonable that years after the interaction with them has left me shy about even touching this story.

It is a powerful reminder that my subconscious picked up on something well before the incident confirmed what it was reporting: stay away!

Fine-Tune Your Business Instincts by Listening

So many times throughout my many years of business both as an entrepreneur and as a marketing executive working for other companies, my ‘gut’ has steered me away from crazy situations, bad clients, and problematic projects. The times I have regretted taking projects are the times when I did not listen to my gut.

How do you learn to recognize your gut instincts? You must learn to recognize your own personal internal signals — that’s the hard part.

My gut instinct sends me signals in several ways. These are physical feelings combined with an emotional sense of uneasiness, like something isn’t right. It often feels like someone is standing over my shoulder trying to speak to me but I can’t hear them — like someone half heard, something half glimpsed out of the corner of one’s eye.

Overall, though, the feeling that I get when my gut is speaking to me is one of general uneasiness. Often when someone brings me a project to bid on that’s not a good fit or has something wrong behind the scenes, I don’t sleep well. My dreams are filled with danger signals — snakes, floods, sirens. It’s as if my subconscious is sending up big red flares telling me to stay away.

Sometimes Gut Instincts Don’t Make Sense

Sometimes, however, my gut instincts don’t make much sense. This may happen to you, too. That’s when learning your own personal feelings and signs of your ‘sixth sense’ warning you away from work or other dangerous situation is essential.

A few months ago, my gut was giving me huge warning signs about an opportunity that looked good on the surface. It was an opportunity I had been hoping to land several years ago but hadn’t panned out. Now, the business owner on the other side of the equation emailed me to see if I would be willing to proceed. All signs looked good. Yet my gut was screaming “Don’t do it!”

I waited for days, examining the contract, looking for information online about the opportunity. All signs pointed to go. Nothing outright seemed wrong. Yet my gut was saying, “Do not pursue this opportunity. Danger.”

I declined the opportunity and as soon as I did, I felt a sense of relief. My crazy snake-filled dreams disappeared and I felt happy again. I’ve been trusting my gut so long that I knew the feeling of relief was a sure sign that I had read my signs right. Even though my conscious mind didn’t process the logical reasons why this opportunity was a danger to me, my subconscious had seen the signs and warned me. I feel grateful that I have learned to trust my instincts in business matters and learned to read my own personal landscape for signs.

Working With Your Instincts in Business

It’s one thing to read these stories, nod, and relate to them, but quite another to develop your own personal lexicon of signals that indicates your senses are trying to warn you away from something. How do you develop this innate ability?

Notice patterns. Whenever a business deal falls apart or goes awry, think back to what you felt and thought when you first encountered it. Did you feel anything unusual, any reluctance to take the opportunity? What did your dreams tell you? Your body?
Write down any unusual feelings such as the ones I have described — situations that seem normal but don’t feel right, or times when you felt something was off and walked away only to be proven right. These are all your personal examples of using your sixth sense. The clues to help you use these instincts more effectively are personal to you. It is helpful to spend time writing in a personal journal or diary all that you’ve noticed or learned and examples of when you experienced such feelings and when you were proven right.
It’s also helpful to note occasions when you were wrong, when you thought your instinct was telling you something only to notice later on that you were wrong about it. Being wrong is part of the learning process. It will help you distinguish between the special telltale signs your subconscious gives you and your consciousness and ego entering the picture.

I promise you that this is perhaps the most “out there” post among the 15 Lessons Learned articles that I have planned. But it is an important one.

Many business books, courses, podcasts and videos talk about all the logical, “right-brained” thinking that goes into building a business: how to choose your company’s legal setup, branding, naming, finding clients and so on.

Very few will talk about things like trusting your gut instinct to avoid bad clients and situations that can set your business back by months, if not years.

After my encounter with the editing project people, I felt scared for a long time afterwards and ended up completely changing my agency’s focus from natural and alternative health products to working with marketing agencies and eventually niching down to technology and manufacturing content marketing. It was a good thing we did that — I think we do a better job for tech and manufacturing clients, and there is certainly more opportunities for us to make a difference — but it took a very long time for us to regain the momentum we lost when I was distracted dealing with the problematic people threatening lawsuits because I was working in their industry (which I had worked in for years before I met them!).

Far too many of us discount our hunches, instincts, and senses that give us information we can’t explain. I did for many years too, very afraid of the increasing number of my hunches that came true. It was only after I learned for a fact to trust my instincts when my father died that I was able to move past that fear and thoroughly trust my gut instincts.

I leave this story for last. It was proof to me beyond a doubt to trust my instincts.

I had lived with my dad for many years after I graduated from college. I wasn’t one to leave the nest. My mother had died when I was in college, and all of my siblings had married or moved out. I had a nice apartment on the second floor of my father’s house and we shared a kitchen. It was a good arrangement for us both.

One weekend, my father seemed pale and tired. He had a nagging cough, so he went to an immediate care center, where they diagnosed him with bronchitis, gave him antibiotics, and sent him home. I felt uneasy. That wasn’t like my father. He was just sort of sitting around watching television. Usually he was very active — in the garden, his woodworking workshop or with church functions. But he seemed very low energy. I chalked it up to bronchitis.

When I left for work the next day, I noticed that my father had left dirty pots on the stove and dirty dishes on the breakfast table. That was very unlike him. He was always tidy and put his dishes in the dishwasher and washed the pots and pans as soon as he was finished fixing his meals. Again, I ignored my growing sense of unease, but my subconscious recognized it. Although at the time I did not know it was happening, my “gut instinct” or “sixth sense” was on high alert seeking other signs and trying to interpret what was going on.

Later on that day, when I couldn’t reach him by phone, my uneasiness grew. I finally asked a neighbor to call on him, and soon my dad called to tell me the cat had simply knocked the phone off the hook. We hung up, but I felt my uneasiness rise almost to a fever pitch.

My coworker at the next desk, who had become exasperated with my anxious pacing around worrying about my father all morning, snapped, “See? Everything is all right!”

I opened my mouth to agree but instead I said, “Nothing is right.”

A few minutes later, my phone at work rang. It was my neighbor. After my dad hung up the phone with me, he walked my neighbor to the door, then suddenly put his hand to his head, said, “I don’t feel well” and collapsed. He died a few minutes later.

The cough and medical signs he had a few days prior were related to his heart failing (not bronchitis as the immediate care center doctor misdiagnosed him, but that’s another story for another day).

My senses had picked up signs that something was wrong, but my logical mind couldn’t make sense of them. So what if my father didn’t wash his breakfast dishes? Maybe, after 70-something years, he was tired of being a neat freak! Maybe he was just going to do them later. Although it was uncharacteristics, to most people, it wasn’t a ‘big deal.’

The things my senses picked up — the unwashed breakfast dishes (unusual for my fastidious dad), the phone off the hook, and perhaps a million small details at home made my “gut instinct” feel that something was wrong. My gut was screaming that morning while I was at work that something was gravely wrong. If I had not honored my instinct to call home, and then call the neighbor when I couldn’t reach him (the cat had knocked the phone off the hook), my dad wouldn’t have received immediate medical care. My neighbor was there to call 911 and although there was nothing that could be done, we all had the assurance that all that was possible had been done to try to save him. His biggest fear in life had been dying alone; thanks to my following my gut instincts, he was spared that and died with someone nearby.

I hope for all of you that learning to trust your gut doesn’t involve anything as dramatic — or painful — as the loss of a loved one or a crazy potential client threatening to sue you when they were in the wrong. But we all encounter these situations along the way, and developing and honing one’s sixth sense or gut instinct is a big lesson I learned in my 15 years of running a small business and niche marketing agency.