Do You Trust Your Gut Feelings?

[Marlin 45 carbine]

I do now - you can say what you want but some years back I went to a 'dowsing' seminar. a woman there convinced me that there is something to the incidence of a colored 'aura' that some people can detect around others.
red 'aura' if it is sensed should set off the alarm.
I've had too may 'incidences' to dismiss this as 'co-incidence'.
and you would be surprised to know how many 'new age' belief adherents (actually this has been around for millenia) keep a firearm of some sort handy around their homes. mostly .22LR semi-autos and/or smaller break-action shottys.

 

[Readyrod]

You gotta learn to control fear, on that one I don't think you have much choice. When you feel fear grabbing your huevos you need to override it and let reason take over or you will panic and lose it. It takes mind control and a heck of a lot of practice. Once you don't get scared much anymore you need to get real good at evaluating risk or you can get into trouble. It takes real courage to not do something you are not scared of but you think is too risky to try.
Sorry to get serious but I'm a bit of an adrenalin junkie and I think about it a lot cause I don't want to make any mistakes.

 

[conw]

Look for the why behind your gut feeling.

I disagree with this if you mean to analyze the feeling immediately. If you really do TRUST your gut, if it's screaming "turn around and get behind that brick wall" you're better served listening than analyzing.

 

[saltydog452]

I don't trust 'gut feelings' implictly, but I dang sure pay attention.

Its foolish if I don't.

Mostly, I try not to be foolish.

salty

 

[Lonestar49]

Take the path of least resistance..

...

Based on your own testimony, trust what you have learned from past mistakes, as it will all come down to ~ Fate is the Hunter ~ when ya get right down to it..

Luck,


Ls

 

[YammyMonkey]

For the record, the "yous" below are not directed at anyone in particular but everyone in general.

conwict- There's a big difference between "get out NOW" & "something's not right here." If you get the former then by all means get out. The latter could be anything from "I'm about to lock my keys in my car" to "That odd noise is someone having a stroke an aisle over & trying to get some help."

From a self defense perspective you could make things worse by bolting instead of taking a few seconds to figure out why. The only way to do that effectively & efficiently is to pay attention to what's going on around you. Think about the last time your intuition kicked in. What was it that triggered that response? You know. But you can’t recall the trigger if you weren’t paying attention. Therefore you learn nothing more than you were freaked out & bolted or you were freaked out but too embarrassed or whatever to bolt, but everything turned out okay. In the first scenario you haven’t helped yourself discriminate between the real thing & a false positive. In the second you’re conditioning yourself to be like the rest of the heads-down world & just ignore real input.

In The Gift of Fear my “favorite” story is the one about the girl who was raped in her apartment for (IIRC) hours, then the guy gets up, supposedly to get a glass of water & she sneaks out behind him, down the hall & out the door. The description was that she felt like she wasn’t in control of herself, her legs were just driving her. She didn’t know why. Because of that I’ll give 100:1 odds that if he had turned around while she was behind him she would have gone deer-in-the-headlights (DITHL) & been killed.

Her rapist closing the open bedroom window is what triggered her reaction. He’d been raping her for a long time, then all of a sudden he closes the window to get a glass of water? Something very wicked this way comes when he’s done in the kitchen. His plan was to get a knife from the kitchen & murder her. If she had the presence of mind to realize that she was now in a fight for her life she could have come up with a simple plan to combat the DITHL response if she got caught. Even if it was just, “Kick him in the balls & bury my thumb as deep as I can in his skull.” it would have been better than uhhhhhhh…oh no…why am I being dragged by my hair…what’s that shiny thing he’s holding…? She got through it well enough & I certainly am not judging her- she probably was never exposed to this kind of thinking, but there was absolutely no margin for error on her part. Paying attention means time for your OODA loop to work, which means better chances for you.

I’m probably already well beyond the OP’s intent but since I’m here I might as well…

Your response to the following should be considerably different:

1- You’re walking along & a guy asks you if you have a light.

2-You’re walking along, notice someone move out from between a van & wall as you pass & then someone asks you if you have a light.

3-You’re walking along, notice someone move out from between a van & wall as you pass with a knife in his hand & then someone asks you if you have a light.

To someone who is heads-down they’re all going to look like #1.

To someone who always bolts when something seems a little off they’re all going to look like #3.

If you have the presence of mind to pay attention & take just a second to figure out why you’re much more likely to respond appropriately to all 3.

 

[conw]

I agree, YM. I guess I feel like my feelings are usually pretty specific. But, yeah, there is that "Look closer, something's not right here" gut feeling too..

 

[CJ]

Lots of people have jumped from 'trusting instincts' to 'being afraid', and there's a big leap in there.

Something's not right, and I acknowledge it, I try to instinctively identify the source (which in my experience has been fairly easy...something odd in THAT direction, something off about the person in the xyz jacket, etc.). Sometimes I just keep a higher level of awareness (never a bad thing really), sometimes mosey out of the area.

Some point out the weakness of 'Gift of fear' as not investigating the causes of the misgiving feelings...but that's sort of the point of the book...to accept that your body has interpreted a cause, adn not to ignore it. My big take away from that book was all the stories where terrible things happen, and so many of the people involved keep saying, "I KNEW something wasn't right!" but didn't do anything about it...even as simple as look around, look more closely...or quietly just leave the area.

 

[YammyMonkey]

CJ- I don't disagree with you at all about the point of the book, but by just calling it "intuition" instead of expanding on it & making the point that the reason you get that feeling is that there is something you observed- on some level that set you off. It's like he went right to the edge of giving people a real, solid way to protect themselves, but pulled back at the last minute.

Acknowledging the feeling is a good start, but unless you’re able to able & willing to analyze it a little you aren’t learning anything from the experience & that’s the problem. If you don’t get your head up, pay attention & figure out why you just got that feeling you’ll be stuck in the same loop next time. Learning from the experience will help you recognize the buildup & avoid it earlier.

Analyzing = learning = time = options = increased survivability.

 

[JMusic]

I don't think gut feeling is a sixth sense. Anyone with good tactical skills wil know this method is a possibility. Trust your knowledge and what you might do. If you think someone is going to even the score analyze and compensate.



Jim

 

[Caimlas]

I trust my gut when it tells me someone is "bad".
I trust my gut (and then assess) when it says there's something fishy going on.
I trust my gut when it tells me a person is warm-hearted (this is one thing I've learned to trust absolutely; it has not served me ill).

I don't trust my gut when it says someone is "good" or "like me". That kind of qualification takes the building of trust.

I don't trust my gut when it says "do what's easy" because it's usually the wrong choice.

Most importantly, I trust my gut when it says I'm hungry. Such a telling usually means I'm well past due a meal.

 

[Lakeshore]

Trust your gut instincts more as you get older, it's the voice of experience talking to you. Disregard it at your peril.

"Act sometimes on second thoughts, sometimes on first impulse. Life is a warfare against the malice of others." Balthasar Gracian

 

[FourNineFoxtrot]

I do trust my gut. I can't really point out any specific times when it's saved me, helped me out, or even been demonstrably correct.

A long time ago, I was reading W.E.B. Griffin's "The Corps" series. And there's a part in the first book where a character just "has a feeling" that something is wrong. The feeling is correct, and the character runs to the rescue of his comrades.

I've always wondered whether, first, such feelings were real, and second, whether I would have them and whether they would be right.

So I decided to err on the side of caution (or paranoia, take your pick), and that if I ever "had a feeling" about something, I'd listen to that feeling. So far, it's just been a couple of times where that feeling had an obvious origin; some guys hanging around outside a liquor store at midnight, so I decided to go to a different store to get my smokes, that sort of thing. Still don't know if it's ever paid off, but I'm still listening.