Trust Your Gut

She's out $1360 because she didn't trust her gut. Such a sad tale and an expensive lesson. At least I hope it's a lesson. E. sold a course to someone via Craig's List. She felt something was hinky because she hadn't gotten the money, yet he was insisting his assistant had overpaid for the course and he wanted E. to send him back $1360. Finally, she got the money orders and, being the honorable trusting person she is, sent him the $1360. Unfortunately, she learned that he paid with counterfeit money orders. So she's out $1360. The thing is she knew in her gut it was a scam. Yet she listened to her mind and its logic and insanity. "Well, I did get the money so he must be on the up and up after all." "I am a good person so he must be, too." She ignored her gut that said "SCAM!!" I hope this is her big lesson to listen to your gut regardless of what your mind is saying. If your gut is saying "NO" even if your mind is saying "GO," you can take the time to gather enough information so your gut is satisfied. This means giving yourself more time to think through things, get things checked out so YOU are comfortable. That's the only thing that matters -- that YOU are comfortable. Even if other people are trying to rush you, you don't have to react to that. You get to RESPOND, which means you are coming from your solid inner place of comfort. In fact, you don't have to have a reason to not do something, other than "I don't feel comfortable with this." Whenever I react, I make errors in judgement and execution. Even as simple a thing as rushing to get into my car to go somewhere - I spill the coffee or drop the book. This of course makes more work for me - wiping things up, picking it up from the garage floor. Not to mention if I spill in the car I could ruin something more permanently. If I take the time to secure these items, they don't spill and I don't make extra work for myself. Why am I rushing? Because I think other people are waiting for me, I'll be late, they'll be angry or disappointed, and I don't want to cause that or suffer from their reactions. Rushing may or may not get me there more quickly. I probably need to look at how much time I allot myself to travel, so I don't have to rush. It gets to root causes, instead of reactions to situations I may create myself. E. just got a huge, expensive, nasty lesson in taking her time to get comfortable, instead of reacting to this guy's hysteria and extreme pushiness. She KNEW it was a scam. If she'd listened to her gut, she'd have taken different actions, like waiting for his money orders to clear before sending anything out to him - regardless of his pushiness, which was a red flag for her. Learning to trust your gut is probably an important lesson for all of us - getting out of your head and into your gut. I learned to trust mine through simple things like following my gut feeling not to go a certain way. Even if my head said "that's the shortest way," I listened. The more I practiced it, the more comfortable I became with trusting my gut. I started to see that every time I ignored my gut feeling, something undesirable happened. So I extended the practice into other areas of my life. Gut feeling, intuition, whatever - we all have this capacity to get guidance from our bodies and inner selves. This guidance is essential to my happy life.