Intuition and Gut Feelings:Follow your yellow brick road

So,what have you been pondering upon lately? Have you been feeling a certain pull toward an activity,place,person or thing? Are you puzzled and looking for rational answers for what is currently happening to you? Now, let me add a twist to the closing question, it is not currently what happens to us, it is what happens within us. Hence,reiterating this question, let me put it is as, "what is currently happening within you?"

That's right, that is your intuition talking to you.Intuition is a sub-conscious process of one using their logic and emotion while decision making, however, when the emotional quotient is higher and impacts your final decision rather than your logical thinking skills,that is when you intuition has played it's part in the decision making process.

“Intuition is like reading a word without having to spell it out. A child can't do that because it has had so little experience. A grown-up person knows the word because they've seen it often before.” ~ Agatha Christie

Via: https://robinsontrainingsolutions.com/follow-the-yellow-brick-road/

On the other hand,gut feelings are more linked to your "elephant memory". Just like an elephant is lauded for having an exceptional cerebral cortex,which is responsible for willpower and problem-solving. They never tend to forget their past experiences and hence, storage is higher in an elephant's brain than any other mammal.

The human gut is an exceptional piece of work. Many psychologists term it as the "second brain". It is the only organ to boast about it's own independent nervous system. An intricate network of 100 million neurons embedded in the gut wall of a human body. The sensations one feels comes from the gut region of the body. So whenever, you feel a stomach drop, when you are on an adventure ride in an amusement park, you know your gut is highly activated at that point.

Hence,the more experienced we are the more accurate our gut becomes. Throwing in my two cents,of being a Human Resource professional of over 5 years, over time, I have been able to gauge people understanding their gestures,body language,voice modulations to state a few.

So,whenever I sense ( linking it to perceptory sensations) any individual has a slouchy body language or is stuttering while speaking,I understand they are nervous and low on confidence.

"We may actually know more than we think we know in everyday situations, too," said Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern. "Unconscious memory may come into play, for example, in recognizing the face of a perpetrator of a crime or the correct answer on a test. Or the choice from a horde of consumer products may be driven by memories that are quite alive on an unconscious level.", has been further quoted by Ken Paller.

Contrasting to the intuition concept,intuition can be sharpened and heightened overtime.Heightening your intuition is directly linked to your gut health. Why do I say so? It is because as the saying goes, "A healthy mind is a healthy body",we need to feed our bodies with the right nutrients that help us stay active in mind and body. I will give you an example here,I start my work at 9am on a regular working day, for my breakfast, I usually prefer eggs and a peanut butter toast.Eggs and peanut butter are said to have health benefits and increase in energy levels. These stated foods keep my mind and brain highly functioning for a good 4 hours in the first half of the day.

So, what did I do here, I fed my gut proper nutritious food rather than an unhealthy meal. Having a clear gut impacts your mood, your mood impacts your decision making, your decision making impacts your human output. Therefore to have a healthy gut instinct you need to follow the following few tips:

#1 Have legumes, fruits and vegetables as the fiber in them helps quick digestion.

#2 Have fermented foods. The new age fad of kombucha, does wok wonders additionally, intake of apple cider vinegar, yoghurt are some common examples.

#3 Reduce table sugar intake and replace it with fructose sugar i.e. more of fruit consumption to up your blood sugar levels rather than white sugar, brown sugar in your caffeine beverages.

#4 Have a plant compound meals plan, in layman's terms, " reduce eating of packaged foods" that would include consumption of almonds,walnuts,green tea,cocoa,eggs,vegetable juices.

#5 Reduce caffeine intake( that is something I am trying since a long time!!) as it results in acidity and stomach issues that can impact our gut health.

Now to just put 2+2 together, we can say that our gut health needs to be kept under check in order for us to keep our mind receptive, perceptive and increase our sub-consciousness.