Your heart will always lead you in the right direction while your head will keep you stuck. But what happens when you get a “gut” feeling and you’re not sure whether or not to trust it? Well, sometimes what you THINK is your heart is really your head. This confusion stems from being outwardly focused. You get a wrenching feeling in your stomach, so you think you’re onto something. But no… it’s just your antennae up, scanning for problems based on old stories. When you look for clues to match a story in your head, that’s not your intuition.

Maybe a past partner cheated on you so your “gut” tells you your current one is too. You start looking for evidence to prove this feeling right… he/she didn’t text back quickly enough the other night, so they must be cheating. He/she is always checking their phone when out with you, so they must be cheating. You don’t realize this is a scenario YOU are creating based on an old pattern. It’s your head looking to support your belief that you’re someone people cheat on. Your intuition doesn’t collect evidence and it doesn’t tell stories—your head does that.

If you confuse your patterns with your gut, you won’t know what to trust and will double-down on those stories making them even more pervasive. It will leave you in a state of constant anxiety, thinking your gut is telling you something when it’s not, and you’ll make decisions from that feeling instead of reality. This may lead you to break up with someone you are certain is cheating (you have that gut feeling after all!), when in reality he/she isn’t. Your intuition isn’t attached to an outcome (i.e. someone leaving you)… it’s a general sense. Learn to distinguish the difference.