How To Trust Your Gut Feeling For Sustainable Career Success

“We’ll pay you when you submit all the articles.”

As a new freelance writer, I had only dealt with two other clients who had said the same thing and paid on time. My internal voice, wherever it came from, was begging me to say no. Looking at my bank balance, I took it. The client ghosted me when I sent the invoice.

From that experience I learned two things: not being paid hurts and when your inner voice says, “I told you so,” it hurts even more.

How was this inner voice, “a gut feeling,” right? And is there a way to leverage it for success?

Cambridge English Dictionary defines “gut feeling” a strong belief about someone or something that cannot completely be explained and does not have to be decided by reasoning. But why is it called a gut feeling?

Imagine you are meeting a friend at a cafe you have not been to before. You are walking down the street trying to look for its sign. Now, while your brain is searching for the sign, it is also unconsciously registering the people walking by, the buildings, cars, and even the roads around. Yes, the brain stores everything.

According to Healthline, the gut has more than 500 million neurons that are connected to the brain, making two-way communication possible. This connection allows the brain to send signals to our gut based on the unconscious data. And good news: you can work on making decisions based on your gut feeling.

So, how do you trust your gut feeling?

It is easy to confuse your gut feeling with anxiety or fear. The trick is to notice the thought pattern. Anxiety involves a fear of the future, whereas a gut feeling is a response to an external situation.

Kourtney Jason, the President and co-founder of Pacific & Court shared her experience with Her Agenda, and calls her gut feelings “aha moments.”

“With time, I’ve learned that the source of my anxiety is self-imposed pressure — the need to offer my clients the best services, deliver the highest quality of work, and so on,” she said. “It is felt in my chest, near my heart. A gut feeling is something that I know deeply, that comes to me as a thought or an ‘aha’ moment, and I feel it in my stomach.”

“It might start as a nagging feeling, but it won’t stop until I pay attention to it,” she added. “It often points me toward underlying issues that aren’t immediately visible, and addressing them early can boost long-term success.”

Learn to acknowledge and abide by your gut feelings. Start small — choosing a meal, a dress, staying in. Listen, observe, learn, and repeat.

“A marketing director told me that LinkedIn wasn’t a platform worth leveraging for our B2B strategy,” said Kate Smiley-Rodgers, the Global Brand Director at GE Healthcare. “My gut said otherwise. Coming from a scientific research background, my intuition couldn’t be backed by hard evidence. So I dismissed it. Now, LinkedIn has become the top social platform for B2B engagement.”

According to Kate, this experience highlighted the importance of working on, and with, your gut feeling, and supporting it with further evidence.

“While validating a gut feeling, I often look to market data and industry leaders to run ideas by,” she said. “Getting a second opinion before acting on that feeling offers perspectives on whether you’re on the right track.”

A gut feeling also shows up as a physical sensation. For example, when the freelance client assured me I’d get paid for my work, I remember feeling a soft whirl in my stomach.

Since we usually rely on logic and evidence, we don’t listen to these subtle signs the body gives. That too, requires practice and mindfulness.

Meditation helps bridge the gap between the body and mind. It makes us better listeners and observers. According to Verywell Mind, even a simple body scan meditation can help people learn to better recognize and respond to internal signals.