A short talk explaining how to distinguish calm, healthy gut instincts from anxiety-driven reactions (avoidance, intrusive thoughts, fear, OCD). The speaker advises following quiet gut feelings but resisting anxiety-driven avoidance, noting we never have 100% certainty and should act despite discomfort once we can identify healthy instinct vs unhealthy fear.
Gut instincts are calm, and there's not a lot of discomfort with listening to that gut instinct. With anxiety, avoidance, intrusive thoughts, and fear, you're going to be experiencing a lot of discomfort. Coming from an unhealthy place, fear exaggerates things. Discomfort and avoidance causes us to avoid things that are uncomfortable, but it negatively impacts our lives. By all means, listen to those calm, quiet gut instincts. But when it comes to anxiety, avoidance, intrusive thoughts, ocd, that's when you need to stop listening and start doing the opposite. We're never going to have 100% certainty about any decision in our lives. We're all learning and making the best decisions we can in each moment with the information that we have. Once you learn what's a healthy gut instinct and what's unhealthy fear and avoidance, you can start to make the right decisions.
