TLaBB Answers: Decisions from the gut...

Hi, I'm Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt. And today we got a great question. Actually, the question came from a young woman named Molly Kite. And Molly Kite's the creation of a good friend of ours, Tam Vayu. And you should definitely check out this resource for your children at MollyKite.com. Anyway, Molly says, what would a black belt do when faced with a situation where he or she only has time to make a decision based on instinct and intuition rather than research and fact. Well, first of all, if you're acting on your guts— and hey, sometimes that's the way to go— but when you're acting from your guts, from your instinct, be prepared for the consequences. Be prepared to react to the consequences, because if you haven't carefully considered what those consequences might be, they may surprise you. You don't want to be blindsided. You want to be prepared to react, change course, and move. Now, another way to answer that question is this: first of all, research and fact-finding when you're trying to make a decision is part of what we call in the Black Belt world training and preparation, right? That's part of the discipline component of the Black Belt mindset we talk about so much. The more you train, the more you prepare, then the more confident you're going to be. The more relative surety you have in a somewhat predictable outcome, you see. If nothing else, you're sure that you did the preparation, the training necessary to get yourself into that, into that ring, to get yourself into the situation you're facing. Now, one more way to look at it is this: I appreciate that people say they're acting from intuition and they're acting from instinct, but here's the thing, and as black belts we understand this, Most of the time, your instinct and your intuition is a product, again, of your training and your preparation. What you've been practicing, what you've been thinking about, that's what becomes part of what we're gonna call our gut reaction in the moment. You may be acting quickly, intuitively, and responsively, but what you're really doing is drawing on the preparation, the training, the experience that you had up to this point. So when we talk about, you know, going with your gut or shooting from the hip and black belt mindset, we're not talking about something that's as random as it might seem. It's a product of everything. You are a product of everything you've done so far. You're a product of your experiences. You're a product of your wisdom that you've accumulated, the knowledge that you've amassed. And that's really what creates that instinctive and intuitive response. That you can trust. So when you're going from the gut, that's a product of your training. The harder you train, the better you prepare, then the better your intuitive or gut response is going to be.