https://www.enlighteningquotes.com/always-trust-your-first-gut-instincts/
Gut feelings or Instincts – What are they?
“That gut feeling is your intuition. Listen up more. When you feel something over and over, it’s your truth echoing the direction towards your unique path. Release the fears and follow it…” ― Kristen Butler
According to Macmillan dictionary a gut feeling is a feeling that you are certain is right, although you can give no good reason why. It is a feeling or reaction based on an instinctive emotional response rather than a considered thought.
According to Britannica Dictionary, an instinct is a way of behaving, thinking, or feeling that is not learned : a natural desire or tendency that makes you want to act in a particular way.
Instincts can be right or wrong. Our purest instincts are always right but those tinged by our own thoughts and emotions may only be partially correct or even completely wrong.
How do gut feelings feel like?
I guess that at a certain point you’ve felt a gut feeling. Say, a friend insisted that you visit them, but you just suddenly felt an unexplainable urge not to meet up with them. You lost sleep because something is telling you to start that business. Maybe you got suspicious that someone is following you or that the environment or the people you are hanging around with aren’t good for you. Felt that using a certain route wasn’t good on that day. Maybe you felt that your loved isn’t okay. Or you felt that someone badly needed help. You felt that someone needed your prayers.
When you get these gut feelings, you suddenly get a weird feeling, you get unease about the situation. Suddenly you can feel butterflies in the stomach or stomach twinges, you can develop anxiety or fear when something isn’t right, you can develop sudden pain or nausea. Whatever gut feeling it is, you feel certain that you are right though you can’t give any reason why. Gut feelings may come along with several sensations. Here are some gut feeling signs from Healthline.
- a flash of clarity
- tension or tightness in your body
- goosebumps or prickling
- stomach “butterflies” or nausea
- A sinking sensation in the pit of your stomach
- sweaty palms of feet
- thought that keep returning to a specific person or situation
- feelings of peace, safety, or happiness (after making a decision)
Some of my experience with gut feelings
-
A case of my mother
The day my mother died; I was in my final year in the last semester at Ndejje University. Surprisingly this was the only semester I went back to the University earlier. I had only spent one week at the University when this misfortune happened. It was a Monday on 19th February 2018, when I got a nagging feeling in my body. I couldn’t get it. Luckily this day I didn’t have lectures, but I was supposed to meet up with my friend to work on our final year project. I woke up feeling that something wasn’t okay.
Am I getting sick? I asked.
But I have never experienced this feeling before.
I developed nausea, some sickness and my all body weakened. My legs weakened and I hardly stood on my feet. The entire body felt strange. I didn’t know this feeling was going to be followed by bad news later in the day. On this day I was supposed to have a discussion with my colleagues who were staying outside the University but when I reached the gate and suddenly, I felt butterflies in my stomach and developed a strong headache. So I just decided to turn back and go back to the hostel where I was staying. On my way back, I received a phone call, it was my mother’s line, so I picked it up. However, on the call it was someone else. Mummy Jerry called me, and I knew her because she was one of my grandmother’s tenants.
Hello Rashidhar, this is Mummy Jerry
Yes, Mummy Jerry. How are you, why are you calling me on my mother’s phone?
Well, your mother is badly off, she needs to go to the hospital right now, please come quickly and take her.
But I am far right now, I am in Ndejje so it might take some time. Aren’t grandmother and my sisters there?
They are here but you need to come quickly. The call ended and I sensed something wasn’t right, so I started praying over my mother while I walked.
Receiving a call again,
Hello, the truth is that mummy is gone. She is dead. By the time she called me; she had just received news from grandmother that my mother had died in an ambulance and immediately they reached the hospital, the doctor told them the person they had brought had already passed on.
I collapsed in the middle of the road and fainted. Luckily, a student I studied with found me, put me on a boda-boda to the hostel where I stayed and later, I moved to bombo road with a friend where my uncle found me.
So, my feelings were right that something was wrong. Rest in Eternal Peace Ma. You will forever be remembered.
-
A case of a friend
I have a friend called Coconunt who stays in Kumi District. I got to know him when I had gone for fieldwork in Toroma, Katawi, and Kumi Districts. We had a project I had gone to work on. It was to carry geotechnical investigations on which included digging trial pits, Dynamic Cone Penetration (DCP) testing, Dynamic Light Probe (DLP) in swampy sections along the roads, Hand auguring around the roads and construction material source investigations (water, sand, gravel, and rock). On this project I gathered several boys to work for me. I worked with over 20 boys throughout the fieldwork. But when I encountered challenges, he was the only person that stood with me.
On 11th/03/2022, I was working in Toroma on a swamp with a DLP and unfortunately when we pulled out the rods from the ground, the last didn’t come out. The rod had gotten stuck at 6m deep in the ground. Therefore, while I was looking for solutions of what to do, Coconunt stayed back and started digging out soil around where the rod that gotten stuck while other people rushed to catch the last ferry that was leaving at 04:30pm.
We were staying in Kumi district, so part of transportation was crossing water on a ferry for 30 minutes. Coconunt worked with me till the end of the fieldwork, he assisted me in getting an elf that brought me and my soil samples to Kampala and he also came along with the vehicle to assist me with the offloading and afterwards go back with the vehicle in Kumi District. Because of his kindness, he became a friend, and we kept in touch.
So, one day, not once did I feel an instinct to call him to find out how he was doing but I did not act. I felt sick, weak and it did not stop at that. I even dreamt about him twice. In the dream he asked me to pray for him and in the second dream, he was waving to me telling me fair well. I woke up very scared, prayed over it and slept again. Still on the same night I had the same dream and this time he was telling me that he wouldn’t survive. This dream left me unsettled because I had not communicated to this person in a while.
So, in the morning I tried reaching him out, but his phone was off. I was restless in my spirit because I sensed something wasn’t right. Because I couldn’t get to him, I just prayed for him committing him in God’s hand and asked God to keep him safe wherever he was. At around 10:00 am, I received a phone call from Kumi District. It was a call of one of the drivers I used while in the field, Mr. Okwi David who also happened to be the chairman of the boys I had worked with.
Hello! Is this madam Rashidhar?
Yes, I am. How is Kumi District. How are my boys and could you be around Coconunt? Could he be there where they used to converge? I want to talk to him, but his phone is off.
Well, it is sad news here in Kumi district. Do you remember the vehicle that brought you to Kampala?
Yes, I do.
It got into an accident while going to Soroti to load oranges. Four people are dead and one survived. The driver that took you to Kampala, two boys you worked with and one other boy you don’t know died instantly. It is only Coconunt that survived but he was greatly injured, we don’t know if he will survive. My purpose for calling you was to assist us with the photographs of these people because I saw you taking their photos in the field.
I was very perplexed and only got meaning of the instincts I got when I received the news. Thanks after 3 months in the hospital my friend was sent home. He is alive.
-
My Case
At 22:49 pm on 04th/04/203, I received a call from my sister, a few minutes after entering my room.
Hello Queen, praise God!
Yes princess, praise him!
Queen, are you Okay?
Yes, I am.
Really?
Yes, why insist on it?
Well, I have been having a bad feeling about you over the day. The feeling started at around 04:00pm and it could not go away. I didn’t take it seriously, but it kept growing strong so at 06:00pm I prayed over it. I really don’t know why I got so scared and started receiving pictures in my head as though you were dead.
Heeeeee, the feeling you got about me was right. Maybe God was trying to show you something that could happen to me, and he wanted you to pray over it. Just today at 08:25pm we encountered an accident as we were heading back to our place of accommodation. We weren’t driving at a speed at all; however, misfortune befell us, and we hit a bicycle cyclist. Sadly, he died instantly but none of us in the vehicle got injured. We thank the Lord.
This accident happened while I was in Arua district with other 14 people. After fieldwork, we decided to converge for supper and afterwards proceed to our rooms. On our way back, time was 08:25 pm when we were leaving a roundabout, entering a lane when the vehicle collided with a bicycle cyclist, and he died.
The case was reported to the police, and thankfully we weren’t held by the police. It’s only the vehicle we left there since the driver had run away. With the assistance of Arua DCAO, the vehicle owner managed to travel from Kampala to Arua and came to a negotiation for the compensation with the family of the deceased and finally the vehicle was released.
Thinking about what happened, I will no longer take my instincts for granted. Gut feelings can also tell you to act for something that is right. I can be taking a certain course, marrying, leaving, or staying in a certain job, staying with, or leaving a certain person. It could be starting a particular business.
For example, for me to get the job I have now, it started with an instinct that I should call Mr. Jjuuko Samuel. That day the feeling was strong, wanting me to act. I got uncomfortable in my seat and shivered. I feared to act, after all I didn’t even know that he had a company. My intention to call was to ask him about career options I could consider doing for a master’s degree. I wanted him to advise me if geotechnical engineering was good for masters. But did I even have any plans for masters at that time? No, not really.
Something was just pushing me to call him. I had never interacted with him even though he was my lecturer while at the university. The force within me to reach out was strong and finally, I sent him a watsup message. Then he asked me to meet him in person in Nansana on the date and time we agreed. When I reached there, he had a company. We interacted about possibilities for doing a master’s degree in geotechnical engineering since he had lectured me in the same course unit. After interactions while he escorted me out, he made a statement which I took seriously. He said, “this is our office, we just started a company recently and when we are set, I will call you and you work with us”.
The company (SADRiNE) started in 2018 and we met in November 2020. I didn’t go to Nansana to ask for the job, I went to seek advice from a person who happened to be my lecturer at the University. Someone, I wasn’t even close to. Yet my instincts that led me into sending the watsup message, resulted into a meeting. When I went back home, I meditated on the statement Eng. Jjuuko mentioned while he escorted me outside office. I prayed over it and told God I wanted Eng. Jjuuko Samuel to be my mentor in my career. He was good at geotechnical engineering so I thought that by joining the company I would learn a lot from him.
After, a few days Eng. Jjuuko Samuel called and asked me if I was interested in working with SADRiNE. I gladly met him, and we discussed further my duties and the salary (sort of an interview), but it was simple and quick. By then I was working somewhere else, so I requested for 2 weeks to resign from my job by then and since 01st October 2020, I have been with SADRiNE. Grateful, am I to God and my employer, Mr. Jjuuko Samuel. My instincts led me to the right environment where I have physically, spiritually, financially, professionally grown in a few years beyond my imagination.
Gut instincts come from God.
In the book of Job, the Lord responded to Job’s pleas and reminded him that He is all-knowing and all-powerful. He said:
Who gives intuition to the heart and instinct to the mind? (Job 38:36 NLT)
That is why when I get instincts, I try to connect them to the fact that God is trying to inform me or warn me about something. God can reveal his will to us in various ways and to me instincts are one of them. Scripture says:
For God [does reveal His will; He] speaks not only once, but more than once, even though men do not regard it [including you, Job]. [One may hear God’s voice] in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falls on men while slumbering upon the bed, Then He opens the ears of men and seals their instruction [terrifying them with warnings], That He may withdraw man from his purpose and cut off pride from him [disgusting him with his own disappointing self-sufficiency]. He holds him back from the pit [of destruction], and his life from perishing by the sword [of God’s destructive judgments] – Job 33:14-18 AMPC.
So many times, we get instinct but fail to pose and listen to whether God is trying to speak to us about something. Like me sometimes when I get a feeling to pray for something or someone but never act the results in most cases are not good.
Summing it up
Whatever it is that has come to your gut, your gut feelings have been trying to tell you something. So always, always give your instincts a thought and try to find meaning out of them. Listening to them could help you bridge the gap between the spiritual and the physical, especially if you pray over them. Your gut instinct is like a sixth sense that makes you know something without any proof. Most of the time your instincts won’t lie to you. When your instincts tell you that something is wrong or right, usually it is. Therefore, let us learn to respond wisely to them. If you get an urge to pray, please pray about that situation without overthinking it. If something is to go wrong and it is the enemy’s doing, God won’t let it unless it is his will.
“We, one and all of us, have an instinct to pray; and this fact constitutes an invitation from God to pray.” — Charles Sanders Peirce
When was the last time you paid attention to your instincts? What were they telling you? Haven’t been trusting your instincts – start now. Notice the messages that don’t change, those are your instincts. The next time you get an instinct pause and listen to what it is telling you. It could save you from danger or land you into a blessing.
*************** Thank you for sparing your time to read! ***************
