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Trust your gut.

How many times do you hear that and yet, ignore that slight niggling you get to do something or don’t do something?  Turn that way, don’t take that route, call that person, don’t take that job…our own internal GPS system instructing us in big and small matters.

We often talk about ‘women’s intuition’ as if it’s only a gift given to us females.  Maybe we women tend to give our intuition more credence but it certainly isn’t something we can claim sole ownership over. I recently learned a great lesson about the universality of intuition and the need to listen to it by way of a little article in my local newspaper. 

A teacher didn’t show up one morning to work.  Nor did his wife, so her employer called the school in an attempt to locate her (it’s a small town so this kind of personal attention happens…).  Couple that with the fact that their child, a first-grader, didn’t show up for classes and the Principal’s inner alarm sounded.   

“Something just went off in my head,” he said. “Another friend had talked earlier about how they had just turned on their heat for the first time this year. Call it a strong hunch … but I knew: lives were in danger.”

Now, I’m going to venture a guess that many of us might have just chalked that ‘hunch’ up to a passing worry and gone back to what we were doing.  Perhaps we would have made an exploratory call.  Not that Principal.  He grabbed another teacher, jumped in his car, and drove quickly to the absent teacher’s home. 

They arrived at the house and found cars in the driveway, but no one answered when they knocked on the front door.  As the two men entered they discovered a haze hanging in the house, and a strong, foul odor.  They knew they needed to get the family to fresh air. Together they kicked out a door close to the bedroom and removed all four people to the back yard where they were resuscitated by medical personnel. 

A dead bird was found in a chimney attached to a 40-year-old hot water boiler that heated the house.  It’s believed that the family turned on the furnace for the first time the night before, and fell asleep before fumes rerouted by the blocked chimney moved up from the basement and into the house.

Thanks to the Principal trusting and acting on his gut feelings – his intuition – a family was saved on the brink of carbon monoxide poisoning.

When I read this story (and even in the retelling of it) I get goosebumps. How did he know lives were in danger, and what caused him to have enough faith in that hunch to take immediate action?  I don’t know. 

But I do know there have been times I’ve dismissed those inner alarms and wound up in relationships and situations that weren’t healthy for me.  I’ve also had many times I’ve paid attention and acted on my intuition, and those are the times I’ve benefited from most.

It takes courage to slow down enough to even hear our inner voice.  To pay attention to what we’re feeling and know the signs that say, “Go!” or “Stop!”  It takes courage to trust in our intuition and take action based on it.

Be courageous!

Warmly,

Megan