How I Learned to Make Decisions with My Brain AND My Gut
Making big decisions — from choosing a job to choosing a partner — is hard!
Should you listen to your gut or to practical considerations?
Is that strong gut feeling inner wisdom — or misguided naïveté?
Does thinking about practicalities make you a soulless robot — or just a practical realist?
And what if your gut says something new every day?
Or there are a lot of unknowns, and the practicalities are hard to assess?
Don’t worry, my friends! I got you. Let me break down why pure-gut and pure-brain approaches don’t work, and how you can combine the two.
I’m going to use my own career choices as an example here, but everything I’m saying can be applied to any choice that you have to make.
Pure gut can lead you astray
Early on in college, I decided I wanted to be a screenwriter after I graduated.
I’d always wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know what kind. And screenwriting just spoke to me. It was easy and fun, and it just made sense.
Gut feeling: 100%
Two and a half years later, I actually went to Los Angeles and learned how the entertainment industry works. I learned that writing a screenplay is just the beginning of the process and that there’s a lot more work involved before a TV show is actually made. You have to pitch to networks, cast actors, do a million takes of every scene, edit, produce, market, and worry about ratings.
None of which had very much to do with writing.
And none of which I really wanted to do.
My trusty gut suddenly went NOPE! And I had no idea what to do next.
I didn’t do my homework about a screenwriting career early on. Because I was relying purely on my gut.
And when I got new information, I made an instant, not terribly thoughtful U-turn. Because I was relying purely on my gut.
(My next step, by the way, was to just show up at recruiting events and hope for the best — a no-brain, no-gut, hail-mary strategy that I was very lucky turned out well.)
Pure brain can ALSO lead you astray
In early 2021, I knew I needed to rethink my career.
My chronic pain condition was not well-managed. I had taken medical leaves at least once a year (sometimes more) every year since 2015, from a variety of different jobs.
Something just wasn’t working.
If I wanted to have a shot at managing my pain, I needed total time flexibility. The ability to not only to set my own hours but also change things last-minute, cancel a full day of meetings at a moment’s notice, and not have things snowball into chaos.
Given that practical consideration, I tried a practical solution: scale down my hours at work and massively reduce my scope. I took on just one project, with no timeline, no team, and all the flexibility I wanted.
And I felt lost.
Yes, the practical consideration was fulfilled. But what was I doing?
What was the purpose of this? Were my dreams dead? Was this the best I could hope for — a life constrained by physical limitations, my career aspirations dead in the water?
The pure-brain approach left me feeling controlled by my circumstances, with no choice and no purpose.
Bringing your brain and gut together
This is how I brought my brain and gut together to create an option that gave me purpose and fulfillment AND met my practical considerations.
My actual process was much messier and longer than what I’ve laid out here. But looking back, this is what it ultimately came down to. And I wish someone had given me these steps back then and saved me a whole lot of trouble :)
Step 1: Decide your non-negotiables
These can be brain considerations OR gut considerations.
The main thing is that they are things where you’d rather solve the problem of how to FIND them than solve the problem of how to live WITHOUT them.
My non-negotiables were:
Time flexibility
Doing work that involved writing
Having total intellectual independence
Making enough money to maintain my current lifestyle (not immediately — I had some time and financial cushion to experiment; but I needed to see a clear path forward to this)
That’s basically two “gut” criteria and two “brain” criteria.
So it’s not that my non-negotiables were all “brain”—quite the opposite.
The point was that I would rather figure out how to do writing work, with flexibility and intellectual independence, that makes me a certain amount of money…
Than figure out how to be okay NOT writing, be okay NOT having intellectual independence, NOT having flexibility, and / or be okay NOT having the same lifestyle I had.
I designed the mountain that I wanted to climb.
If you’re not sure what your non-negotiables are, there are lots of ways to find out.
Step 2: Find options that fulfill your non-negotiables and pick one
Do NOT tell me that you just can’t think of anything. Clear your emotional cobwebs, remember that not having an answer immediately spring to mind is not a problem, and get brainstorming.
The options I came up with included:
Getting a Ph.D. and becoming an academic / public intellectual (like Adam Grant or Brené Brown)
No Ph.D., just start writing based on my own research and experiences (like Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Lewis, or Matt Levine)
Joining some kind of research-y consulting firm that might give me more leeway to do my own thing (like IDEO or ghSMART)
Become a coach (like Corinne Crabtree or Claudia Curran, two coaches that helped me completely change my life)
I started just writing, because it was the fastest, easiest, cheapest way to figure out what I wanted to talk about.
After a few weeks, I realized I was always writing about coaching concepts. (Probably because I was using them on myself daily and had been doing so for over a year.)
So I picked coach and signed up for a coaching certification.
Step 3: Actively fall in love with your choice every day
This is the most important step.
The option you chose fulfills your own pre-decided non-negotiables.
So there is nothing wrong with this choice. It is perfect for you.
AND YET, your brain is going to come up with objections.
Especially if the thing you’re going after is something you really want…
Your gut will yearn for it in theory, when it’s all dreamy possibility and potential…
And freak out when you’re actually going for it, when the reality of doubts, failures, and difficulties creep in.
THIS IS NORMAL.
So do not question and re-negotiate your decision every time you get scared. Don’t let your queasy gut stop you from going after the things you actually want.
Instead:
Listen fully to every objection your gut comes up with
Check if it’s a violation of one of your non-negotiables (if you’ve been thoughtful about Step 1 and 2, it probably won’t be)
If it’s not, flip the objection and use it to actively fall further in love with your choice
Here’s what this looked like for me:
Coaching is weird and scammy!! ➡️ Is it? How has coaching helped me? How is it normal, necessary, and incredibly valuable?
I can’t choose a coaching niche!! This is too confusing. ➡️ Okay, stay broad until a focus emerges for you naturally. How fun! You have no limitations and can talk about anything!
No one will want to pay out-of-pocket for a coach when they can get therapy through insurance. ➡️ YOU paid out of pocket for coaching after trying therapy first. Why? Why is coaching so effective? Why is coaching 100% worth paying for?
I’m not telling you to suppress your gut’s fears and objections.
I’m telling you to listen to them and use them as jumping off points to MAKE your choice the right choice for you.
Every fear is an opportunity to build a new kind of conviction.
Step 4: If and ONLY IF one of your non-negotiables is affected, run this process again
You may realize that the option you chose doesn’t fulfill your non-negotiables as well as you thought it did.
Or, maybe your non-negotiables may change.
In that case (and ONLY in that case), reconsider your choice.
Being disciplined about doing this only when a true non-negotiable has been affected will help you stay true to what really matters to you without getting whiplashed around by random knee-jerk fears and reactions.
For example:
I was concerned that coaching isn’t really writing. One-on-one coaching is mostly talking to people. Was that close enough to writing to fulfill my non-negotiable?
As I explored coaching, I realized that you can do plenty of coaching via writing too (look at all my emails). In fact, that’s mainly how I get clients — by putting out lots of free, written coaching.
I also realized that, for me, talking to people uses many of the same mental muscles as writing. So I was having lots of fun either way.
So for now, this non-negotiable is met. And that may change in the future! Coaching may stop meeting my non-negotiables, for one reason or another. Or, my own non-negotiables may change.
No worries. I can always change my mind and trust myself to make good decisions.
Because I have a structured process to bring my brain and my gut together and make the best decision for ALL the sides of me.
This is just one of many ways I help clients get results — every time, faster than they thought possible.
Many clients come to me with things they have been wrestling with for months if not years. And I have heard from them, time and time again, some variation of the following:
“Huh, you helped me figure that out surprisingly quickly. I thought it would take much longer than this.”
And it’s all because we go straight to the root cause and get to work.
So come find out what coaching can do for you.
📸 Instagram | 💌 Newsletter | 👋🏽 New? Start here