The qualities that make us the men that we are are largely attributable to the relationships that we have with our fathers. We take on mannerisms, traits, quirks, behaviors and emotions. Our intimate relationships, in many ways, are also results of our relationships with our fathers.

Too many men have difficulties being the fathers that they should be to their sons. Many times, they never got the right role modeling from their parents. Without the right tools, or no tools at all, problems get created. Men go on to have imperfect relationships, and don’t know how to be effective intimate partners to their wives and girlfriends.

First, men learn from their fathers how to be emotionally withdrawn from their women. They learn from the environment they grew up in at home, over time, to shut down, stay in their heads and generally not be present to their feelings. This is the nucleus of the problem. Men have learned a lot of negative coping skills to gets their needs and feelings met, and sometimes that comes out as anger, rage, substance abuse, violence, criticizing or judging, or just avoiding and withdrawing altogether from their women.

Second, as children we model behavioral patterns from our parents. As boys, we model the ways of being in a relationship from our fathers (and mothers). Many times, our fathers never got it right, so we simply take from them what we see, because unconsciously, if we do what they did, we just might get our needs met after all.

This is child’s logic, and somewhere down the road, we fail to drop those tools when they don’t work for us anymore. As kids, they might have had some basic effectiveness, but now they just don’t work anymore.

The key is to understand and deal with these negative behavioral patterns, and the emotions that we avoid buried underneath. In seeing these, often for the first time, and experiencing them in the present moment unconditionally, they begin to transform themselves and set us free from the patterns that keep us stuck in conflict and unsatisfying relationships.

We can work towards freedom from these problems if we can first see them. Our fathers might not have been able to do it for themselves, but we can for ourselves. We can change those relationships by digging deeper, so we don’t have to create those same relationships for ourselves, and so the problems don’t get handed down the generations again.

In honor of an early Father’s Day, here are some parenting strategies that you can use to right now to give your child a real gift back. Parenting is a real struggle for some men, and a lot of guys that I talk with feel like they’re not giving their kid everything that I can, or aren’t there for their child as much as they’d like to.

There are plenty of distractions, from keeping a demanding work schedule, domestic responsibilities, and a happy marriage. We want the very best for our kids, and want to give them more, but sometimes don’t know exactly how to do that.

To make matters worse, sometimes our kids elicit those negative parts of ourselves that we don’t really like, which make it all the more confusing and frustrating to know how to “do it right.” We think we’re doing the best job we can, but it doesn’t always feel that way.

Here are five strategies to be a better dad that you can use now, to improve the relationships with your kids:

• Keep your anger in check: Most frustrated guys that I talk with say that their kids are too well versed in pushing their buttons and getting deep under their skin. For men, it’s easy to get frustrated and explode, or take it out on their kids. Learning how to divert your frustration and anger, so as to not bring it down on your kids, is really important to building a better relationship with them. If we’re already angry about the numerous life stressors that affect our lives, it’s sure to be made worse when our kids upset us. Kids will internalize your anger, and translate it to mean that it’s something wrong about them, or how they aren’t “good enough” for you. Try to practice using a soft tone, and communicate with your kids with your feelings, whether you’re frustrated, concerned, afraid that they’ll hurt themselves, or whatever. Watch this short video on “Supereasy Anger Management Tips” I shot a while back to help cool some of the anger you might be putting on your kids.
• Use natural and logical consequences: Teaching your children to experience the natural or logical consequences of their actions is one way that you can help promote acceptance of responsibility. The idea here is that there are real-world consequences for certain behaviors, and allowing your child to experience them on their own, without parental intervention, is one approach to helping children learn from their own actions and behaviors. Here’s more information on using natural and logical conquences with your child.
• Be consistent with your spouse on parenting: A lot of times, spouses are not on the same page about how to parent their children together. With this inconsistency, kids often seek out the cracks in parenting, and go to more permissible parent to get what they want.This sets up a problematic family system and bad family dynamics, and it’s then one parent against the other. Your kid ends up fueling further marital tension. Get on the same page with your wife or girlfriend, and create a parenting alliance so there’s no misunderstandings between anyone in your family. Decide early on how you will parent your child around the issues that matter most, whether that’s on homework, eating, sleep times or other areas of life that will inevitably come up.
• Validate and affirm your kid: Your son or daughter wants to know that you care about them, and that they feel special to you. Too often, we either inadvertently criticize or judge our kids, even when we’re not meaning to, or are so busy that we don’t attend to our kids. Overparenting, or underparenting, can have negative effects on your son or daughter. Kids need to feel that you care, and that they are worthwhile to you. Make regular time with your kids, but make the time focus on making your kid feel good. Really practice the “quality” in qaulity time. Validate their efforts in school or play, and tell them things that make them feel loved and cared for by you. For some men, this is really hard if they didn’t get it from their parents growing up, but it’s super important so that your kid grows up feeling good about themselves, and has high self-esteem and competency.
• Watch how you overcompensate from your own childhood: Problems we experienced as kids, growing up in our own family of origin, usually leave deep impressions on us subconsciously. The dads that I talk with have some awareness about the effects those problems have on them. Most times, they overcompensate with their own kids, which is to say that they do the opposite of what they received as kids. For example, if they were neglected and invisible as kids, they will make it a point to work to extremely (if not too) hard to make their own children feel visible and important. This can create its own set of problems. If you’re not resolved around your own childhood issues, they’re probably spilling out onto your own parenting and onto your kids.

I hope these parenting tips help. If you’ve got other suggestions that work, leave them in the comments.

Need an energy boost, and don’t necessarily need to get it from a can? Try considering these energy drainers and boosters, for more sustained energy.

8 psychological energy drainers/boosters

Drainers:

1. Energy vampires: the people that suck energy from you, and don’t bother replacing it
2. Poor time management: contributes to stress, which drains your energy
3. Poor diet: lots of sugar, caffeine, refined carbohydrates and heavy foods can deplete you mentally. also, not eating periodically throughout the day, including breakfast.
4. Poor or not restful sleep
5. Sedentary lifestyle: not walking, running or engaging in another form of exercise can leave you feeling flat and low on energy.
6. Not taking time out of the day for yourself: even if it’s five or 10 minutes to meditate or to organize your thoughts, when we don’t attend ourselves, and are consumed with attending to others (family, work responsibilities), it can leave you feeling burned out.
7. The news: is usually filled with stories of suffering. Try a news fast, or limiting your time or exposure to TV or Internet news.
8. Anger: learning how to deal effectively with anger, and communicated in a way that it is non-toxic to others, will help to expel it and leave you more available to yourself and others.

Boosters:

1. Nature: taking a walk outside, or on your lunch break can revitalize and reinvigorate you for the rest the day
2. Hanging out with positive people, who can fill you up and rub off positivity on you.
3. Meditation: my preferred method of meditating is mindfulness meditation. There are a lot of good books, podcasts, and other resources on the subject. Try looking into Jon Kabat Zinn and mindfulness-based stress reduction to help.
4. Dumping your worrisome thoughts onto a to do list, into a journal, or onto some thing external from your brain that can help you expel the thoughts that are nagging at you and to help you organize them in a way that you can attend to them later.
5. Yoga: there are plenty of guys doing yoga, and it’s great way to crank up your energy in a short amount of time. Try a class in town, or go with someone you know.
6. Get in touch with your emotions: emotions, especially negative ones, have this way of freezing up and going nowhere when you don’t attend them. They suck up valuable psychic energy and physical energy, so if you can learn to get in touch with them in process then, you’ll free up needed energy for other things.
7. Eating small meals regularly through the day: when your blood sugar is consistent and not spiked, you’ll experience more stable energy through the day. Try eating five or six times throughout the day, drinking plenty of water as ago, and notice if your energy levels stay balanced.
8. Positive self talk: the way that we talk to ourselves is critical to how we deal with the world and with other people. Try validating yourself, talking positively to yourself or generally supporting yourself through your own self talk to improve your positivity in your energy.

Pleasing others sure has it’s benefits. People think well and highly of us, we get to do good for others and feel good about ourselves, and it leaves the world in a generally better place. Right? Not so fast.

Helping and giving to others certainly is honorable and selfless, and others certainly do like us much more. But, for those that fall victim to people pleasing behavior, effects can be just as harmful as they are pleasing.

For those who fall victim to the “disease” of people pleasing, saying “no” to others is like the kiss of death. For guys, just like women, being driven by the need to please other people, or the fear that they will fail to do so, keeps people in this cycle of pushing aside their emotions and needs and giving their power over to other people.

Dealing with Guilt

For people pleasers, guilt is a familiar emotion. A lot of times, we feel guilty because there’s a part of our brains that feels we need to, should or have to do for other people or give to people in certain ways. competing with that experience is that voice inside of ourselves that knows what we really want for our own selves, that may be different from pleasing others.

When those voices stay in conflict, life becomes really challenging. We stop listening to ourselves, and push that second voice away, leaving the people pleasing voice to act and behave in the world (and if you’re wondering, no, you’re not schizophrenic).

I believe guilt is the byproduct of these two voices clashing. Guilt is highly associated with anger, and when we feel guilty about something, there’s probably a “should” or “have to” associated with it. What we really want is to not indulge in the pleasing behavior, except were not listening to ourselves, and feeling guilty as a result. people pleasers off and just carry around the guilt, without really attending to what it is that they truly want for themselves.

Fear of rejection

A lot of times, people pleasers are deeply afraid and insecure of others rejecting them. It’s the fear, or better yet the avoidance of fear, that promotes the people pleasing behavior. for some people pleasers, being afraid of being rejected by others in their lives is tantamount to death, and would do anything to avoid putting themselves in a situation where they felt rejected.

The people pleasing behavior arises as a way to manage the fear and help you keep it in check, ensuring that the pleaser doesn’t set himself or herself up for a situation in which he is rejected. work on the fear, and you start to chip away at the people pleasing behavior. Most often, our fear of rejection comes from early childhood experiences, when we felt rejected, or were actually rejected, by a parent or a parent figure.

We develop the people pleasing behavior as a way to deal with that original rejection, and grow up into adults that perpetuate people pleasing with those in our lives. The best ways to deal with people pleasing behavior are to get to the root of the issues, which are often fear-based, and start to work on those.

Journaling, talking with close friends or family, or seeking out counseling to work on those issues are all effective. challenging and training yourself to learn to say “no” is difficult, but it’s essential to breaking the habit of people pleasing.

Additionally, learning what the differences are between “should” and “want to” Is equally important to busting up this cycle. identifying what you really want, aside from what others want from you or what you think others want from you, is also really crucial to ending the people pleasing behavior.

There are plenty women in the world. Lots of other women. For a lot of committed guys, this is quite a struggle. Men want their committed relationships, yet their minds, or their behaviors, stray to seek out other people. Some guys troll around online on dating websites, or cheating websites for that matter. Some guys get massages with “happy endings” and justify that as “not cheating”, and other guys carry on full-fledged affairs with one or more women outside of their marriage. Cheating is definitely a spectrum of behaviors, and it can mean different things to different people.

For some guys, who starts to look outside of their relationship or marriage for female gratification, it’s a slippery slope from looking and fantasizing about other women to actually engaging with them and carrying on relationships. I talk with a lot of guys who absolutely thought “I never in a million years thought I’d be doing this.” A lot of guys who are not feeling like they’re getting their needs met in their current relationship, year after year, finally start to seek out gratifying their needs outside of the relationship, when they feel that it got too bad. Others start cheating from the get go.

Learning to deal with other women in the world is a reality. We are certainly sexual beings by nature, and there are plenty of outlets in our everyday lives. But, we are so much more than primitive beings. A lot of what drives us towards seeking out the comforts of other women is not just sex. Again, for many guys, it’s the feeling of not being appreciated or affirmed by their wives or their girlfriends, and they are unconsciously driven towards seeking out those things from other women. For the great majority of men that I speak with, especially the ones that aren’t tuned into their own emotions, it can be hard to verbalize the negative feelings or reasons that drive them into the arms of other women while they’re in a relationship or marriage. Their partners never know because these men don’t know what they need. We are driven just as much emotionally as we are physically, believe it or not.

Other women also serve as ego boosters. They can help you feel good about yourself when you were not feeling good about your own self. They can also help men create these fantasy worlds, kind of surrogate worlds that man can enter when they want to, and then leave when they want to. This “fantasy world” contrasts with the stark reality or unhappiness at home or in their current relationship. It’s easy to not deal with the problems at home when you can immerse yourself in a fantasy world, where you have another woman validating you, stroking your ego, and making you feel affirmed, special, and sexually satisfied. It’s hard to not be in touch with the reality, especially when you’re creating good cover for your indiscretions.

Really getting in touch with your values, and seeing how your behaviors are aligned with, or maligned with, your value system is one way to start to choose the kinds of behaviors that you really want to be engaging in. If seeking out other women is not aligned with your value system, and nurturing your marriage and your family are, you can see how the behaviors are then maligned with your value system. The more you can align your behaviors with your chosen values, the more in harmony you can live, and a greater amount of happiness you can experience. The behaviors may have short term gratification, but don’t meet the long-term needs, which are more aligned with one’s values.

Again, understanding the reasons that drive you to seek out simulation or affirmation from other women is totally important. For a lot of guys who don’t know what drives them, learning to understand the reasons and the mechanisms that drive them to meet other women are very important. Do you want to seek out sex solely? Do you want your ego to be stroked? Do you need affection, attention, or appreciation from another woman? Do you feel inferior with women, and are trying to attract the attention of women to compensate? Do you want to have your cake and eat it too?

Basically, learning to get in touch with these things is going to help sharpen your attention and start to help you clarify those things that are most important to you. For many guys, seeking out the simulation and satisfaction from other women is more of a way out, or a fantasy world, or a way to get their needs met somewhere else. Many times, it’s not quite how one could go about getting their needs met directly, and learning to appropriately communicate those things will make you a stronger man.

Anger is an emotion that, if left unchecked, can greatly undermined or ruin the closest relationships that you have. It can also have the power to motivate and transform us into a positive force. Unfortunately, a lot of guys react out of unconscious anger, and often end up falling into the destructive kind of anger.

Rage and physical violence also stem from uncheck anger. For some guys that have grown up in an abusive household for seeing one of their parents react out in physical violence, it can seem almost common to explode in reactive anger. Hitting things or people, putting your fist through the wall, or generally blowing up without getting physical are all ways that anger can feel out of control in those moments where it takes over.

Here are six tools to start with to learn to deal with anger more effectively. If you start using it on a regular basis, you’ll be able to control your anger and stop alienating those closest to you.

1. Stop anger from turning into something verbal or physical.

Saying something that you regret, or putting your fist through a wall, may alleviate some of the angry pressure immediately, but it may have longer-term effects. It teaches you to depressurize yourself through releasing anger, not working through it for a better resolution. Learning to differentiate your anger from the reactive behaviors that result from it is really important. Reacting on the anger, or doing or saying something you’ll regret, is pretty common for men, but trying to develop your awareness not not act on it takes more courage and strength.

2. Use your anger instead of turning away from it.

Especially in intimate relationships, communicating your anger tells your partner that you are fully invested. According to recent study in the Journal of Family Psychology, women tend want to engage with men around conflicts. They want to see men’s ability to communicate their feelings, even if those feelings are negative, which means to women that their partner is invested in the relationship. Women want to see men engaged in the conflict, or at least available, and when men withdraw or avoid their anger, it can be more damaging to the relationship than one would think. Men want women to be happy, and to do that means to engage more around the conflict. IT may be tough, but it will stave off more conflict to come.

3. Don’t identify or label yourself as “the angry guy” if you’re angry. 

Identifying ourselves as “the angry guy” is not beneficial. If we’re angry, were angry. Don’t make a big deal about it, and let yourself be angry. It doesn’t mean anything about you as a person if you get angry. Challenge beliefs that have been indoctrinated into you from growing up, and challenge some of the ideas about getting mad. A lot of us men have dysfunctional messages about what it means to be angry, because anger was not acceptable to express in a lot of our early childhood experiences. So, getting mad is not the same as being an angry guy. One is the feeling; the other is an identity label. Don’t confuse the two, or it’ll be made worse.

4. Find more constructive ways to deal with your anger.

Try journaling, or hitting the gym, or learning to develop your communication skills so that you can get better at learning to speak your anger. Learn to work on identifying those points in time where you do get frustrated or angry, and resolve to make it a habit to do something different instead of unconsciously reacting. Practice deep breathing, or mindfulness meditation, or get better at controlling your stress in the other parts of your life. Treat your anger with understanding, kindness and inquiry.

 5.  “Own” your anger.

A lot of guys ask me what this means when I say this, and owning your anger is the same as taking responsibility for it. When we’re angry, we get into this habit of blaming our anger on other people for their behaviors that caused it. We fixate on the ways that people have upset us, as the reason, as opposed to learning to identify our own anger as a result of someone’s actions. There’s a difference. Learning to take responsibility or “own” our anger is learning to be responsible for our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It’s also going to stop blaming other people for our anger, or victimizing ourselves because we think we’ve been wronged.

6. What’s underneath your anger?

Because anger is empowering, and intoxicating, it also helps men feel in control. That’s why a lot of times when men and women engage in conflict, anger is the place that men feel more comfortable in, because it’s empowering. The fact of the matter is, most of the more essential emotions lie right underneath our anger. If we can learn to tap in to those underground emotions, and learn to identify them, we can start to open up the conversation and transform it, and not just limit it to just our display of anger. Women want to hear from our emotional hearts, and often get put off or intimidated by just seeing or hearing or anger over and over again. Learn to dig a little bit, and you might discover hurt, fear, shame, or some other less “powerful” or less “masculine” emotion. it maybe difficult to feel, but it’s a little more authentic than is just our anger on its own.

Consider the six steps before you get reactive and angry in your next conflict. There are ways through just getting angry and exploding. Anger is a very neutral force, and if you can learn to become more aware of it and make it conscious, you can start to use it for the good instead of falling victim to it’s consequences.

There’s no greater saboteur than ourselves. Others may make life difficult for us, but it’s often ourselves that hinder our own selves from getting what we want in life. From getting the right job, to improving the relationship we’ve got, we constantly undermine ourselves and impede our forward progress into getting our needs met.

1. Fear: often times, fear is a more powerful motivator than anything else. When we’re afraid, of either failure or of success, we devise strategies to get in our own way. For example, a lot of guys need affirmation or validation from their wives or girlfriends, yet are too afraid to speak up and get it. They turn to other women outside of the relationship where it’ll be safer to get affirmed or validated, thus eventually undermining their existing relationship when the other partner find out.
2. Stress: Stress management is a difficult thing to employ. We’re busy people living busy lives. Too often, getting the right sleep, eating right or just generally taking good care of ourselves get sidelined. When we’re stressed, our tolerance thresholds are lower, and we’re more immune to poor mental health, anger, interpersonal conflict and physical ailment. Maintaining your well being and keeping stress under control are essential to not undermining yourself. Keeping a positive outlook and good mental health are ways you can promote yourself, and not get in your own way.
3. Making the Wrong Choices: Either out of impulsivity, or just making decisions that aren’t in alignment with our long term goals and life vision, making poor choices undermines our forward progress. Taking a job because it pays better, but may not provide the kind of work you love, could eventually pan out to be a poor choice. Keeping friends who use you instead of give to you may be another. Making clear, solid decisions is based on what you value for your life: do you value your work to be personally meaningful? Do you value mutually giving and reciprocal relationships?
4. Not finding resources or support: The world is interconnected, and there are things you can’t do alone. If you’re impartial to asking for help from others, it may be hurting you. Everyone needs help. Whether you need to find better ways to network with others for professional purposes, need counseling for a personal problem, or want to start dating again and need some help, asking for help is
5. Worrying about what others think: I recently shot a two minute video about how to stop worrying about what others think. When we fall into this kind of thinking, we give other people power over our lives and decisions. I think when we worry about what others think, our mental energies are distracted, when they could be used to help us help ourselves instead. Worry a little less about what others think, and you might find you have available energy to improve your own life.
6. Falling into acts of anger: Anger in and of itself is not harmful – it’s what you do with it that creates problems. Usually, we fall into anger and end up reacting, whether it’s alienating friends or family, or getting angry on the job, anger is a force that, if left uncontrolled, can leave us undermining our own chances of success. It’s a huge impediment to good relationship building. Learning how to deal most effectively with anger, and learning how to harness it, communicate it and make it work for you is no easy task, but it’s something that could go go from a liability to an asset in your life if you know how to use anger effectively.

When I talk with couples, what I hear sometimes is “Well, we’re fine – we don’t fight.” Or, “there’s nothing really wrong with our relationship. We never argue.” Or,  for the couples that knows something’s wrong, I may hear “we just never talk about.”

There may be a problem with “not fighting” or “never arguing” in your relationship or marriage. For a lot of couples, when there’s problems in the relationship, too often one or both partners fall into a withdrawal pattern, and push aside the issues that they’re having with the other. This creates deeper problems, as constant problem avoidance festers and grow over time.

Men’s Avoidance and Emotional Withdrawal

Men can be notoriously consistent in relationship struggles by withdrawing emotionally from their partners and “checking out.” We come to know the “man cave” metaphor in popular culture, but do we realize that men hide when there are problems or difficulties in their marriage? I hear men taking about not wanting to get into a fight, not wanting to upset their wife, girlfriend or partner, or feeling afraid of their own anger. They may be too ashamed to talk with their partners, and hold or stuff the problems they’re having. This can be a slippery slope to other problems.

The Effects on Your Partner

The partners of the emotional withdrawers often complain that they “can’t access” their partners, or talk about feeling unloved or disconnected from their guy when he’s emotionally withdrawn. This creates other problems. The partner who has such a difficult time accessing their withdrawn partner will react in their own way, creating problems on top of problems. A vicious, negative cycle thus ensues, and the withdrawn partner continues to distance himself.

How to Help Yourself

Consider that the storyline you’ve been telling yourself about your relationship might be flawed. Every couple gets into a reactive cycle, so it’s important to come to understand your own. How do you contribute to it? Do you withdraw and avoid conflict? Do you end up pursuing a hard to reach partner in the distance? Considering that by “not fighting”, you still may be locked in a struggle, albeit a silent one.

There nothing wrong with wanting to feel affirmed or validated by your significant other, but when we aren’t forthright with our needs, problems become greater. Men need to feel affirmed just as women do, yet most men I talk with have such a difficult time asking for it. Why?

Making Assumptions

A typical guy might just assume that his partner can affirm, validate or praise him, yet without asking for those things, you risk your partner never knowing what your needs are. When you make assumptions about what your partner should do, it’s likely they’ll fail them. When you’re not clear about what you need, especially in the realm of validation and affirmation, problems then do come up, but they don’t need to.

Questions to Ask Yourself:

• Do I feel affirmed by my relationship partner? By my boss? By my friends or family?
• Do I need more from one particular person, e.g. my significant other? What would that look like?
• When I don’t feel affirmed, I feel ___________________.
• When I feel affirmed, I feel ____________________.

Too Proud to Beg

Pride gets in the way of men asking for validation or affirmation from their partner. A lot of guys think they’ll lose their edge, or be seen as not manly or weak. Those things are simply not true. Your spouse wants you to come to them with your needs, because when you don’t, you may disconnect and hide, worsening the problems that are already there. Being too proud gets in the way of getting your needs met, and connecting more deeply with your significant other, so can you push pride aside to meet the greater needs? I think you might be pleasantly surprised if you did.

Exercise:

• Scribble down one area of your life where you’d like to receive more praise/affirmation/validation from someone close to you. Write down the feelings that come as a result of that need not being met, and also write down what you do when it’s not met (e.g. reaction/behavior). Set up a time with the person to have a conversation with them about your findings.

How Men Hide

I think any conversation about how to get needs met for men also has to include how men hide and disconnect. Guys go to the “safe zone” and hide, and many often haven’t come to terms with what they’re needing or how to communicate it. This can be dangerous, because bad things can come from hiding. For example, the number one reason men cheat is because they don’t feel validated or affirmed by their relationship partner. Men withdraw emotionally, or go the reverse route, by eventually exploding or blowing up. (or a combination of both). Neither way really works, either in the short term or long term. But, out of fear, hiding their anger, or not wanting to be rejected, men pull away emotionally and hide their needs and feelings from their partners.

Learning to get your needs met by communicating your need for affirmation or validation is critical. You’ll feel happier, have more satisfying relationships and learn to meet your needs when they come up.

The traditional way to making decisions may be slightly outdated. For men, we’re used to making quick decisions based on fact, reason, and experience. We make decisions everyday, and when those decisions prove correct, it reinforces our sense of being smart and in control. But, what if there are decisions we just can’t make with our heads, like whether to stay or go in a bad relationship, or how to learn to connect emotionally with our partner?

No Guts, No Glory

Learning to “tune in” to that “gut feeling” is difficult, because what’s happening is that you’re tuning into emotions. Emotions are not logical, and men get hung up on logic to get out of difficult situations. When your gut (whether that’s your actual stomach, heart or some other place in your body), starts “glowing” and trying to communicate to you, do you listen, or tend to ignore it? Try listening to it, and try to suspend “rationality” for a minute or two. What would happen if you actually acted on what your gut was trying to tell you?

The Brain and the Gut

Researchers at the Centre for Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School have the science to back it up. They conclude that intuition is the brain pulling on our previous experiences and external cues to make a decision, but the decision is largely unconscious and below our awareness.  What we’re left with, and what we then experience, is our awareness of a general feeling that something is right or wrong.

Missed Opportunities, or Not?

When you don’t tune into your gut, you may be making decisions you’ll later regret. Sometimes, we look back on decisions we should have made, “only if we’d have listened to our gut.” But sometimes, there are time you may not want to listen to your gut. In “High Fidelity”, John Cusack said “Should I bolt every time I get that feeling in my gut when I meet someone new? Well, I’ve been listening to my gut since I was 14 years old, and frankly speaking, I’ve come to the conclusion that my guts have shit for brains”.

Some decisions are better left to “gut feelings”; others, not so much. I think developing your gut intuition, and being able to reference it when it’s good for you, makes sense: you have both your rational mind and intuitive gut both working for you at the same time. You get the combined awareness of both.