Your intuition is your gift. I had an experience recently where I trusted my gut and my gut was right.

You know what your gut is. Your gut is the voice of your inner being and will guide you to keep you from harms way. It says something is off here. It’s this feeling that something’s not right here. When you use that, it can make you safer in the world.

So much attention is given to warning signs. But what’s most important is your feeling. The feeling itself is the warning sign. The feeling is enough. Women often think other people’s feelings are more important than their own. And that’s where we don’t honor our feeling that says, hmm this doesn’t seem right or something’s wrong here….and I need to go another way, or I need to stop, or I need to not get on, or I need to leave. All the other stuff is explanation for the feeling.

We are the only creatures when we sense something is not right here and then we walk into it anyway. Every other creature or animal that senses fear runs in the opposite direction.

Culture teaches that women should be nice all the time, that we have to engage and respond when someone says something to us in public, that we can’t be a bitch, that we can’t be mean. Niceness does not equal goodness. Niceness is a decision and a way of social interaction. It is not a character trait. When you get the signals in your body (sweaty palms, heart racing, uncomfortable feeling, etc.), our challenge is to listen to it. But we don’t want it to be true, so we deny it. We think it’s not polite.

Also, I’m not saying you have to be fearful of all people all of the time because then there is no signal available for the times when its really needed. It’s important to evaluate our sources of information for the situation. Our intuition fails when it’s full of inaccurate information.

Your gut will help you. Your gut won’t fail you. That intuition you have is your guiding light, your inner voice. Always remember that.

*For more information about survival signals, check out the book, “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin De Becker. He is one of the nation’s leading experts on violent behavior.*