Learn To Listen To Your Gut

We are all drowning in information. Twitter threads, YouTube videos, video courses, books, written articles - as many as you want, all available with a few keystrokes.

When you have the entirety of human knowledge in your pocket, it’s not your brain that needs exercising, it’s your gut. Your instinct. That inexplicable feeling that tells you what you should do and when to do it. It’s not always right, but it’s always true for you. And it pushes you where you really want to go.

But most people don’t hear it because the world is too loud. The world is always screaming “try this! do that! read this! watch that!” Things are never quiet enough for you to learn what you’re really interested in or what you’re curious about.

And if you don’t spend time intentionally learning to listen to your gut, you’ll never escape the noise.

The Most Important “Work” Is Figuring Out What You Liked Before Life Got In The Way.

How many people really choose what they want to do? Or more accurately, how many people discover their innate curiosities and follow them for a lifetime? Very few. Because most of us are pulled into our career paths early based on opportunity and timing.

I know I was. My first job was developing and producing unscripted tv in Los Angeles in my early 20s. I’ll tell you now - I could not give a shit about reality television. But I was desperate and needed a job, so I took it. It was fun and I had an awesome boss… but I still couldn’t watch Storage Wars or Ice Road Truckers without wanting to stab my eyes out with butter knives.

After that job ended, I hadn’t learned my lesson because I once again took the first job I was offered - a producing job working mostly on car content. I did that job for five years - about two years longer than I wanted to.

Finally, I found myself turning 30, making great money (that’s how they keep you!), and wondering how I got myself into this mess. I was bored, drinking too much, and driving my wife insane by threatening to quit every month without knowing what I wanted to do.

And then I found this Nassim Nicholas Taleb quote that changed everything:

“I have a single definition of success: you look in the mirror every evening, and wonder if you disappoint the person you were at 18, right before the age when people start getting corrupted by life. Let him or her be the only judge; not your reputation, not your wealth, not your standing in the community, not the decorations on your lapel. If you do not feel ashamed, you are successful. All other definitions of success are modern constructions; fragile modern constructions.”

So I asked myself: who was I before life happened to me? What did I want?

And suddenly, I remembered that feeling I had as a 17-year-old kid watching the movie A Knight’s Tale. It was a guttural response to a work of art I fucking loved. It was that movie that inspired my move to Los Angeles at 18 because I wanted to be just like Heath Ledger. I wanted to be an actor and tell stories. I had to capture that feeling again.

So, I started paying attention to what I did in my free time - I read fiction and non-fiction, I wrote for this blog, I watched movies and tv shows every night. And it finally occurred to me that all my specific knowledge was pointing in the same direction: writing for film and tv.

About the same time all this was happening, my wife had come up with a great movie idea that only we could write. And so I put my producing hat on and we wrote a treatment of the movie and pitched it around… and now the script is done and going wide to the market.

And guess what? I’m so fucking happy because I followed that feeling. I took a detour for a decade in my 20s only to get back where I started. Back to that gut feeling.

Your Body Knows If You’re Doing What You’re Meant To Do.

Wherever you are in life, ask yourself this question: if you could start over, is this what you’d choose to do? Is this what you dreamed about at 18? Is the kid inside of you proud of what you’ve become?

You’ve probably met someone who’s doing what they’re meant to be doing. Once you realize what it looks like, it becomes obvious. There’s a lightness and play in their work and interactions. There’s enthusiasm not just for the work, but for life. It permeates their entire being.

If you haven’t found what you want to do, that’ll be obvious too. You’ll notice subtle signals - boredom, fatigue, frustration, a panic in your gut as you keep searching for something you don’t know exists.

Don’t ignore that feeling. Listen to it and follow it.

To Get In Touch With Your Gut, Spend More Time Alone.

The world is constantly conditioning us. It’s telling us what to like and not like. What to get upset about and what to cheer for.

Naval Ravikant has a simple exercise to decondition yourself and figure out what you really like: spend more time alone. Naval writes:

“Curiosity is innate, but smothered via socialization and distractions. Spend enough time alone and it will return.”

You’ll learn far more about yourself sitting quietly under a tree, with no internet connection, picking up the book you really want to read, than any time you spend on the internet. Only in the quiet peace of aloneness does your gut speak to you. Spend more time there.

Once You Know Yourself, Listen To No One Else.

Once you become in tune with your gut, it’ll become your guiding force. That doesn’t mean you ignore your head - just that your gut has more of an influence on how you navigate the world.

As Naval says: “It takes time to develop your gut, but once it’s developed, don’t listen to anything else.”

When everyone can take the same classes and courses, listen to the same audiobooks and podcasts, read the same books, follow the same influencers… it’s your instinct that will set you apart. It’s not what you know - but how you interpret it and use it to create what’s unique to you.

It takes a decade to decondition yourself - to get back to where you started. To that 18-year-old who didn’t let the world tell them what they wanted.

Your gut will take you there… but only if you listen.

Thanks for reading.

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SOURCES

Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Incerto 4-Book Bundle. Random House Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.