Instincts

Once, I did. I trusted them in the years I built my company, when every choice came down to a gut feeling rather than a spreadsheet. I trusted them in the therapy room, too—when a pause or a tremor in a client’s voice said more than any diagnostic code ever could. Instinct, then, was my compass.

But somewhere along the way, I stopped listening. Success has a strange way of disguising arrogance as wisdom. I started trusting systems instead—science, metrics, “best practices.” They’re good tools, but they aren’t intuition. They can’t tell you what a person’s silence means, or when the air in a room shifts. I began to trade instinct for evidence, forgetting that the two were never meant to compete—they were meant to complement.

And maybe the hardest part is this: I still hesitate to trust my instincts where it matters most—the heart. Experience has a way of making you cautious. Once you’ve been wrong about love, you start to doubt the quiet voice that once guided you. You analyze, interpret, second-guess. You build walls of reason around what should simply be felt.

But instinct is how the soul speaks. It’s the voice that says yes before the mind has time to weigh the risks. It’s what pulled me across oceans, into new lives, and out of darkness more than once. I’ve ignored it before, and every time, it’s cost me something essential.

So, do I trust my instincts? Not as much as I used to. But I’m learning to again. Slowly. Carefully. Like someone reacquainting themselves with an old friend they betrayed.

Because reason may build a life, but instinct—the kind that comes from somewhere deeper than thought—that’s what reminds you to live it.