why we don’t follow our intuition

Even with a commitment to trusting the wisdom of my body and all the practices I do toward this end, I still get met with challenges.  

This week I'm grappling with a financial hit for a business-consulting service that my body knew was not something I should pay for.

From the outset, the churning of my belly and constriction in my chest indicated something was not right. 
My body suspected that the folks involved (though well-intentioned) didn’t really understand my work.
It knew I'd be better off forging ahead solo or continuing in my research.  

But my mind said, "You're out of time for deliberation." "They're the experts. They KNOW what they're doing." "Plus, this will be much easier." "Your time is better spent on what you're good at." "Let them handle it." "Yes, it's a big expense but it will pay off in the long run." 

Long story short, not so much. 

I share this because I think so many of us have been here. 

We've all made choices that conflict with our intuition and then looked back and wished we'd trusted what some part of us already knew. 

We might feel down about ourselves when this happens. Maybe we experience shame, embarrassment, and anger.  Perhaps we close the blinds and don't want to tell anyone what has happened for fear of being met with the proverbial "I told ya so." 

But following our head over our body is not a personal defect. This is something we've been trained to do -- often from very early on in our lives. 

The society we've created demands that our bodies "prove" themselves. There is usually a specific time window for them to show us exactly why they're in revolt. If they're going to cause trouble (i.e. not go along with the mind's plan) they must also come up with another viable option. 

This is not how our bodies function. They don't deliver us to linear answers. They invite us to deeper questions.

Being with questions is big work. We're meant to take our time with these unknowns. Feel how they rattle and unnerve us and yet remain. Sometimes we need days, but often it's more like months or even years to unwind what the body is presenting. 

Such time is a luxury in world that prioritizes speed, productivity, efficiency, and action-oriented to-do lists -- especially for marginalized bodies. Many of us just don't have it. 

So, we do the best we can which often means talking ourselves into the only "solution" we see. 

To be a body-wise human navigating late-stage capitalism, the patriarchy, supremacy culture and more means inevitably being forced to choose between the narrative of the mind and the feelings of our body. When we really want to get it right, we often go with what feels the most clear. We go with the head.   

If we recognize this as an inevitability of the times in which we live, we relate these moments in a different way. 
 
Rather than berating ourselves, we can examine with care.
 
Was there real or perceived urgency around the choice I was faced with?  
What do I see now that I couldn't explore then? 
How did my body indicate this knowing to me?
 
Then we can take a deep breath, wrap ourselves in the softest blankets of compassion and remind ourselves that we, "did the best we could and that’s all we can do. Now we know more and we'll try to honor that knowing day by day