For the first couple of rounds of Sunday’s With Margo, I will be addressing a particular topic each week and if you wish to submit a topic for discussion, you can email me at hercampusbuadvice@gmail.com or dm me on Instagram/Twitter @margo1598. For as long as I can remember, I have always had a very strong core sense of self. Inclinations and decisions I knew I wanted to make always hit me over the head like a sack of bricks. And whenever I knew that something was important to me, I could quite literally feel this heaviness that I carried with me, a very heavy gut feeling. Until I acted on thought, the heaviness followed me and with distraction from school and other aspects of my life, came compartmentalization. And then, this feeling would slowly grow in the back of my head like a piece of bacteria harboring in a petri dish.
Lately, I have done a lot of thinking about instincts when it comes to decisions that I have to make. When it comes to the particular decision I have in mind, I keep thinking about the impact the decision would exude, but not the impact it would make on myself.
I am the type of person that tries to please, so when I go to friends and family for advice and they give me advice that doesn’t line up with the decision I want to make for myself, I begin to overthink about what they could think if I go against what they want me to do. Or, if someone’s advice matches up with the decision that I wish to make, I almost use it as a way to justify my decisions.
When it comes to these decisions, I always find that I am trying to come up with a concrete answer to myself about why I make the choices that I do, why I want to make the decisions I do. For smaller day to day tasks, reasons I do what I do is innate. But for more serious larger decisions, the ones where my gut is telling me to act in a certain way, I find myself getting frustrated. Because for some reason, I feel the need to come up with a concrete justification.
Sometimes, we don’t need concrete reasons to make the decisions that we do. I’ve learned that just because we don’t have the concrete answers for particular problems, doesn’t mean that they’re impulsive. You can mull over something for a long time and know you want to do something, yet you don’t know exactly why. And that’s okay.
You are you. And with that, you don’t need to use others approval as justifications for yourself. Going with your gut and acting on your instincts is incredibly satisfying. And if things don’t go as planned, that’s okay too. For one, it’s a learning experience. Most importantly, it builds, deepens, and elaborates your intuition, your gut. Instinct is a muscle: good and bad situations allow it to become stronger. So go with your gut. Don’t let the outside voices get to you. This is your life and you have to do what makes you the happiest.
Until Next Sunday,
Margo