Everything you’ll ever read on this blog is only one person’s opinion.

And, if you search long enough, you’ll always be able to find someone, somewhere whose opinion is the exact opposite of mine. And, in between the opinions of the two of us, lie a myriad of other opinions in every shade of grey.

So, whose advice do you follow? Whose opinion matters most? Whose smarts can you count on?

The answer is: your own.

Ultimately, you have to learn how to trust your own gut. Success definitely involves soliciting sage advice, gathering informed opinions and educating yourself, but it also involves filtering all of that information through your gut to determine what “feels right” to you.

Now, please do not confuse a gut feeling with emotional impulsiveness. A gut feeling (or inner voice) is a deeper, more centered, more assured knowing. An emotional impulse is a rather rash, whimsical, momentary reaction. Also, gut feelings are instinctual rather than intellectual… we describe these mysterious hunches, feelings, or directives as “visceral” because they seem to come from our vicera, or internal organs. They do not come from our brains!

But so what?

Well, you will never achieve great success by relying solely on your brain. (And this is especially true for you really, really smart people!) Your brain is great at handling questions with more definite, yes-or-no/right-or-wrong answers like: “Do I need to print more business cards?” or “Should I get this shoe in size eight or eight-and-a-half?” or “What is pi to the power of four?” Your brain likes to crunch the numbers, analyze the facts and give you the security of absolutes.

However, when you are pursuing an artistic career or you are building your own business, most of the decisions you have to make are not the kind with right or wrong answers. (Oh, folks will tell you “you can’t do that” or “you have to do that” but, remember, those are just opinions. For every person who says “never call agents before 3 p.m.” you can find someone who says, “I always have luck calling agents between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m.”) If you rely solely on your brain to decide issues such as “Should I leave New York City for a year and do regional theatre?” you’ll drive yourself nuts! Your brain will spin that decision around and around trying to find the (nonexistent) “right” answer. For a decision like “NYC vs. regional theatre” to be made, your brain must release its grasp and let your gut take over.

Ooooo, but when you have yet to develop a reliable gut instinct, this can be a scary move. When you are unsure of yourself, the natural urge is to use someone else’s gut or brain to make decisions for you. One of my favorite college theatre professors used to famously torment us all when we’d attempt that route.

Us: “Is it better to light this scene with two from overhead or one on each side?”

Him: “Yes.”

And then he’d walk away! Of course, what he was implying was “that both options could work so you have to consider the different factors and then make a choice that YOU think is best.” Incredibly frustrating, yet incredibly instructive. Our professor knew that “tuning into” or “getting in touch with” one’s gut (a.k.a. inner voice) is a skill that can be developed with patience and practice. (He was just forcing us to practice!)

But why bother?

I can offer several important reasons. First, far too often when a creative person like yourself offers an idea, dream or goal to the world asking “should I, dare I?” you are met with a chorus of discouragement: “That won’t work”, “Way too risky”, “Next”, etc. Yet there may very well be a little voice inside you whispering, “go for it!” Your ability to hear that inner voice and believe it, and strengthen it may be the difference between you accomplishing something or not.

Second, the more successful you become, the more pressure you have to make decisions with less time and less information than your brain would like. Therefore, the more facile you become at moving issues out of your brain and into your gut, the less chance decisions have of morphing into obstacles. The more skilled you become at tuning-into and interpreting your gut feelings, the faster you will progress towards your goals.

Third, as you become more and more successful, you will have a greater number of people on your team offering advice on what you should be doing and how you should be doing it. If you’ve chosen wisely, these folks will genuinely be trying to help you. However, being humans, they will also have their own agendas and reasons for pushing you toward one direction or another. Without the ability to filter all of that advice through your gut and to trust your own gut instincts, you will waste a lot of time and energy second-guessing your choices and decisions.

Finally, a fourth reason why it is important to develop the ability to hear what your gut is saying is because some of the most profound conversations you will ever have will be conversations you have with yourself. The more in-tune you get with your gut, the more often you can ask yourself a question… and actually receive an answer – from yourself. The answer you receive may, at the moment, sound bizarre or scary or challenging, but it will usually also feel “right.” What the Glinda the Good Witch said to Dorothy really is true: all the answers we ever seek are already within us. One of our missions in life, as adults, is to excavate those answers. (I think my life coach, Lauri Johnson, is brilliant, but Lauri will be the first to say that her skill is merely to change my perspectives so I can see stuff about myself that is already there and visible to her.)

Sooo, how do you tune-in your gut?

Turning up the volume up on your inner voice is achieved by increasing your self-awareness. Everyone charts their own path toward self-awareness, but the following three suggestions will help get you started:

1. STOP

Stop random polling. I know folks who, when they are wrestling with major (and even minor) life decisions, start asking every single friend and acquaintance for advice on the matter. My guess is that they want the external responses to pull them strongly in one direction or the other. Ironically, the more feedback they gather the more even the split becomes between the “yes, you should” and “no you shouldn’t” opinions. This result drives them to gather even more feedback and they remain in the relative comfort of decision-making limbo.

In fact, some folks make all their decisions by NOT making decisions. But don’t fool yourself – the act of “not making a choice” is a choice… and the results generated by that passivity are allll yours.

When you need to make a choice, select your sources of guidance wisely. Do some research, get some advice and then stop and decide.

2. THINK

When might you have heard your gut speak to you before? List some of the biggest accomplishments in your life and think about the series of choices that you made that led to those successes. You are looking for times when you relied on your gut instincts: Did you ever say “yes” to something without knowing how you were actually going to actually do it? What were the biggest risks you took and why did you take them? How did you make it through a tough time when you felt like you were “lost” or “in a fog”? Have there been times when you’ve surprised yourself by knowing exactly what to do in a situation (but not knowing how you knew)? Have there been times when you had a sudden impulse to do something, ignored/repressed that impulse, and later regretted doing so? Have you stood up for your opinion/idea/belief against a more educated/experienced authority because you just felt you were right – and you were proven correct?

By constantly crediting your surprise successes to “luck”, you dismiss (and thus minimize) the power of your gut instinct. A beginning step towards building trust in your gut is to acknowledge those times when it has helped you out.

3. LISTEN

Often your gut will speak to you in whispers. To hear those whispers, you have to be able to calm and quiet any intellectual or emotional turmoil – at least for a few moments. If your brain is in a frenzy, or you are cut off from your emotions, you will not be able to ask yourself how you feel about an issue and then hear your answer.

Requesting and interpreting feedback from your gut may be very new territory for you. You may have to expand your comfort zone a bit to get in touch with yourself this way. Some people get very anxious when they allow themselves to be “alone with their thoughts.” If that’s true for you, a therapist might be able to help you examine why. If you are very kinesthetically-oriented or hyperactive, yoga or some other calming physical practice might be a useful tool to help you focus on your inner voice. Meditation practice might also help you learn how to recognize your inner voice. If you still feel you are having problems hearing your gut, you might consider working with a life coach or other insightful guide. And, even if you are able to hear what your gut is saying, you may still need support in actually acting upon its advice.

It is human nature to fear being wrong, looking stupid or making a mistake. Yet waiting to make a move until you are 100% sure that you are 100% right means you will spend too much of your life standing still. If you want to achieve your goals, you must develop confidence in your self (your gut) so you can make choices and move ahead despite doubts, uncertainties and fears. (As the good book says, you must learn how to Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway.)

I’m not suggesting that your gut will never mislead you. Trusting your gut is always going to be a leap of faith – faith in yourself. Faith that, should your choice yield undesirable results, you’ll be able to pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and make a course correction. Faith that, if you just concentrate on shoveling the dirt, one day you will look up and realize you have succeeded in moving a mountain.