When presented with a choice, do you trust your inner voice?
You know when you get that “gut feeling”—that intangible premonition? It can seem like a sign from God, literally heaven-sent to guide you one way over another. It can seem lucky, like a ‘chance’ feeling that you may not have gotten should you have been somewhere else or someone else. It is personal; it is your inner voice.
Contrary to popular belief, your intuition is not spiritual, it is not ‘God-sent’, and it is certainly not objective. It is brain-powered, experience-powered pattern recognition that can be manipulated further by your emotions. And this processing happens so fast that it might miss the target completely.
Yet, because this is unconscious computing, it spits out a conscious result: the “instinct” which we think is otherworldly, magical, and correct.
There are times when we zone out and drive home, and we don’t know how we got there. Your brain and body just processed the red light that you stopped at, put the indicator on at the right times, and your mouth swore at the person who swerved in front of you as if it was nothing.
The same machinery in our brain is at work when it comes to our gut feelings. Our amygdala and insular cortex analyse our past experiences and memories while taking signals from our current emotional and environmental situation.
In layman’s terms, your intuition is based on what you remember (and memory is malleable), what your body has taken in as relevant from the current situation (only what you pay attention to), how you are feeling (so your emotional state can alter the processing taking place), and your past experiences.
If your past experiences in that situation happened to be negative, your ‘gut feeling’ would advise you in a certain way—different from someone who has had only positive experiences in that exact same situation.
We need to make sense of the world quickly sometimes. We need to predict so that we feel protected. That is why it is there.
And guess what? Even if it is scientific, it is still helpful and monumental, as a couple of Thai-Indians share.
When it comes to following my intuition, two instances come to mind.
I still remember waking up one morning with this random urge to take a pregnancy test. No real reason—just that quiet nudge I couldn’t shake off. And sure enough, two pink lines appeared. That moment changed everything. It was the first time I truly realised how powerful intuition can be—that soft whisper that somehow just knows.
Since becoming a mum, that voice has only grown louder. When my son was a newborn, he was constantly fussy and uncomfortable. Doctors kept telling me it was just colic, but deep down, I knew something else was off. My intuition kept nudging me that dairy might be the culprit.
Despite the scepticism from some doctors, I kept advocating for him, pushing for more tests and more attention. Eventually, we found a paediatrician who listened, and it turned out that he had a dairy allergy.
That moment taught me the power of maternal instinct—that quiet, unwavering voice that knows what’s best for our children. It wasn’t just about a diagnosis; it was about trusting that bond and never giving up on what I felt.
It’s wild and beautiful—the invisible thread that connects us. Trusting that instinct? Best call(s) ever.
One day, I was going for my daily evening walk in my very safe neighbourhood. For some reason, I looked to the side as I was walking and noticed a man behind a tree at a distance.
It was just a glimpse, nothing more. It was more like I noticed a movement rather than a man, even. The path I usually took looped back and would pass his location. I didn’t catch a good glimpse, but I was alarmed. I remember getting goosebumps.
I decided not to circle back my usual way and went straight ahead, picking up speed. I passed a corner and stopped. I called my brother and asked him to come pick me up, even though I was just a one-minute walk from home.
My brother came and drove me home. We took the loop that I would have walked through anyway and passed the man I caught in my peripheral vision.
He had come out from behind the tree and seemed to be frantically searching for me—confused as to why I didn’t loop back.
I’m so glad I trusted my instincts that day.
There was an incident where my son was crying and just fussy. He had been fed, he had no temperature, he had slept, and yet he wasn’t his bubbly self. Why was that?
I felt like he wasn’t dressed warmly enough, but I didn’t know for sure. He was 8 months old and couldn’t tell me. “He’s not used to this,” I thought. I was driven to further confusion by many family members around me who couldn’t figure it out.
But we were adjusting to the climatic whims of a new country. My baby is Thai, I kept thinking.
After some time, I got fed up and trusted my gut. I added another woollen layer to him, and he was fine in an instant. I felt so guilty for not doing it sooner—for letting him be uncomfortable for so long.
He was so little, unable to put into words, and while this may seem like a small moment for someone else, it was the moment I decided that my opinions, my beliefs, and my feelings about my baby trumped everyone else’s.
And I was going to trust my intuition—with no apologies.