Deutschmann

Should the Gut Always Rule?

While listening to what your body is telling you is important to your emotional wellbeing, it is not a license to go hog wild. Statements like, ‘always follow your instinct’ or ‘your gut feeling is always right’ are, scientifically speaking, total nonsense and can lead a person down the wrong path. My primary message is that smart decisions are not based on reason alone. Emotional responses should also play a primary role. They should be analyzed and weighted on the benefits they bring to your current and long-term situation.

These principles do not just apply to private life, but also to career. Managers that cultivate open team communication should also encourage their team members to “speak from the gut.” Companies that want to benefit from the current scientific insights, should establish a somatic marker culture, where employees are encouraged to express their feelings, even if they can’t be immediately backed by arguments.

Emotional experience memory, via the signal system of somatic markers, not only provides general support to decision-making, and not only helps to trigger motivation processes through positive somatic markers. Instead, it is a direct reflection of that which makes up our deepest experience of the self. This has the following consequence: the appearance of positive somatic markers is a direct signpost pointing to the topics, contents, intentions, and plans which are congruent with the self of a person.