Your Gut Carries the Answer. You're Still Asking Questions.
Written by: Kurt Schliemann3 min read
Updated: 06/12/26
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Try this the next time you’re facing a hard decision: take a coin, and assign heads to “yes” and tails to “no.” Flip it, and when it lands, ignore the result. Instead, check your gut. What did you feel when you saw the result? Relief? Disappointment? That feeling is the real answer. The coin just activated your inner knowing -- your intuition.
I can’t take credit for this idea myself — my wife taught it to me many moons ago. But it was only recently that I discovered how truly wise it is.
For some of us, when we get quiet, we feel that pull toward something you can’t fully explain. The business idea, or the career path…or the uncomfortable conversation you know you need to have but keep postponing.
And if you’re like me, there’s almost always another voice that follows: That’s too risky. That’s not realistic. It’s not the right time.
That’s the ego, and it’s trying to keep you safe.
The ego is highly skilled at talking us out of what we already know.
But that intuition, that gut feeling -- it’s something we need to learn to listen to, and to trust. Because it’s actually built into our biology.
Columbia’s Michael Gershon famously dubbed the enteric nervous system the “second brain.” The gut-brain axis links our emotions and cognition with our gut. And it goes in both directions. What we feel in our body is not separate from what we know in our mind. It’s actually part of the same system. Science is finally discovering the significance of this connection: our gut carries very important information for us.
So here’s how this crystallized for me. Yesterday, on my weekly call with my coach, we got into a conversation about scaling my practice — specifically about the frameworks I work with and teach, and how they’ve come to me. My coach made a suggestion that resonated deeply. In my gut.
“You should document all of this,” he said. “Write it down.”
The suggestion landed like a ton of bricks, because it wasn’t a new idea to me -- but it was one I’d been actively ignoring.
I’d been hearing that same voice for six months. Every time it surfaced, I had a response: that’s too hard. It’ll take too long. Maybe one day. I had become so fluent in my own resistance that I barely noticed it.
My coach said it once, and I knew immediately it was right. I knew it in my gut. And I finally let myself hear it.
That’s what ignoring your intuition actually looks like. Most of us don’t even know we’re doing it…because we’ve built a habit of talking ourselves out of what we already know.
But we are now coming to see that intuition isn’t just a feeling. Mystics have known this for centuries; science is beginning to confirm it: our intuition is accumulated intelligence.
Every experience you’ve had, pattern you’ve recognized, lesson you’ve learned — your mind and body has been filing it all away. Your intuition is the output of all that processing. When it speaks, it isn’t guessing. It has already done the work.
The problem is that we’ve built an entire arsenal of sophisticated, reasonable-sounding arguments for why we shouldn’t trust it. That’s our ego doing its thing.
We are literally smart enough to outsmart ourselves (not a compliment).
Here’s the good news: you can strengthen your intuition by following it more frequently. And there is a snowball effect: the more you listen, and the more you follow, the more you witness how much it knows. Which makes you want to follow it even more.
So if you’ve gotten this far, ask yourself: What is the voice I’ve been ignoring?
The quiet one that is there when the alarm goes off in the morning, or that speaks up on a long drive when your mind finally goes still. The one you’ve gotten very good at dismissing before it finishes its sentence.
What have you been telling yourself instead?
The coin isn’t what matters. It’s a vehicle, to help you discover what your gut already knows.
The only question is whether you’re finally ready to listen.
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