when trusting your gut isn’t getting you an answer

A wise therapist once told me that when she works with couples, she tells them, “You’re either staying together, breaking up, or discerning. I make the most money from couples that are discerning.”

If you’re in a job now and you’re uncertain about whether or not you’re going to stick around, it can be really helpful to you and to the organization for you to get out of discernment mode. Ambivalence, “feeling stuck”, trying to figure out what your gut says so that you can then trust your gut – all of these can trap you in an unhappy holding pattern. One path out of such a pattern is data collection. Instead of trying to intuit an answer to a fraught question, commit to gathering more information within a finite window of time. 

That information could take many forms. You could rate how you feel at the beginning and end of each work day on a scale from 1 (“depressed”) to 10 (“elated”). You could track how many meaningful (to you) accomplishments you rack up in a given week or month. 

While you’re doing this tracking, hold aside the question of whether you’re staying or going. Don’t ruminate on that, if you can help it. Instead, invest yourself as fully as you can in the work and relationships at hand. 

The idea here is to give you something to look at outside of yourself that is at least a little more proofed against your emotional weather than your inner monologue. Instead of waiting for an epiphany, you’re running an experiment. 

The way you show up while running the experiment is likely healthier for you and better for the team around you than the alternative.

-eric