Live With Integrity: Trust Your Gut

I've learned that to ignore the still, small voice -- of logic, conscience, or whatever you may call it -- inside of me is a Bad idea. Too many times have I pretended that a decision that I made was the right one when all along my gut was telling me otherwise.

Moreover, marginalizing that still, small voice and delaying a decision is usually just as difficult as making the wrong decision. In my career as an educator, I have procrastinated making a phone call or sending an email because the results could be painful. If only I could bottle the feeling of relief after resolving conflict. That would indeed be a valuable and potent elixir. One swig would remind me that to take care of a problem quickly and with integrity is nothing to fear.

My "gut" and I had our first professional "run-in" about 15 years ago. I was running a university summer music camp that had clearly defined rules and regulations that governed student behavior. During the first night of the week-long camp, two campers chose to break the rules. The following morning, it was my responsibility to call their parents and tell them to return to the university, pick them up, and take them home without the refund of several hundred dollars each. The plot thickened, as one of these two was the daughter of a university regent. For the sake of the other campers, I took swift and decisive action and trusted my gut. Luckily, the result was anything but painful. The parents understood, the campers went home, and my sense of relief is still memorable.

Some of us deal with important and difficult decisions every day in our profession. If not there, our personal lives are full of decisions that need us to be honest and forthright because they can -- and do -- affect other people.

What I found over time, though, is that confronting a decision and trusting my still, small voice has resulted in better outcomes than I could hope for.

Whether or not a decision was ultimately right or wrong, if I have made it based on integrity and/or my best intentions, I know that I will be more comfortable with dealing with any possible, difficult aftermath -- I have moral ground upon which to stand.

What is your still, small voice saying to you? Trust it.

 

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