Gut feeling

Everyone makes thousands of decisions. Everyday.

Just think about how easy it feels to speak. Now sketch all the processes working in the background to make you articulate concepts. Impressive, isn't it?

The same is valid for processing inputs. Every second, hundreds of signals reach our consciousness. All our sensory mechanisms, thoughts and feelings. And this is before taking the plunge into screens, internet and connectivity.

A key to being a well-functioning human being is to make continuous and fast decisions on what to do consciously and which input to focus on. Most of all, discarding 90% of what we could focus on in this specific moment to select the correct 10%, which is functional to our survival.

Several brain areas are involved in these processes, and response chains spread throughout our body. However, we are so used to associating the mind and the brain with conscious processes and separating them from our body that we commonly refer to this autonomous and unconscious decision-making as gut feeling.

Entrepreneurship involves rapid decision-making and prioritising. As a founder, your gut feeling might unconsciously play a significant role in these processes. Everything you are and you were is trying to give you directions. As fast as a heartbeat. Your current perception of your life, health, environment, how you handled past traumas and your relationships. All of this has built a series of cascades and triggers that will provide you with instinctual decision-making.

The challenge is that building a company is about sailing in uncharted waters. A significant difference between riding a bike and articulating sounds with your body. On top of that, high stakes and fast decisions trigger all the circuits built for surviving acute stress (fight or flight, for example). These tend to override conscious deliberation.

Being in contact with your emotions, feelings and automated mechanisms from a position of grounded stability allows you to access your drivers and instincts without simply being puppets to them. It will enable you to keep true to yourself and your core values while building for the long run. At the same time, it gives you those precious seconds to evaluate if what you are planning to do is really what matters the most or is just the result of processes that worked well in the past but not in the present.

Setting up your boundaries and ensuring you live a life that puts you in the right environment and mind space is the best investment you could make for yourself and your company.