Why Listening To Your Gut Is A Powerful Step Toward Self-Evolution

The only difference between change and evolution is our awareness of the significance of our own conscious attention.

I’m not talking about the scientific Darwinian usage where we change by natural selection, I’m talking about something more specific to us, to our marriage between choice and chance.

Over the last year of being stuck inside and wallowing in self-pity and boredom, I’ve become more spiritual and mindful, and this is the biggest thing I’ve taken from that experience.

We are more powerful than we give ourselves credit for.

You are more powerful than you give yourself credit for.

The way we harness that power and evolve on a daily basis is by consciously paying attention to the small changes that happen regularly. By seeing their beauty and finding ways to integrate anything into our soulful existence that our energies call out for.

This is the key to what I’m calling evolution.

It’s about understanding that every day, we grow older.

That every day, we might become stronger.

That every day, we learn new knowledge.

That every day, something in us changes because yesterday no longer exists and today is the only thing that does.

By taking some time—whether an hour or a whole day—to understand what our changing minds, bodies, souls are asking for, we are telling ourselves that we are worthy.

Not only do we connect to the higher forces around us, we connect to the higher forces within us, and this bonding of two powerful sources gives us a feeling in our gut. It gives us a vibration of sorts to listen to, not to deconstruct or attack with logic, but to listen and follow with caution.

Evolution is having the intention to listen with trust and faith (not in the religious sense but in the sense of believing in divine timing). It’s about moving with life, not against it. Like fire to a candle, it gives us the light, and we keep it burning by acknowledging it is there. And that fire will burn out, and that’s okay. But at every point in our lives, we are given not necessarily a sign, but a shift in our energies that gives us a hint that something is changing. Our task is to tune into that frequency and just acknowledge it. No huge action. No deep consideration, just acceptance of its existence and the feeling that you can follow it if you wish to.

Think about it this way, some of the main subjects that correlate with a feeling of a ‘gut instinct’ are love, pain and purpose. So let’s dig into each:

Love is complicated by our misunderstanding of it. Love is often embroiled in miscommunication and confusion. Love is also the opposite—it is beautiful and explorative and symphonic. How we evolve when it comes to love is we tap into every feeling, every gut instinct, and acknowledge it. This isn’t anxieties, necessarily, but a tangible energetic signal that must either be listened to or actively ignored. More often than not, it’s telling us something we’re not yet aware of, and by directly becoming conscious of that signal, we learn to confront things earlier rather than watching them build in ignorance.

What this leads to is love that speaks to the soul because it is in conversation with it. What this leads to is an acceptance of the present moment being infinite, such that if it ends in our collective, mutual experience of it, it still lives in our minds, in our bodies, in our spirits. When something lives, there is nothing to mourn and our lives can move on faster.

Pain is so often demonised as being irrational because for so long we have been told to bury it deep. But pain is another signal—it is our bodies, our energies, trying to save us from further hurt. If we listen to the first essence of the pain, the first hint of its sting, and we attune to the source of the pain and validate its existence, we arm ourselves.

What this leads to is a weaponry of self-prioritization, where we notice shifts in our being toward a painful state caused by something or someone else and confront it. If someone hurts us, we tell them. We communicate, and if they reject us with condescension, we pull back our energy further from theirs so it is not drained. We learn to understand when something is not healthy for us because our instinct is telling us something is wrong. We investigate that source and in doing so either find the anxieties responsible or the validation to confirm it’s time to walk away from it.

Purpose is broad and ever-changing. It is multifaceted and extensive and it is arguably the one thing our guts tell us about the most. We worry so often that we have no purpose, that we don’t know our purpose. But often, we only say this because we are comparing ourselves to the hierarchy that exists in a generationally flawed society. Our purpose does not have to be one thing or generate huge wealth or even stability. Our purpose does not even have to be in the external world. Our purpose resides inside of us, and so it makes sense not to listen to factors outside of our body but attune to those in it.

What this leads to is a fluid bond between brain and body and mind and gut. It teaches us to simply give ourselves the time to be. To understand that no human can arrive at their true purpose by running at something they were told was their purpose without first asking themselves if it was true. It teaches us to have a reliance on the self, to develop an attunement to the messages behind our instincts. It teaches us to trust ourselves.

How you reach that conscious awareness is up to you. It doesn’t have to be meditation, it doesn’t have to be crystals or candles, though I do like these myself. It is simply taking the time to listen, undistracted, unafraid, unfiltered, unashamed, and acknowledge what it is you hear.