How Do You Tell Your Gut From Your Fear?

Most men who come to me on the edge of a big decision have already worked out what they need to do. They're just not aware of it. Usually the decision is about their work - whether to leave the career they built, or stay in it. The work is discerning between our fear part - which tells us it's our gut, our true wants and needs - and our real gut.

Your fear part is loud, it argues its case, and it sits high - in your chest and head. Your gut is quieter, more deliberate, and it sits low - in your abdomen.

I left a fifteen-year career in entertainment in my forties, so I've been through this, myself. My fear part sounded like conviction. This is what gives me meaning. I have to succeed, or I'm a failure. That's a belief a man can build a decade on, and I did. What it was actually saying was, "I'm terrified that this is the thing that makes me precious and special, and without it I will be worthless, unlovable, and invisible.

That's not a gut talking. That's a scared kid with a good vocabulary.

The fear part brings what it says is irrefutable evidence about how this ends badly if you go against it. It's incredibly persuasive, because it's been rehearsing its lyrics since you were six. The gut is quieter, calmer. The difference between a waterfall and a deep, still lake. The gut is also frequently saying the thing you don't want to hear. That's why people don't listen to it.

I wanted my purpose to be the thing I had decided long ago was my purpose - I knew who I was in that world, and I knew how to live in it (as anxiety-ridden though it was). I might have been in a cave, but it was a home, safer than the unknown terrors that might await me if I left. So I didn't listen to my gut for decades.

Your gut has been told to shut up enough times that it has mostly stopped raising its hand. When it does speak it's in milliseconds, tiny moments that are easy to walk straight past. The work is catching one and treating it like a chip in a slippery wall: What if I can chisel that chip into a step? What if I can stand on it, to cut another one?

Much of being a therapist means zipping on a hazmat suit descending alongside my clients into their shadows, sewage, the parts in us that are too scary to go into alone. The rapport we build isn't a nicety; it's the equipment.

It's all right to be scared as hell. Something like a career shift isn't simply a job change; it's an identity shift, and even that word doesn't reach far enough down. You're just not changing jobs. You're shaking the Etch A Sketch and redrawing your life from scratch.

You're also allowed to reach a different answer than I did. You're allowed to say, "This used to be fun, it isn't anymore, but I want to find my way back to it being fun again." Or, "This isn't fun right now, but I don't want to leave it, and I want to find a way to handle the stressors better." There is no "brave" or "cowardly" choice; every choice is an option to the correct one. The work is figuring out what your gut - your true needs, what actually gives you meaning - is saying.

If this resonates… let's talk.