Leaning in to Your Gut Check

I am definitely not someone who leads with their heart. I am a logical, analytical, lead with my head kind of person, and that is how I make almost all decisions in my life until recently. I'm doctor Carrie Mankey. I'm a creator here at Cadre and a life coach, and I would argue that strategics, analytics, intellectual thinking is kind of my forte. I took strength finders, and I have, like, on the relationships category. They're, like, at the bottom. Okay. That is not my areas of strength. My natural unique ability is to strategically think about things and strategize.

So, case in point, when I went to nursing school, instead of making this decision with any emotion whatsoever, I actually made a decision matrix, which, for those, you're like, oh, my gosh. What the heck is that? I literally ranked all of the different variables that I was considering, like, how long it takes to get into the program, how long the program is, where are the programs located, how many more prerequisites do I need to take? All of these things cost, all that stuff. Ranked them as far as, like, what I thought the weight should be.

And then with each school I was looking at, I ranked each of those to give me a score, and that's literally how I decided where I wanted to apply. So, that's how I traditionally make decisions in life. But since I have trusted God a lot more with my life and just kind of let go of some of the control that I have over things, I've been able to use my gut a lot more. And I call this my God check. My gut check. Same thing. They're, like, interchangeable in my language. And most recently, my husband and I were having a conversation about, what is your gut telling you about our most recent move?

Because we were forced to move to this area in California for the military, because my husband is in the military. And it really was not an exciting move for either of us because it's kind of in the middle of nowhere. It's home. Hot as all get out. Guys, I am a Minnesota girl. Hence the Minnesota t shirt. You can't really see, but I am a Minnesota girl, and this is hot. Okay? And it's only, like, may time, so it's only gonna get worse. But I. It's two stoplights in this town. There's, like, nothing here.

There's no restaurants. If you're a foodie, it's a bad place. But we both said, like, our gut is telling us this is really a peaceful place to live, and what if we were to consider living here longer? And I can't explain it because I can't tangibly put my finger on it. But there's a piece that I have about this move, and I lean into that now way more than I used to, since I've kind of let God guide me in life and decide that, hey, you're going to move to San Diego, even though you had no idea you wanted to move there or live there, and you've never been there before.

That was a total God decision in my life. So I just want to encourage you today that if you are a logical, intellectual decision maker, or maybe you're the reverse, maybe you just always lead with your head or your heart in making all decisions. If there's a way you could maybe find more of a balance in that, because the logical part of my brain wanted to go, well, the cost of living is less out here. We're still in California, where you pay high taxes. The weather is absolutely atrocious. My dog is really hot.

It's hard to walk her and exercise her. There's not a lot of resources here. But on the flip side, then there's these pros, so making my pro con list. But then there's the part of me that's also leaning into this kind of gut feeling. So if you are a one way or the other, I want to encourage you to challenge yourself in this area. Maybe that means that you start making pro con lists if you are a total, like, gut heart decision maker, and maybe if you're an intellectual head decision maker, maybe you lean more into that, like, just kind of sit with.

With your feelings about something, journal about it, and see, like, what's coming up for me. For me, I'm an out loud processor, so I just need to tell my husband, give me two minutes, and I just talk for two minutes, and then I've, like, processed it out loud. But challenge yourself in this area, because we can always grow in these areas, and you're innately going to be one way or the other. But challenge yourself and see what happens. And I would venture to guess you might find some more peace in some of the decisions that you make once you can learn to kind of channel both your head and your heart in those decisions.

So love to hear how this goes for you guys. Give me a comment. Let me know how this was, if this exercise was helpful in any way for you, and thank you for tuning in. God bless. Bye.