Learning to Trust Your Intuition When Making Difficult Decisions
- Feb 18
- 5 min read
Written by Gemma Sheppard, Mindset Coach
Gemma Sheppard BSc, MSc, is a mindset coach for ambitious women who have lost themselves. She helps women reclaim their self-worth, own their big identity shifts & remember who the f*ck they are, using a unique blend of science and spirituality.
Making decisions can be challenging, especially when you're constantly second-guessing yourself. This article highlights the importance of trusting your intuition and how to rebuild self-trust. Learn to distinguish between intuition and fear, and discover how to align your intellect and instincts to make decisions that feel right for you.
Why caring, conscientious people often struggle with self-trust
Some of the most caring, conscientious people I know struggle deeply with self-trust. They are thoughtful, responsible, and desperate to do the right thing. They read the books, listen to the experts, gather the evidence, and ask for advice from people who seem more qualified or more confident.
And yet, when it comes time to make a decision, they hesitate. They second-guess themselves. They assume someone else must know better. I recognise this pattern because I’ve lived it.
When authority feels safer than your own instincts
For years, whenever I felt uncertain, I defaulted to deferring. If a professional sounded convincing enough, I followed their guidance, even when something in my body felt tight or uneasy. I told myself they had more experience, more letters after their name, more authority. My own instincts felt flimsy by comparison.
But afterwards, I often noticed the same feeling: discomfort. A subtle sense that I had abandoned myself somewhere in the process. Over time, I realised that this discomfort was my gut instinct.
Intuition is not irrational, it is pattern recognition
Many of us have been taught, directly or indirectly, that intuition is irrational and that good decisions should be purely logical. We’re encouraged to override our gut feelings in favour of expert opinion, data, or whatever sounds most confident and certain.
While evidence and critical thinking absolutely matter, there is a problem with relying on them alone: they remove us from our own lived experience. And lived experience is data too.
Your nervous system is constantly picking up cues long before your conscious mind catches up. It notices tone changes, micro-expressions, subtle shifts in behaviour, and patterns you couldn’t articulate even if you tried. What we call intuition is often your brain processing thousands of small signals at once and presenting you with a simple message: this feels safe, or this doesn’t. The difficulty is that many of us have lost the habit of listening.
The cost of outsourcing your authority
Instead, we look outward. We search for the right method, the perfect framework, the step-by-step answer that guarantees we won’t make a mistake. We convince ourselves that if we just gather enough information, the decision will become obvious and risk-free. It rarely works like that.
In my work with people, particularly those in caring roles, I see what happens when self-trust erodes. They become anxious about even small choices. They constantly ask for reassurance. They feel guilty no matter what they pick. Because the decision never feels theirs fully. Responsibility gets outsourced, and with it goes confidence. Ironically, the more you hand your authority to other people, the less capable you feel.
Signs you may be outsourcing your authority
You feel anxious about small decisions
You repeatedly ask for reassurance, even after deciding
You feel guilty regardless of what you choose
You search for one correct answer before acting
You feel relief when someone else decides for you
Letting intuition and intellect work together
Rebuilding self-trust doesn’t mean rejecting science or ignoring expertise. It doesn’t mean assuming you know everything. Rather, it means allowing your intuition and your intellect to work together instead of treating them as opposites. Evidence can guide you. Logic can inform you. But your body still gets a vote.
Sometimes that looks like pausing before you agree to something and noticing the sensation in your chest or stomach. Sometimes it means asking yourself: If nobody else were watching, what would feel right here? Sometimes it’s simply giving yourself permission to say, "This advice might work for others, but it doesn’t feel aligned for me." These moments sound small, yet over time, they are where self-trust is built.
Self-trust is not
Ignoring evidence
Dismissing expertise
Assuming you know everything
Acting impulsively
Refusing feedback
Learning the difference between fear and intuition
The more you practise listening to yourself, the clearer those signals become. You start to recognise the difference between fear and intuition, between old conditioning and genuine misalignment. Decisions feel less frantic and more grounded. You may still feel uncertainty, but underneath it, there’s a steadier sense that you are capable of navigating your own life.
Intuition vs. fear: What’s the difference?
Intuition | Fear |
Calm but firm | Urgent and catastrophic |
Clear and simple | Spirals with what if thinking |
Feels grounded in the body | Feels frantic or overwhelming |
Doesn’t need to prove itself | Tries to convince or justify |
Self-trust is a skill, not a personality trait
I’ve come to see self-trust not as a personality trait, but as a skill. It develops through attention, reflection, and the willingness to take responsibility for your choices. Each time you honour what you know deep down to be true, you strengthen that internal relationship. Each time you override yourself to please someone else or follow authority blindly, you weaken it.
No one else lives in your body. No one else sees your life from the inside. Which means no one else can ever have the full picture.
What sustainable decisions actually feel like
There will always be experts, opinions, and louder voices telling you what you should do. Sometimes they’ll be right. Sometimes they won’t. The goal isn’t to eliminate outside input, but to stop treating it as more trustworthy than your own perception.
Because at the end of the day, the most sustainable decisions are the ones you can stand behind with a calm, settled feeling in your body. Not because someone told you to. But because you listened carefully and chose them yourself.
Continue exploring how self-trust inside animals makes us human
If this reflection resonates, we explore these themes more deeply inside Animals Make Us Human, the Skool community at the heart of More Than Human.
It’s a space to learn, reflect, and connect around intuition, self-trust, nervous system awareness, and the human-animal bond, not through quick-fix advice or rigid frameworks, but through thoughtful conversation, embodied learning, and lived experience.
You can read more about self-trust for animal carers here.
Read more from Gemma Sheppard
Gemma Sheppard, Mindset Coach
Gemma is the founder of Align & Grow Coaching and author of the Align & Shine Workbook, guiding women through the messy stages of identity shifts into unapologetic confidence. With a background in Psychology (BSc) and Human-Animal Interaction (MSc), she blends evidence-based tools with grounded spirituality and a no BS approach. Her work includes digital products, workshops, and coaching experiences. You'll usually find her outside with her horse or rescue dog, dreaming of a future animal sanctuary X retreat centre. Her mantra, f*ck fitting in.
