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Gut Decisions.
The best, and my favorite kind of decision. The kind of decision that is made without your conscious mind. The kind of decision that just "feels" right and you're able to act on immediately.
These are the kinds of decisions that make me happiest. These decisions make me feel alive and assure me that there is a real "me" somewhere nestled in the neuron wiring between my ears. Large decisions made on gut feel are by in large the most authentic we can act. It's something down to our biological makeup that shoves us down a path that we may not even be able to explain.
I've made a good amount of gut decisions in my life, but by far the largest has been on where to live next. I had never visited New York in my life up until the summer before my senior year of college but when I went out to visit my friend Dimitri there, after three days it just felt right. I decided on that trip that I was going to have my offer at PwC switched to New York and I was moving there after graduation. That's it. I made my decision right then and there, without any idea on who else would be living there, or what my life would be like. I just made it because New York felt like home and that's where I wanted to be.
June 2020 I made another gut decision in an incredibly short amount of time.
Some preface: I've been toying with the idea of moving to LA in the next couple of years for a while now. My girlfriend lives there and a good number of my closest friends live out there so there were strong pull factors from a personal standpoint. Additionally, I've been living in New York for 4 years now and while I have truly loved every second of it, I do miss being able to get outside whenever I want and go skiing, hiking, camping, surfing, etc... I was brought up in Denver and being outside is in my DNA, I have missed that being in New York. All of that being said, I had no concrete plans to make a move. Either in the near or mid-term future. There were simply too many unknowns with my job and with my last ride in New York to make a commitment.
On Wednesday, June 3rd that changed.
That Morning at 10:42 am I got a message from my friend Justin asking the following:
"Brunt + Huge - so Henry most likely won’t come back to the US in 2020. He’s still paying rent for his room. As a result, we’re currently looking for people to sublet his room for the remainder of the year, or even a few months at a time. What are the odds either of you would be interested in living with the bois, a few steps from the beach, with some great pups, and endless home cooked meals?"
From that message, it took me no less than 6 hours to negotiate the rent of the room, talk to my boss about working from LA and make the decision to move 3000 miles from my home in Williamsburg.
After I got the initial text I asked myself, “What do I have to lose here?" The answer: “Nothing."
I am a big fan of Derek Sivers and one of the ideas that he espouses is to make big, reversible decisions as fast as possible because if you don't go see for yourself you won't actually know how you feel about it. With this decision, I will be in LA but only have a four-month commitment (August - November) and full reversibility if I want to move back to New York at the end of this period. I essentially get a trial offer at living in Venice Beach CA (a dream for most not only in the US but in the world).
Gut decisions, really any major life decision will cause some amount of anxiety. Change is difficult to comprehend and there will always be some small part of you that asks "Is this the right call?” Or “Have I thought this through enough?” Those doubts are a part of the deal, but in my eyes, you can squelch those doubts with practice and experience. Make more decisions that “feel” right and evaluate the results. In this way, I think you can train the gut to suss out the right calls from the wrong and identify your gaps when it makes the wrong choice.
It's almost akin to pulling the trigger on a gun for the first time. You don’t really know what’s going to happen. You look down the sights, and squeeze the trigger and BANG, it goes off, the recoil shoots into your shoulder and you spend a second bewildered. After that second you adjust, you know what to expect now, and you pull it again. Still somewhat jarred, but more prepared.
That is my goal. To continue to pull the trigger on these types of gut decisions until it is second nature. I want to be able to make decisions on BIG changes without hesitation because those are the experiences that will teach you the most in this life.
If you have any other great examples of gut decisions that you’ve made, please drop me an email. I love hearing these stories!
S/o to Justin “The Triggerman” Chan for the text and the opportunity.
Venice, I'll see you in August.