Give your best piece of advice for how to stop overthinking and start trusting your gut in business.
To help you stop overthinking and start trusting your gut in business, we asked successful entrepreneurs and business owners this question for their best advice. From not putting your mind on the competition to refraining from over-analyzing, there are several pieces of advice that would help you take the right steps to stop overthinking and gradually learn to stay true to your gut feelings in making decisions in business.
Here are 13 pieces of advice these leaders offered for how to stop overthinking and start trusting your gut:
- Don’t Put Your Mind on the Competition But Trust in Your Process
- Make Low-Risk Decisions for Practice
- Prepare for the Worst to Make You Feel Secure
- Choose and Practice Some Advice From Trusted People
- Lean on Your Values
- Make Decisions Based on Facts And Take a Leap of Faith
- Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
- Write Down the Reasoning Behind Your Decisions
- Keep a Gut Scorecard
- Keep Practicing Self-Trust and Acknowledge You Will Make Mistakes
- Surround Yourself With People You Trust
- Eliminate Overthinking Through Structure and Systems
- Refrain From Over-Analyzing
Don’t Put Your Mind on the Competition But Trust in Your Process
Be confident and be positive that your business will do well. Don’t compare your business with the other businesses because it creates fear inside your mind that whether you compete and whether you could stand in the rat race competition or not. Though your move is slow, trust in your process. These would be my pieces of advice.
Timothy Woods, Carnivore Style
Make Low-Risk Decisions for Practice
You can only truly start trusting your gut when you know that it’s taking you in the right direction and these feelings can be validated through hands-on practice. Start by identifying small and seemingly harmless low-risk decisions that you can make in your day-to-day life and use these to “test” out your gut instinct. The more you practice relying on your gut and the more these decisions turn out to be favorable, the more you’ll actually end up turning to your inner voice as opposed to overthinking every decision.
Harry Morton, Lower Street
Prepare for the Worst to Make You Feel Secure
If you’re anything like me, you spend a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong. If this process is not managed well, it can lead to you not following through on a decision because you think you’ll make a mistake. To stop overthinking and start trusting your gut, I assess the worst case scenario, accept that as a possibility, and plan a course of action should such a scenario unfold. If you’re prepared for the worst, you really have nothing to worry about and can begin to trust that your experience and intuitions will lead you to reasonable results.
Matthew Ramirez, Paraphrase Tool
Choose and Practice Some Advice From Trusted People
Advice is easily given and almost everybody you speak to will have an opinion and thus advice for you. Listen carefully to them but in the end make choices in function of what you want to reach and what fits your strategy. And the most important part is to decide what not to do. Because otherwise, you will end up doing too many things in a suboptimal way. Choose a few actions based on the advice you get and put them into practice in an excellent way. And be patient and consistent in doing so!
Bjorn Verbrugghe, Unigift
Lean on Your Values
When all else fails, remember what your core values are and allow that to guide your decisions in your business. When you’re faced with a ton of tough calls you need to make, truly putting what your values are first will make the entire process that much easier. For example, if your business’s website gets breached and creates an entire PR nightmare, you may fall back on your core value of transparency to guide you to being open about what happened and taking responsibility for whom you may have hurt. Using your core values will help you figure out what feels right and what doesn’t, giving you perspective on each situation that comes about.
Bill Lyons, Griffin Funding
Make Decisions Based on Facts And Take a Leap of Faith
One of the biggest challenges in business is learning to trust your gut. With so much at stake, it’s easy to overthink every decision, leading to paralysis by analysis. However, at some point, you have to be able to take a leap of faith and go with your instinct. Here are a few tips to help you stop overthinking and start trusting your gut:
Gather as much information as possible before making a decision. Once you’ve done your research, it’s important to give yourself a deadline for making a decision. Otherwise, you’ll never stop second-guessing yourself.
Trust your intuition. You’ve probably heard the saying, “Trust your gut.” There’s a reason why this advice is so popular—it’s often accurate! If something feels wrong, it probably is. So don’t ignore your intuition; it could be trying to tell you something important. Trusting one’s gut can be difficult, but if you follow these tips, hopefully, it will become easier with time and practice.
Jim Campbell, Epic Caribbean Vacations
Don’t Be Afraid to Fail
Overcoming the fear of failure is key in order to stop overthinking when it comes to your business. By accepting the fact that you might fail, only then will you be able to act on your gut instincts. If you are too scared to fail, then you will never act. Once I discovered this crucial fact, I found that I was better able to run my business. Although it may be a difficult hurdle to overcome, I believe it is a necessary step all entrepreneurs must take.
Gerald Lombardo, The Word Counter
Write Down the Reasoning Behind Your Decisions
If you’re convinced that your gut instincts are right when it comes to business, sit down and write the reasoning behind your decision and why it’s the right one. The points you list should be able to back up your plan and explain why it should succeed. With a clear head, you should then be able to sit back, re-read the points and cross reference with other data to understand whether or not your gut instinct is indeed the right route to take.
Steph Andrusjak, SEO Steph
Keep a Gut Scorecard
One solid way to start trusting your gut in business is by keeping a scorecard. Every time you make a decision based on your gut instinct, simply record the outcome. Seeing results in your gut’s favor on paper will help reduce your brain’s invasive, overthinking habits. Eventually, the habit will break.
Chris Coote, California Honey Vapes
Keep Practicing Self-Trust and Acknowledge You Will Make Mistakes
Trusting yourself takes time, persistence, and practice. Overthinking can be a significant barrier to this. It’s tempting to believe that by considering every possible angle, we can control the outcomes of each choice we make. In reality, this isn’t true. It’s impossible to predict every consequence, or plan for every eventuality. It’s essential to accept this and acknowledge that you will make mistakes. Then, you can begin practicing self-trust. Get familiar with the feeling and recognize what your intuition is communicating.
Start small and make a minor decision without the usual overthinking process. Was it a success? Yes? Great. Do it again. No? That’s okay. Ask yourself what you learned, and how you could do things differently.
As you gain experience, you will find it easier to have confidence in your decisions, recognizing that you have a bank of knowledge, understanding, and observations to draw on. The more you practice making intuitive choices, the easier it becomes.
Mario Cacciottolo, SBO
Surround Yourself With People You Trust
Your intuition and gut instinct tends to become clearer and devoid of fear when you have a strong foundation through trustworthy people. When you are sure that there are people to support you through the process, you’re more likely to relax enough so your gut instinct can speak clearly. And besides, with the right people around you, you are more likely to be unafraid to make a few mistakes while you discover how to listen to your gut.
Asma Hafejee, CMR Surgical
Eliminate Overthinking Through Structure and Systems
As a founder and overly neurotic child (ONC) in recovery, I know exactly how it feels to self-sabotage or delay progress due to overanalyzing data, ruminating, and trying to build “more confidence” before taking the leap. For founders and other business leaders, this can be amplified by the fact that you have so much at stake for yourself, employees, and the health of your company.
To help combat this, here are a few techniques that have helped me tremendously:
1. Give yourself a defined time limit to make a decision.
2. Write out your research process beforehand to make the decision so you don’t add unnecessary steps.
3. Find someone else to be accountable to.
4. Pre-define situations where you have already had success and where further analysis isn’t needed.
It’s not an easy road, but if you use these tactics, and start off trusting your gut with smaller decisions, you’ll eventually gain the confidence.
Ken Marshall, RevenueZen
Refrain From Over-Analyzing
The best way to stop overthinking and start trusting your gut is to make sure that you are not over-analyzing everything. You need to be able to take a step back and see the bigger picture. You need to see the forest for the trees. It is also important that you are confident in your abilities and what you bring to the table. If you have these two qualities, then it will be much easier for you to trust your gut in business.
Smith Miller, Convert Time Zone
