Tapping into My Gut Intuition
I have been enjoying a long winter vacation which has allotted me a great deal of time to delve into reading some pretty awesome books. The book that I just finished is called, In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts. This book was recommended to me from a friend who shares my interests in sobriety, addiction and mindfulness. The book is written by a man named Gabor Maté who writes about his views on addiction as a mental and physiological disease. He shares his insights about the disease, his research on childhood development and trauma while simultaneously chronicling the individual lives of the many drug addicts that he attended to as a physician practising on the lower East side of Vancouver for 12 years.
While I was reading this book I found myself spacing it out gradually, day by day, so as to avoid finishing it too quickly. That is the sign of a great book to me. Every chapter gives me something to reflect on for the rest of my day and I am truly enjoying it. I've been discussing it with friends and they have recommended to me other work by him so I have been on a bit of a Gabor Maté kick as of lately. I will link below some of his talks on Youtube that I find extremely fascinating. In several of them he poses the following question to his audience:
How many of you have ever had a gut feeling about a certain situation and ignored it, talked yourself out of it, realizing after the fact that you were right and should have followed that initial gut instinct?
I know I have.
He goes on to explain how our intuition in our gut is also our intelligence and is connected to our brain. We need to pay attention to that because our intellect does not rest solely in our minds. Our intuition is connected with a deep knowing that we sense in our bodies, it is the type of intelligence that grounds us to the reality that we're living in. It's that icky, unsettling feeling we have when someone's shady actions do not match the pretty words they speak. It's the same feeling we get when a situation suddenly feels dangerous that on the outside might appear harmless. Often, when we trust our gut, we end up protecting ourselves and sometimes even rewarding ourselves with wonderful situations and relationships. Your gut intuition can be that feeling of deep knowing and connection that we feel when we meet someone who is meant to be in our lives for a reason.
This has had me thinking about a current situation in my life. Our rental lease is up at the end of February and my husband and I have decided we want to move into a bigger place. So far the search has been quite a struggle because we both have a lot of requirements.
For Jin:
For Jess:
These two lists might not seem like much but in Korea it can be difficult to get all of our needs met at the budget we'd like to spend. The type of apartment that we usually have to rent from is called an Officetel. This adds another issue which is where my gut intuition comes into play. Officetel buildings are usually listed as buildings with office space to rent. However; the rooms within the buildings are entirely livable but because the building owners do not want to pay homeowner taxes on them they list them as offices only. So the people who live in them, then cannot register their home addresses with the government. Usually this means that people will list their parents home or another apartment with the government as their home address. This is just one of those grey area situations in Korea. It feels oddly familiar to the E2 Visa issue that I dealt with first hand last year. Basically it's an illegal thing happening here that the government is currently turning a blind eye to.
But, everybody's doing it so it's ok right?
It might be totally ok and not something that anyone will be penalized for for a long time. However it just is not ok with me. Especially after my traumatizing experience last year with my coworkers being deported from the country and deemed criminals for crimes they did not knowingly commit (teaching English?), I just have to trust my gut on this and not rent from a building that does not list itself as both a home and an office. This has meant turning down an option that checked off almost all of the boxes. Fortunately, there are some buildings where the owners are honest like the place that we currently live in. We have had zero problems in our current place by the way which will make it very hard to leave. Luckily we are not in a situation like we were last year where we were desperate to get out of our lease, and so I am trying to just be present to the wonderful aspects of where I currently live and I'm hopeful that the stars will align and we will find a place that ticks off every single box.
I will be headed to view two more places tomorrow that have potential! I can go into them with a clear conscience and continue to tap into my gut intuition on how the place feels. When I listen to my gut, I believe I can be a pretty intelligent woman!
We have signed a lease on a new place and will be moving in next week. I will be taking House Tour photos once the furnishing and decorating of it are complete. Until then, I would like to mention that the place does not meet all of our criteria. Jin had to compromise on location and I, on my bathroom requirements. But after touring the place, we both knew it was the one.
Some pros about it are:
While I was reading this book I found myself spacing it out gradually, day by day, so as to avoid finishing it too quickly. That is the sign of a great book to me. Every chapter gives me something to reflect on for the rest of my day and I am truly enjoying it. I've been discussing it with friends and they have recommended to me other work by him so I have been on a bit of a Gabor Maté kick as of lately. I will link below some of his talks on Youtube that I find extremely fascinating. In several of them he poses the following question to his audience:
How many of you have ever had a gut feeling about a certain situation and ignored it, talked yourself out of it, realizing after the fact that you were right and should have followed that initial gut instinct?
I know I have.
He goes on to explain how our intuition in our gut is also our intelligence and is connected to our brain. We need to pay attention to that because our intellect does not rest solely in our minds. Our intuition is connected with a deep knowing that we sense in our bodies, it is the type of intelligence that grounds us to the reality that we're living in. It's that icky, unsettling feeling we have when someone's shady actions do not match the pretty words they speak. It's the same feeling we get when a situation suddenly feels dangerous that on the outside might appear harmless. Often, when we trust our gut, we end up protecting ourselves and sometimes even rewarding ourselves with wonderful situations and relationships. Your gut intuition can be that feeling of deep knowing and connection that we feel when we meet someone who is meant to be in our lives for a reason.
This has had me thinking about a current situation in my life. Our rental lease is up at the end of February and my husband and I have decided we want to move into a bigger place. So far the search has been quite a struggle because we both have a lot of requirements.
For Jin:
- My husband is very particular about location (either Dongdaemun near his office or Gangnam near his cafe)
- He also wants to have 2 bedrooms so that he can have his own study space.
For Jess:
- I need big windows with a lot of natural light
- I like open kitchens
- I want a proper bathroom where the shower is a separate stall from the rest of the bathroom. Typically, in cheaper studio apartments in Korea, the shower tends to be fixed above the toilet and attached to the sink. So essentially, you shower over your toilet and the entire bathroom floor is wet for hours after your shower. I find it icky, but it's the norm here.
These two lists might not seem like much but in Korea it can be difficult to get all of our needs met at the budget we'd like to spend. The type of apartment that we usually have to rent from is called an Officetel. This adds another issue which is where my gut intuition comes into play. Officetel buildings are usually listed as buildings with office space to rent. However; the rooms within the buildings are entirely livable but because the building owners do not want to pay homeowner taxes on them they list them as offices only. So the people who live in them, then cannot register their home addresses with the government. Usually this means that people will list their parents home or another apartment with the government as their home address. This is just one of those grey area situations in Korea. It feels oddly familiar to the E2 Visa issue that I dealt with first hand last year. Basically it's an illegal thing happening here that the government is currently turning a blind eye to.
But, everybody's doing it so it's ok right?
It might be totally ok and not something that anyone will be penalized for for a long time. However it just is not ok with me. Especially after my traumatizing experience last year with my coworkers being deported from the country and deemed criminals for crimes they did not knowingly commit (teaching English?), I just have to trust my gut on this and not rent from a building that does not list itself as both a home and an office. This has meant turning down an option that checked off almost all of the boxes. Fortunately, there are some buildings where the owners are honest like the place that we currently live in. We have had zero problems in our current place by the way which will make it very hard to leave. Luckily we are not in a situation like we were last year where we were desperate to get out of our lease, and so I am trying to just be present to the wonderful aspects of where I currently live and I'm hopeful that the stars will align and we will find a place that ticks off every single box.
I will be headed to view two more places tomorrow that have potential! I can go into them with a clear conscience and continue to tap into my gut intuition on how the place feels. When I listen to my gut, I believe I can be a pretty intelligent woman!
We have signed a lease on a new place and will be moving in next week. I will be taking House Tour photos once the furnishing and decorating of it are complete. Until then, I would like to mention that the place does not meet all of our criteria. Jin had to compromise on location and I, on my bathroom requirements. But after touring the place, we both knew it was the one.
Some pros about it are:
- It's in a brand new building that was built and officially opened in December 2017. This means we will be its first tenants and everything inside is new and sparkly clean.
- It is an Officetel registered as a home and office so we can put our names on it!! 😀
- The location is closer to my workplace and more ideal for some of the regular hangout spots that I visit throughout my week.
- It's a two bedroom so we will finally be out of a studio apartment. Very exciting!
- The views are amazing and there are big windows in all rooms
- BONUS: It has a small laundry room!
In the end we both compromised in order to get a place that felt truly right for us. I could not feel more certain that this place was meant to be. And following that amazing gut feeling was so worth it.💖
Gabor Maté's Talks:
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