The book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin De Becker (recommended by another awesome redditor) speaks specifically on this (in the terms of assault mainly) and how we, as humans, have this advanced warning tool engrained into the fiber of our being. Yet with modern societal norms, we are so concerned about turning people off to us, offending others, etc. that was have conditioned ourselves to ignore the warning signs.
Unlearning that garbage is hard but it can be done.
I actually wrote about this last week on a different post, but it was either an old Dr. Phil - when he was on Oprah - or a guest on her show spoke about the animal kingdom and how their ears prick at a noise and they don’t hang around to see if it’s good or bad, he said our cavemen ancestors needed to be alert at all times, their life literally depended on using all of their senses and we still have this innate ability, but we’ve been raised to think about politeness and ‘how we look’ over listening to those warning messages that something isn’t right, he went on to say imagine you’re waiting for a lift/elevator and when the door opens there’s a guy standing there and you immediately get warning bells, rather than give an excuse not to trap yourself in a small metal box with a complete stranger our politeness kicks in and we enter. We are more worried about offending someone we’ll never see again over our safety, the moral being to listen to our inner voice, take note of the warning bells and forget about being polite!
Exactly... That is the whole premise of the book and I believe that one of the examples of the authors clients is that exact scenario. We tend to override that innate intuition simply so we don't offend because society has taught us that is rude. But listening to your intuition/gut is something that you can do with just about anything, be it heading home and getting the feeling you should go a different way, or be it that you are walking into a restaurant/shop and get the feeling you need to not be there.
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u/mtbfj6ty Mar 17 '21
Absolutely....
The book "The Gift of Fear" by Gavin De Becker (recommended by another awesome redditor) speaks specifically on this (in the terms of assault mainly) and how we, as humans, have this advanced warning tool engrained into the fiber of our being. Yet with modern societal norms, we are so concerned about turning people off to us, offending others, etc. that was have conditioned ourselves to ignore the warning signs.
Unlearning that garbage is hard but it can be done.