Gut check: why logic alone won’t lead your business

As I’ve since learned, you can only shove things down or hit the override button for so long while following the parade of encouragement from your brain. This disconnect led me to my lowest of lows in my early thirties, where I became completely overwhelmed by burnout.

And so began a decade-long search to figure out how I’d gotten it so wrong. How had I lost touch with my intuition—something that should have been mine to trust? How had I led myself so far astray from the wisdom of my body? I became insatiably curious about answering the age-old question: Are we thinking beings who feel or feeling beings who think?

From Brené Brown’s exploration of the 87 emotions that shape us as humans to Peter Levine’s insights on intuition being rooted in the nervous system and my own journey of recovering from burnout, we’ll dive into how humans—and entrepreneurs—make decisions and what it truly means to "trust your gut."

(Un)popular opinion

I got curious about what my network of predominantly entrepreneurs and founders thought. So I added a poll to my LinkedIn feed asking what drives us to act and make decisions in business.

A staggering 100% of respondents unanimously agreed they are feeling beings who think instead of thinking beings who feel.

My first reaction? “There’s hope for us after all!” Still, I had to acknowledge an inherent bias in this group. 100% of the respondents were women working in fields similar to mine, where being deeply connected to emotions and sensations is part of their livelihood. And all of them do the work they do because of the real-life crash courses they took on the deeply personal impact of burnout and overwhelm. How did we get here, where the only way to truly connect with our intuition is to lose connection to it?

Let’s see what the experts have to say about it.

The brain-body connection

If you’d asked me a decade ago whether we’re thinking beings or feeling beings, I would have scoffed and confidently said, “Of course, we’re thinking beings!” But looking back now, it’s clear that relying too much on logic while ignoring feelings and sensations didn’t lead me in the right direction.

Burning out at 30 wasn’t logical at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel—I felt so much that it became overwhelming. Shutting it all down seemed like the only way to cope. But in doing so, I lost touch with a core part of being human: we feel, whether we want to or not. The full spectrum of emotions—the good, the bad and everything in between—are what makes us who we are.

Intuition, or gut feeling, is our body’s natural way of sensing and responding to the world. It’s a deep, physical “knowing” that comes from how our nervous system processes information and communicates with the brain, often without us even realizing it. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing and one of my favorite thought leaders, explains this beautifully: “We must learn to listen to and trust our body’s internal wisdom as it holds the key to our healing.” His words remind us that our bodies are constantly scanning for safety and threat, shaping our felt sense of the world long before our thoughts catch up.

When our intuition gets hijacked

Trusting our gut is powerful—but sometimes, life scrambles the signals. Stress, trauma and overwhelm can short-circuit the body-mind connection, leaving us unsure of what to trust.

As my small business coach through The Forum—a community supporting women entrepreneurs—always asks, “What’s the hustle?”

For me, the answer was a cascade of medical issues that sent my nervous system into a constant state of alarm. I was either scanning for danger everywhere or missing obvious warning signs. My body wasn’t failing me—it was trying to keep me safe. But the cost was a deep disconnection from my inner compass.

Rebuilding connection

Rebuilding that trust wasn’t easy, but it was transformative. Catherine Roscoe Barr is a neuroscientist and author I greatly admire, and I took these words of hers to heart: “Self-love is the highest form of self-leadership.” This shift was my first step back to rewiring and repairing the rupture that led me so far astray from my real needs and wants.

Peter Levine’s work on calming the nervous system and reconnecting with the body also became my guide. After two years of training as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and doing the work to repair my own nervous system, I finally found my way back to myself. I stopped ignoring what I wanted and needed.

And the result? I quit a 15-year career—with no safety net. I knew, deep down, it was the right move. For the first time, I fully trusted my intuition and it led me straight to the life I was meant to create.

Relearning to feel

Reconnecting with your gut also means rethinking how you approach your emotions. Brené Brown captures this perfectly in her book “Atlas of the Heart” where she dives into how emotions shape us: "There's nothing more limiting than tapping out of tension and oversimplifying the thoughts and feelings that have the power to help us understand who we are and what we need."

She maps out 87 emotions and experiences, showing just how powerful it is to recognize, name and acknowledge what we’re feeling.

Brown emphasizes something game-changing: emotional granularity. It’s the skill of identifying and articulating our emotions with clarity. This can become a superpower when it comes to understanding ourselves, building resilience and connecting with others in impactful ways.

When we stop running from our emotions and instead have the skills and language to lean in and authentically listen, we unlock a whole new level of self-trust. Our feelings carry messages that can guide us back to our intuition. Combine that emotional clarity with a calm, regulated nervous system and you have a recipe for making decisions with your heart, body and mind working in sync.

Trusting your gut: the ultimate entrepreneurial superpower

As entrepreneurs, we’re constantly making decisions that shape not only our businesses but our lives. The journey to reconnect with our gut isn’t just about tuning into some abstract feeling—it’s about rebuilding trust with ourselves by integrating our emotions, our values, our body signals and our intellect.

Burnout taught me the hard way that you can’t power through life on logic alone. The real magic happens when we embrace the full spectrum of being human—when we let our emotions speak, regulate our nervous system and allow our intuition to guide us.

This isn’t a quick fix; it’s a practice. It’s learning to recognize what we feel, giving it a name and listening without judgment. It’s trusting that those signals when combined with clear thinking create a decision-making process that is not only effective but aligned with who we truly are.

For those of us building businesses and dreaming big, this isn’t just personal growth—it’s the foundation for success. When you can trust yourself fully, you’ll make decisions with clarity, confidence and courage. That’s the kind of entrepreneurship the world needs—and it all starts with learning to trust your gut again.