{"id":42163,"date":"2026-01-02T16:53:39","date_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:53:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/now-that-im-in-my-50s-i-regret-not-trusting-my-gut-more-through-the-years\/"},"modified":"2026-01-02T16:53:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T16:53:39","slug":"now-that-im-in-my-50s-i-regret-not-trusting-my-gut-more-through-the-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/now-that-im-in-my-50s-i-regret-not-trusting-my-gut-more-through-the-years\/","title":{"rendered":"Now that I&#8217;m in my 50s, I regret not trusting my gut more through the years"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6956c25f832e0ef1ead70e1a?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The author, Elana Rabinowitz, poses on an overlook.\"\/><figcaption>The author said she once always asked other people for advice before making any decisions, big or small. Now she&#039;s learning to trust her gut more.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Elana Rabinowitz<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>For most of my life, I doubted my decisions and often asked others for advice.<\/li>\n<li>Sometimes I didn&#039;t trust my gut and made major life decisions that I regretted.<\/li>\n<li>I&#039;m learning to seek less guidance and embrace making my own choices \u2014 even my own mistakes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I eat fermented food, sometimes with a a dash of turmeric, all to maintain a healthy gut. What I don&#039;t do is trust it. And that must change.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;ve done it for as long as I can remember: poll people, phone a friend, or even ask a stranger what they think about something. I&#039;ll do anything to have others weigh in on decisions, to lighten the load. It&#039;s gotten so bad that sometimes I feel I&#039;m one step away from asking a Magic 8 Ball, &quot;Will it all work out?&quot; <\/p>\n<p>I need to stop being afraid to make my own choices.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>I&#039;ve always been this way<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>&quot;What&#039;s your favorite?&quot; I ask the waiter. I alwaysdo this as if a stranger&#039;s taste will be in line with mine. Worst yet, I usually order it. And in the end, it rarely pans out. Everyone tastes things differently. If only I&#039;d go with my gut more.<\/p>\n<p>Depending on others to make major choices has been a big part of my life. In my 20s, I decided to move to California but was torn between the prospect of living in San Francisco or Los Angeles. I had returned from the Peace Corps, so it seemed strange to head to Hollywood after such an experience. I did what I always did. I polled people. Lots of people.<\/p>\n<p>I really wanted to try LA. Yet, I moved to San Francisco based on the feedback I received. I went during the dot.com boom and thus spent the majority of my time looking for housing. And while I did get the chance to work for a cool company, I lost my job within a year. Had I trusted my gut, I could&#039;ve opted for sunshine, easier housing, and being near my best friend. <\/p>\n<p>Who knows how differently my life would have turned out if I trusted my instinct. I think most of us know what we want to do; we are just afraid to trust ourselves.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Change is hard<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I&#039;ve tried to stop asking for help, but my friends are so used to doling out advice, even when I politely ask to stop, they can&#039;t seem to. This especially holds true for my dating life. It has gotten so bad that sometimes my friends wrote texts for me to send potential suitors.<\/p>\n<p>I know it comes from a good place, but I finally realized I no longer want advice from people who are removed from the experiences. Instead of asking my married friends about my love life, I&#039;d rather ask the girl in my building who met her husband on Hinge later in life. I&#039;ve learned, that advice works best from those who have gone through it.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6956c2e004eda4732f2e5c69?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Elana Rabinowitz looks out over a bridge at sunset.\"\/><figcaption>The author is learning to trust her gut more.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Elana Rabinowitz<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2><strong>I need to trust my own gut<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>The same goes for giving advice. When I first began having success as a writer, a lot of people reached out to me for tips, and when I told them about the classes I took and my tenacity, they simply ignored me. It wasn&#039;t advice they were after, but a quick way in. Advice is more than a word; it is an anthem, and it usually isn&#039;t easy to heed.<\/p>\n<p>Curiosity and questioning are essential for expanding our tastes, but sometimes we really do need to look inward.  I now realize that many people, no matter how well-intentioned, have a limited periphery and give advice based on their own self-concept.  Did you ever get your hair cut by someone with horrible hair, or a doctor who smokes? Maybe they aren&#039;t the best ones to entrust yourself to.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;m not sure why it has taken me so long to let go of my advice addiction, or to realize I had one to begin with. But as I get older, I realize that I&#039;m more than capable of making my own informed decisions. Even if I&#039;m wrong, I know I can learn from my own mistakes. In fact, I am dying to. That is the only true way to learn anything. I only wish I had realized this sooner.<\/p>\n<p>So yeah, if I buy new clothes, I may ask which one to wear, and if I want a great book, I&#039;ll ask around, but for everything else. Well, I think I got it from here.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The author said she once always asked other people for advice before making any decisions, big or small. Now she&#039;s learning to trust her gut more. Courtesy of Elana Rabinowitz For most of my life, I doubted my decisions and often asked others for advice. Sometimes I didn&#039;t trust my gut and made major life [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42164,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42163","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42163\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}