Biggest Best Life

The Spelling Bee, Self-Doubt, and the Science of Intuition

• Lauren Chapnick • Season 1 • Episode 10

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A childhood spelling bee loss sets the stage for a deeper look at intuition as pattern recognition and the cost of doubt. We break down when to trust the gut, when to override it, and three simple tools to strengthen inner signals and take action.

• intuition defined as fast pattern recognition in the body
• benefits of trusting inner cues: speed, confidence, creativity
• fear masquerading as intuition and how to spot it
• limits of intuition with low experience and hot emotions
• outcome attachment blurring true signals
• the 90‑second pause to clear emotional noise
• daily reflection to build pattern recognition
• light vs heavy body check to test alignment
• turning gut signals into action with small steps

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Lauren Chapnick:

My intuition whispered the right answer. I just didn't listen. And sometimes the cost of ignoring your intuition is everything you've worked for.

Announcer:

Welcome to Biggest Best Life, the podcast that darts even three minutes. Louder and step fully into the rock star life you are made for. You're not too late. You're right on time. And we're just getting started. Here's your host, Lauren Chapman.

Lauren Chapnick:

Hello, my friends. Welcome on back to Biggest Best Life. I'm so happy that you're here. We've got an amazing text community. If you're looking for just a little weekly hit of motivation, something to make you smile, something to make you get off your butt and take action to live your biggest best life. Text the word best life. That's one word, best life, to 833-681-6463. That's 833-681-6463. Or if you don't want to bother writing down all those numbers and going through all that, you can also just click the link in the description of the show. It will automatically text the word best life to that number. All you have to do is hit send. Just click the link that says join my text community. All right. Does anybody want to hear what the sound of 12-year-old dreams getting crushed sounds like? Wait for it. That still cuts deep, you guys. That is the sound that I heard at the New Hampshire State Spelling Bee in sixth grade when I lost on the word Phantom weight. Phantom weight. So what happened? I knew that word. Definitely not the cool kid, but I was the smart kid. And that spelling bee meant the world to me. And I wanted to go to Washington. And I was six spots away. We were down to the top six in the state. And my chubby-cheeked braces, awkward sixth grade turtleneck, V-neck, sweater wearing self stepped up to that microphone and got the word bantamweight. And the first four letters I said with confidence, B, A, N, T. And then I started to doubt myself. My intuition whispered, you know this. It's A. But then I thought, well, wait, is it you? It sounds like it could be bantum weight. And I stood there for a good long minute. And I said it wrong. I said you. And I heard the sound of that terrible bell. And in that moment, all of my dreams were crushed. All of that hard work just went out the window. My dreams of going to Washington, D.C. and standing on that stage were just gone. My intuition whispered the right answer. I just didn't listen. And sometimes the cost of ignoring your intuition is everything you've worked for. How many of you out there can think of a time when you knew something, you knew it to be true, and you ignored your intuition and you regretted it? You kicked yourself later. Maybe you took a test and you said, Ugh I knew it. I knew the answer was A, and I went with C because I doubted myself. Or I knew that guy was a jerk, or I knew that girl was a jerk. Why did I stay with them for so long? I should have listened. That's intuition. It's your inner knowing. It's that inner whisper, as my good friend Oprah says, it's your inner knowing, your gut. But what is intuition on a biological level, on a scientific level? What is it? What's happening? Well, very simply put, your intuition is your body's pattern recognition system. Your brain, it's your quick unconscious response that your brain has to your body's signals. So things like your breathing pattern, your heartbeat, your muscle tension, even little shifts that happen in your gut itself, your body collects that data faster than your brain can name it. And it sends a signal. And your body gives you that gut feeling, that voice that says, yes, this is right. Or, you know what, something's a little off, something is not quite right here. It's it's your subconscious telling you before your body can catch up. But sometimes our intuition can get it wrong. It can steer us wrong. And we're gonna talk about how to tell the difference, when to trust your gut, when to trust your intuition, and when not. What is that difference? And we're gonna talk about some of the research behind that. There's this great book that I've started reading, and I'll tell you more about it when I'm done. I don't want to fully recommend it until I'm done, but some of the research that I talk today is by Laura Huang, who is a researcher and a business school professor at both Harvard and the Wharton School of Business, and her life's work is on intuition and how it can be this superpower that you harness, and you can think of it like a muscle that you flex. And how does a muscle get stronger with repetition? If you're an athlete, if you're training for a marathon, you train your body, you train your muscles to run. Well, intuition works the same. And if you flex that muscle and you make it stronger, you'll have a stronger sense of intuition and you'll know when to trust it and when not to trust it. But why does this matter? You might be thinking, okay, great, who cares? Like, what's the point? Well, I'm just gonna share a few of the benefits with you. And there are so many more, but the benefits are incredible. The first thing it's gonna do is it's gonna make you a faster, more confident decision maker. How many overanalyzers or overthinkers are out there? I'm definitely one of them. And that's exhausting. Overanalyzing and overthinking every decision, it drains you. So if you are a more confident, more decisive person, that's going to give you a boost of energy. I'll tell you another thing that a greater sense of intuition will do. It will give you a stronger sense of self-trust and greater confidence level. What could be better than that in every aspect of your life? Are you somebody who doubts yourself? Are you somebody who's self-conscious, who doesn't quite believe in themselves? If you use the simple tools that I'm gonna give you today, you can have a greater sense of self-trust and confidence. So you can move through the world with a greater sense of ease. And another thing that it's gonna do is it's gonna give you heightened creativity and problem-solving power. Because the more you tap into that unconscious programming in your brain, the more likely you are to have a creative breakthrough. So it's very easy to do to strengthen this intuition muscle. And we're gonna get to that. But look at just three of the benefits that I shared with you: stronger decision maker, faster decision maker, stronger sense of self-trust and confidence, and more heightened sense of creativity. That is just incredible, right there. All of these benefits will make you a happier person and get you on the way to living that biggest best life. But let's pause for a second because trusting your gut isn't always the right thing to do. Sometimes your intuition can steer you wrong, and it's something that you should actually ignore. There are times where your intuition can steer you wrong. And I'm gonna share some of the most common times. And you can think about the times in your life where you trusted your intuition and you shouldn't have. It was the wrong thing because our intuition can be disguised, it can be masked by a bunch of different things. Number one is fear. Fear can disguise itself as intuition. Now we all know we need fear. Fear helps us stay alive. Fear tells us when there's danger, when there's actual physical danger, that fight or flight, it tells us you got to get out of here. There's danger. But when you're not in actual physical danger, a life-threatening situation, but something just feels uncomfortable or unfamiliar, most of the time, that's the thing you should do anyway, because greatness lies on the other side of fear. How many times, how many times has fear held you back and disguised itself as intuition? And your inst your instinct says, Don't do it, don't do it, because it feels uncomfortable and it feels better not to do the thing. That is when you should not trust your intuition. You hit that override button and you go, you power through. There's a lot of times where I have caved and given into fear, and I'm going to share one of them with you. It was in high school, and it was an audition for a solo for this song called Boy from New York City. It's a jazz song. And I worked my butt off for this solo. I knew what I was doing, and I wanted it. But what happened? I didn't put my hand up to go first, and the person who went first was so good. And I started to doubt myself and I got scared. I got scared that I was gonna forget what I was doing, that I wasn't gonna sound as good as the other person, and I didn't put up my damn hand. And you know what? Every time I hear that song, I think of that moment and I think, damn it, Lauren, you should have just done the damn thing. Another way that intuition can steer you wrong is if you simply lack experience in that area. So think about it. If you're brand new at something, let's say you are a brand new paramedic, you are not gonna have the experience to trust your instinct to know when your patient is about to crash. If everything looks right, their vital signs all look fine, but there's you're you're not gonna have that instinct that somebody with 10 years experience has, where they just know and they have everything ready to go because they just have that sense. Repeated exposure to a pattern strengthens your intuition. And if you just don't have it, you need to gain that experience. So if you find yourself having that instinctive reaction, ask yourself, do I have enough experience in this area to actually trust what my gut is telling me? Another way that our intuition can steer us wrong is when emotions are running hot. Do not mistake intuition for emotional reactivity. If you are triggered by someone or something, let yourself take some time to actually think about how you're feeling and how you want to proceed. Do not trust that initial response as instinct. That's when your intuition can steer you wrong, when you are just hot, fired up, angry, devastated. That is not your intuition. That is emotional reactivity. And your body needs a minute to catch up and say, okay, how do I actually feel about this thing? And the last way that I'm gonna talk about, there are many other times where your intuition can steer you wrong, but I saw these as kind of the top four. If you're attached to the outcome, if you really want something to be a certain way, you may ignore your intuition telling you something's not quite right here because you want something so bad. If you really wanted to go to a certain school because you've always thought you were gonna go there, but then you actually step on the campus and something doesn't feel quite right, you may ignore your intuition. Or if you really want a relationship to work out and something is just off, you may ignore your intuition because you are attached to the outcome. So ask yourself, would I feel the same way if I didn't care about the outcome and see if anything feels different? So, guys, I know I'm powering through this, but that is for a reason. I want these episodes to be short, digestible. I'm not here to give you a lecture on intuition. I'm just here to give you little nuggets of knowledge and things that you can take with you during your day to actually put into action. I want you to listen, but I also want you to get out there and get off your butt, right? That's one of my taglines of the show. I say it in every episode at the end. Trust your gut and get off your butt because your intuition can only get you so far. It's not just a feeling, it's taking that feeling and putting it into motion. It's trusting whatever that gut feeling is telling you to do next to get out there and live that biggest best life, but actually taking action. I'm gonna give you three very easy ways that you can start to train your intuition muscle. Three easy things that you can do today. The first is called the 90-second pause. There is a neuroscientist, Jill Bolte Taylor, and her research showed that emotional reactions last about 90 seconds. After that, our emotion depends on the story that we told ourselves about that emotion. So the next time you are torn about a decision, you're not quite sure which way to go. I want you to stop. Close your eyes, if possible, not when you're driving. I want you to stop and breathe and do a check-in with yourself for 90 seconds. I want you to think, how is my body feeling about this decision? What am I feeling in my gut? What does this feel like in my hands? In my chest, how is my breathing? How's my heart rate? How does this feel to me? And just notice, just be aware. The second one is called train your brain. And there was research done at the University of Leeds, and it found the more time we spend reflecting on our past intuition. Where do we go wrong? Where do we go right? It builds a stronger sense of pattern recognition in our brain, which makes our intuition muscles stronger. And you can do this every day when you're getting ready for bed at night, maybe when you're brushing your teeth, or as you get into bed, just think, just think through your day a bit. When today did I trust my instinct and it went right? What went well with my intuition today? What decisions did I make that I went with my gut and it was the right call? And when did you trust your gut and it was the wrong decision? When did fear take over? When did emotional reactivity make the decision for you? The more you continue to reflect on these patterns, the stronger your intuition will be. This third one is my personal favorite because it's so simple and it makes so much sense. This is based on research done at Harvard, and it found that intuition, when it is right, feels light, it feels open, and when it is wrong, it feels heavy, it feels tense, it feels constricted. So as you're checking in with yourself during these moments of decision, ask yourself does this feel heavy or does this feel light? Light means you're in alignment. And heavy means hesitation. Doesn't that make sense? If this feels heavy, if I'm feeling tense in my body, you gotta think, is it fear or is this simply the wrong decision? And if something feels right, you know how people just say, I can't explain it, it just feels right. That should feel very open and very light. That's it for today. Just a little bit on intuition. I hope it gave you a different outlook. I hope you walk away with something that you can run with and start training that intuition muscle and start boosting that creativity, that confidence, and that fast decision making. Until next time, trust your gut, get off your butt, make today awesome, and go out there and live your biggest best life. Bye-bye.

Announcer:

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