“I believe in my guiding light, my gut instinct, my intuition. I believe that if I take decisions following it, everything will be fine.”

Just the day before, we had a long talk about this, collecting examples from our lives where following the gut instinct would have been wise in retrospect – or when we got rewarded by life following it.

“I've used this a lot in my life, but I didn't have the name for it before.

For example, I still remember the time between my bachelor's and my master's degree. I had just come back from the UK and it was time to decide where to do my master's. Out of the blue, I got this huge offer from my old university with a year at an elite university, then later to do my doctorate…

I had this professor who fully supported me and believed in me.

That would have been a total springboard. The opportunity attracted me, and my father was really impressed. So, I went there with my mother to look at apartments. I even got an apartment offer – but I wasn't really happy about it.

Suddenly, though, acceptances came from other universities.

When I received the confirmation from one of them, everything suddenly became clear. My whole body relaxed and I knew: This is the right decision, I will do it. My guiding light, my body, my gut feeling signalled that to me. Of course, I had to tell my father that I wasn't taking going to take that great opportunity and choose a different university and city. He was disappointed, but because I trusted myself and listened to myself, it bounced off me a bit.

I went through with it and everything just flowed. My current home town is the other way around: I actually didn't really want to come here."

"Also, another example: After a breakup, you and I, we saw each other the next day and you said: Wow, you're absolutely beaming! I remember that feeling: The resistance in me was simply no longer there. That felt really good", she recounted.

"And actually, I can apply my guiding light to all of my decisions. The next one is already coming up: What am I going to do next? To figure that out, it takes a few different opportunities for me to create. I can even break it down to friendships, to exercise – do I want to exercise or not – and even to questions like ‘do I want a cup of hot chocolate or not?’”, she laughed. “You can also overdo it. Anyway, my guiding light always jumps in to show me the way when I am about to decide something from my head, from my mind, and not from my inside.”

Her smallest glows in the dark. It is inspired by one of her own paintings showing two hands holding a bowl repaired with Kitsungi. Here, her hands are holding the guiding light itself, as if looking down on oneself holding one’s own belly, feeling the gut. The guiding light holds the power, the power we are holding in our own hands. We can draw from it to repair what the mind has broken – or follow it directly.