Trust Your Gut: How Three Little Words Changed My 2020
By: Lisa Malcolm
Tags: Self Improvement, Trust Yourself, Goal Setting, Goals For The New Year, Trust

Photo Credit Robin McSkelly

Like most people, my 2020 started with the hope that a New Year brings. Personal goals to improve my health and well-being, and professional goals and benchmarks to take the small business I shared with a partner to the next level of success. But a cloud hovered over those goals that I couldn’t shake. My partner and I no longer held the same desires for our business, a fact I could no longer ignore.

Feeling the negativity and pressure of not sharing the same vision, I called a meeting in January of 2020 to get back in sync and chart the same course. While I was satisfied with the discussion and hopeful, we would again find our paths in alignment. I still had nagging doubts that continued to manifest themselves in three little words, “Trust your gut,” my subconscious would whisper, this isn’t going to change. And it did not change until July of 2020, when I started to trust my gut again by leaving the business and starting anew. What did I learn by trusting my gut? Three valuable lessons that will carry me through 2021 and beyond:

Lesson 1 — Letting go does not have to signal an end. It can be a beginning. My biggest fear was starting over and re-building everything I had worked hard to achieve in my industry. This fallacy was the main thing holding me back from trusting my gut and moving on to better circumstances that supported my personal, professional, and financial growth.

Lesson 2 — I’m the one responsible for my happiness. As Abraham Lincoln once said, “Every man’s happiness is his own responsibility.”

Depending on another person for your career fulfillment is a recipe for disaster. When I finally accepted that our goals were no longer the same career satisfaction was impossible to achieve together; only by trusting my gut and letting go did happiness find its way back into my work life.

Lesson 3 — What you put out into the universe matters. Looking back over the past three years of our business, I realized that our financial desires were vastly different. My previous partner had a specific set idea of dollar amounts that were needed monthly. I held an exceedingly different set of ideals concerning income. I desired far more than we were bringing in. Once I trusted my gut and walked away, I made more from July through December than we had in almost an entire year, even in the middle of a global pandemic.

As 2021 quickly approaches, once again offering the hope and excitement of a new year with new possibilities, I will continue to follow those three little words, “Trust your gut,” to make my way through.

A 15 year veteran of the entertainment industry as a sought after department head; she currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer of KAP Productions, Entertainment Principal at Z Star Digital, and Director of Media Relations at ConnectHER Media Group. Lisa is an all-around PR guru working with some of the biggest young stars in the entertainment industry. In her spare time, she enjoys crafting, writing, and spending time with her family.

Connect with Lisa on IG: @thelisamalcolm