Trust Your Intuition: A Lesson from "Past Jessica"
We’ve all heard the advice: Trust your intuition.
It sounds profound, almost spiritual, until you’re sitting in the middle of a Tuesday, paralyzed by a vague sense of unease. Usually, we label that feeling as anxiety, dismiss it as overthinking, or tell ourselves we’re just being paranoid.
I recently learned that sometimes, that "nagging feeling" isn't a symptom of stress—it's actually your brain trying to save you from your own past mistakes.
The Nagging Feeling
A few days ago, a quiet thought crept into my mind: Did you book your lodging for the Stone Arch Bridge Festival on the wrong weekend?
I didn’t just ignore it; I actively argued with it. I told myself, "No way. I’m organized. I definitely double-checked those dates." I felt so confident in my past competence that I silenced the doubt entirely.
Then, a few nights later, I woke up at 3:00 AM. The thought was there again, sitting at the foot of my bed. Are you sure about those dates?
Again, I talked myself out of it. I told myself it was just late-night restlessness manifesting as a logistical phantom. I went back to sleep, secure in my (false) certainty.
The Reality Check
Today, I finally decided to do a quick check—you know, just to prove my intuition wrong.
Spoiler alert: My intuition was right. I had, in fact, booked my stay for the weekend before the festival.
The immediate scramble for a new place to stay was stressful. I was incredibly lucky to find an opening, but the reality of the situation hit home quickly: the options I had originally vetted were either completely booked or had surged in price. I narrowly avoided a travel disaster purely by deciding to listen to that persistent little voice.
The Lesson
It’s easy to write off our hunches as "anxiety," but this experience was a sharp reminder that sometimes, our subconscious is just trying to flag an error that our conscious mind missed.
We often put a lot of pressure on "Future Us" to be perfect, but we rarely account for the curveballs "Past Us" accidentally throws our way. In this case, Past Jessica set a trap, and it took a few rounds of annoying mental pokes to get Future Jessica to pay attention.
So, here is my takeaway for all of us:
Don't dismiss the nag: If a thought keeps circling back, take ten seconds to verify it.
Trust the pattern: If you aren't usually an anxious person, that "anxiety" might actually be intuition.
Forgive your past self: We all make mistakes. The goal isn't to be perfect, but to be open enough to correct the error before it becomes a catastrophe.
Anyway, if you need me, I’ll be over here glazing pottery and wondering what other "surprises" Past Jessica has left for me to discover.
