JTFest Consulting Training & Consultation visit the Online Library at www.in4y.com Lesson From a Yahtzee Game The benefits of going with your gut By JT (Jerry) Fest Trust your hunches. They're usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level ~ Joyce Brothers In another article (Instinct Trumps Training) I suggested that we learn to professionally respond in situations rather than be slaves to our instincts. In this article I suggest the exactly the opposite, that we should trust our instincts. Contradiction? Not really. It’s more a matter of semantics. In the other article, the “instincts” I was referring to were our ingrained, almost involuntary reactions that are rooted in emotions … fear, anger, loss of control. We often experience these emotions in youth work, and it’s critical that we learn to recognize them so that we may respond appropriately according to our training, rather than react reflexively according to our emotions. The “instincts” I refer to in this article are those “gut level” feelings we have that are really nothing more than the sum of our experience and knowledge telling us the right thing to do. Emotional reactions are instincts that often do not serve us well in youth work … gut level feelings based on experience and knowledge often serve us very well. I was reminded of this in a recent game of Yahtzee. If you’re not familiar with Yahtzee, it’s a dice game where you have 3 rolls to get certain scores or combinations with 5 dice. In this particular game, the situation I was in was that I needed my 4 of a kind. My second roll left me with a 5, 5, 5, 5, and 6. That’s a pretty good 4 of a kind (worth 26 points), but I had one more roll left. I could throw the 6 and try for a Yahtzee in 5’s (A Yahtzee being all 5 dice with the same number, and worth a LOT of points), but if I didn’t get it I would risk reducing my 4 of a kind by up to 5 points. My gut instinct was to give up the 3rd roll and just be happy with the 26 points. However, as I went to take it, the person I was playing with challenged me, saying that I was only risking a few points at most to try to get a Yahtzee. She made a pretty good case and I began to doubt myself. So, against my gut instinct, I rolled the 6 trying to get that 5th five. What did I get? I got a 1. As I feared, I not only didn’t get the Yahtzee, but I reduced my 4 of a kind by the biggest hit that it could have taken … a full 5 points. No big deal. It’s only 5 points, right? Here’s where the universe stepped in to teach me a lesson. The final score was 229 points for my opponent, 225 points for me. That’s right. I would have won the game if I only had 5 more points … the exact number of points that I lost when I went against my gut instinct and tried for the Yahtzee. I realize that going with my gut instinct doesn’t always work out, as it would have in this situation. But even when it doesn’t work out I still get two major benefits. First, I learn something. That’s the way we grow and learn, by things not working out. Edison once commented -- even though he conducted thousands of failed experiments before getting a light bulb to shine -- that he had never failed. Thousands of times he succeeded in discovering what didn’t work. This is the theory behind youth participation in Positive Youth Development. We don’t give young people the opportunity to be involved and make choices and decisions because we think they’re always going to make good choices and decisions. We do it because young people need to take risks and make mistakes as part of their development. But the second benefit is even better. If I follow my gut instinct and it doesn’t work out, I don’t beat myself up for not following my gut! Follow my gut instinct and I feel like I gave it my best shot and learned something. Let people influence me against my gut instinct, and I feel like a schmuck who should have known better. I much prefer the former feeling to the latter. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not saying don’t listen to or take counsel from people, and I am definitely not suggesting that you violate boundaries or break rules. All I’m saying is; trust yourself. Your “gut instinct” is just a feeling derived from your knowledge and experience. If you can’t trust your own knowledge and experience, what can you trust? As I said above, if following your gut instinct doesn’t work out, you still feel empowered and you have an Lesson From a Yahtzee Game - 2014 - JT (Jerry) Fest, JTFest Consulting - page 1 of 2 opportunity to learn something. But the real argument for following your gut instinct is this; if you know the limitations of your knowledge, and you have let your experience teach you … most of the time following your gut instinct will work out. Besides, if you can’t trust yourself, how are you ever going to trust the young people with whom you work? Permission Guidelines This article is copyrighted by JT (Jerry) Fest. Permission is granted to download and/or print out for personal use. Brief quotations (500 words) may be made from the material in accordance with “fair use” provisions of copyright law without prior permission, provided proper attribution of author and source is made. For information contact JT (Jerry) Fest at [email protected] Lesson From a Yahtzee Game - 2014 - JT (Jerry) Fest, JTFest Consulting - page 2 of 2 .