In this week’s post, I share how a moment of absolute certainty unraveled everything I thought I could trust and what that experience revealed about the deeper, often uncomfortable way intuition leads transformation.
JANUARY 23, 2026
I rely on my intuition a lot.
From tuning into my body to understand if it needs more rest or movement, to getting a sense for someone’s presence in a meeting, my “gut” feeling is part of my decision-making.
There are absolutely many other dimensions to decision-making but when something feels inherently coherent in my body and mind, it’s usually a great sign.
I have spent decades of my life honing my intuition and as a result, I also built more self-trust and self-confidence.
By now, I know what alignment feels like in my body and I can trust it.
However, last year my intuition failed for the first time ever and it changed how I now understand intuition fundamentally.
We make decisions in life and business all the time. Sometimes these decisions feel insignificant like what to wear or where to meet a friend for coffee.
Then there are the bigger decisions like getting married, having children, buying a house or a car, going traveling, changing jobs, starting your own company, and the list goes on.
The smaller decisions are usually automatic and I arrive at an answer without much thinking.
The more challenging decisions often have me thinking for days, until I can get through all the noise and reconnect to what feels coherent in my body. Then the actual decision is quick.
When it came time to drastically pivot in my business some time ago, I found myself in one of those situations where I nervously mulled it over for nearly two weeks.
I eventually trusted my intuition and went for it, and everything felt aligned and coherent in my mind and body. I knew I had made the right decision.
But what followed was chaos, financial losses, sleepless nights, and disappointments, completely uncharacteristic for my intuitive decisions.
Most days, I was so anxious I couldn’t sleep or eat. I felt fear in my body like never before and the thought of losing everything shook me to the core.
I questioned my decision. I even desperately tried to roll back some of it to return to my starting point, but by then it was too late.
For the first time in my life, making an intuitive decision had backfired, or had it?
At first, I felt betrayed. How could something that had guided me so reliably suddenly lead me into chaos?
It took months before I realized that my intuition hadn’t actually failed me. It had simply taken me somewhere my nervous system wasn’t yet ready to go. My internal chaos then rippled into my external world.
It made me wonder what actually happens in the body when intuition moves us this far ahead of ourselves.
From a neuroscience perspective, moments of deep intuitive clarity often coincide with changes in the default mode network, the system in the brain that maintains our ongoing sense of self.
When something challenges that familiar sense of self, such as a major decision or a change you can no longer ignore, the default mode network reduces its usual background activity. The brain stops predicting what should happen next and begins collecting new sensory and emotional information from the body.
At that point, the brain and body work together to register conditions that are no longer in sync with the current story of who we are.
What we experience as intuition is this process of integration, when information from both body and mind aligns into a clear sense of direction before we can logically explain it.
That clarity feels powerful. But the moment we act on it, everything that was organized around the previous version of us begins to destabilize. The nervous system must now reorganize around the new pattern our intuition already saw.
The chaos I experienced wasn’t proof that intuition had betrayed me. It was evidence that my internal model of safety was being rewritten. My body was trying to update itself to a higher level of coherence while my mind still clung to the old one.
Most of us encounter this at some point. We follow a strong inner knowing, and soon after, everything we counted on starts to move. Projects fall through, relationships change, and unexpected emotions surface.
It can feel like the decision was wrong when, in reality, it might be the exact moment our nervous system begins catching up to what we’ve already chosen.
When that happens, it helps to pause and notice what your body is communicating. Are you resisting the change or reorganizing around it? The difference is subtle but powerful. One keeps you looping in fear; the other lets your physiology start building capacity for a new level of coherence.
Have you ever accepted a promotion, ended a relationship, moved to a new city, or launched a project that felt completely right at the time, only to find yourself disoriented once the reality set in?
Did you notice the tiredness that came after, the doubt that crept in, or the moments when everything familiar seemed to stop making sense?
What helps you stay grounded in those times when something that once felt right suddenly feels uncertain and you can’t yet tell where it’s leading? What does that process look like for you right now?
So now, when things start to shake after a clear intuitive “yes,” I take it as confirmation that something deeper is realigning.
The rebellion is not against logic or planning. It’s against stagnation.
And maybe intuition’s purpose was never to keep us comfortable but to keep us attuned to what transformation actually feels like in motion.
By Petra Brunnbauer
Petra Brunnbauer is an award-winning Mind-Body Coach, founder of The Jōrni®, host of the globally-ranked Jōrni Podcast, and author of The Functional Freeze Formula™. With a Master’s in Psychology and as a doctoral student in Mind-Body Medicine, Petra is committed to advancing holistic approaches to health and healing.