You have to trust your gut! Sometimes that bad feeling you get better not be ignored. Like ESP or Spidey-sense, sometimes you just know when something is going to go wrong. But when you course-correct, things often work out, usually for the (much) better.
In these amazing stories, people talk about the times they sensed that something was up and they had better change course if they want things to work out. It's incredible how well they do work out too!
He Got It All On Tape
“About 10 years ago, when I was married, my wife’s best friend kept on flirting with me. I told my wife it was happening and she said it was just harmless fun.
One time when the best friend was being super aggressive, I recorded it on my cell phone.
A few months later, she accused me of saying to her the very things that she said to me. So now when I was accused, she didn’t think it was so innocent. Yet one listen by my wife of the recording on my phone completely exonerated me and shut the best friend down completely.
She was trying to ruin my marriage because hers was crappy.
Also, this situation and the divorce were years apart and unrelated. My wife re-fell in love at her high school reunion.”
Dodging A Big Disaster
“A tropical storm was blowing through my city a few months ago and we were projected to get some wind gusts and significant rain.
Because our parking lot isn’t large enough for all of the staff and our clients, a lot of us have to park on the street, which is lined with large, old trees.
As I rolled up in the morning we were due to get the storm, I parked in my usual spot down the block. Before I shut the car off, though, I noticed that this particular spot was located directly across the street from one of the largest trees on the block. Thinking, ‘you know what, just to be safe…’ I put the car in reverse and backed up about ten feet, safely out of the direct line of fire from any trees.
In the middle of that afternoon, in the midst of the howling wind and driving rain, we heard a huge ‘THUD’ down the street. I went to investigate and that same tree I’d been parked across the street from fell across the road and missed my car by about eight feet.
At that moment, I was glad that I’d decided to play it safe as the car parked on the other side of the street directly across from where I’d initially been got absolutely destroyed. Crushed roof, windows blown out, just pulverized.”
He Saved His Messages And Saved His Relationship With His Son
“I got divorced 11 years ago from a horrible woman when my son was only 7-years-old. Once I got my life together and settled in, I tried to get him to visit me as often as I could (due to work I had to live in a different state.)
Every single time I tried to make plans to fly him to see me or come see him, his mom would give me some horrible excuse about some medical thing he had, some event with school, or some emergency as to why he couldn’t spend time with me. Or even sometimes she would just tell me to bugger off and straight up say no. She knew I didn’t live in town and I wasn’t just going to show up and see him, so that gave her some power.
After the 9th or 10th time of that happening I said to myself, ‘you know what, just to be safe I should keep a record of all of this.’ So I made sure I saved every text message as well as every email conversation between her and me.
Over the years my son started to resent me, thinking that I did not want to spend time with him. He became more distant and I was not able to communicate to him what was actually happening. At the age of 15 or 16, he stopped talking to me because he said that his depression was due to me not wanting to see him. I couldn’t explain anything to him at all, so I emailed him and apologized and let him have his space.
Last year I was able to get through to him and convince him to let me come see him and spend the summer with me. I had legal visitation to do so and told him that he needed to tell his mother he wanted to spend the summer with me. She tried to come up with an excuse, but he was resilient in asking and told her it was his choice to spend his summer break with me. She wanted to seem like a good person so she said yes finally. I drove 1100 miles to go pick him up and take the drive back with me to my state. I cleared it with child services, his mother, his grandparents, and everybody was okay with it. I was going to fly him back in 2 months when his break was over, a week before he started school again.
On the drive back he expressed to me how upset he was with me about not being around in his life and not wanting to see him. We had a difficult conversation and I just let him tell me everything he was feeling. It was hard to hear, but I wanted to know where his headspace and his heart was.
So when we stopped the first night at a hotel, I pulled out my laptop and told him I wanted to show him something.
I knew it would hurt, but he had to know how much I cared about him and how hard his mother made it for me to see him. So I showed him every message and every email his mother had ever said to me about the lies she told that kept me from seeing him. I also showed him the legal documents from when I hired a lawyer to try to get custody of him and how difficult she made things. I showed him the communications between her and I and how downright mean she used to get to me when we communicated. I showed him the tweets from his now stepdad that was basically calling him a loser and saying how much he didn’t like him. I showed him a part of his family that he had no idea existed.
Immediately his attitude towards me changed. We spent the entire summer together and had the most amazing time rebuilding a relationship. He came to where I lived and saw the clean and responsible life that I lead, and the hard work that I do to make a living. He started to realize that the life in the small town where he is at is very lacking and that his family there is toxic. The entire summer he spent with me he had zero bouts with depression, and actually stopped taking his medication for it. He started to understand that his perceived depression was an environmental thing.
As a thank you for coming to see me, I canceled his flight home and gave him my old pickup truck as an early 18th birthday present and his first vehicle, and drove it back to his home state with him when the summer was over.
He graduates from high school this year and is going to be moving here where I live to attend college.
Thank God I saved all those messages.”
Keep All Your Important Emails!
“I was offered a job in Europe, where I was promised a bonus that was x% of my salary, paid twice a year. When the offer was sent, there was no mention of the bonus and when I questioned why I was told, ‘don’t worry, it’s in this email with my official company signature.’ I put that one into the saved folder, ‘just to be safe.’
On the first payout period, I was told I needed to be with the company for 90 days first before a bonus would be paid. Ok, I was annoyed, but I guess that makes sense. On the second bonus payment, they mentioned that the company hadn’t had a great year and nobody would be getting bonuses. More annoyed, but if the company isn’t doing great, what are you going to do?
The following year rolls around and the company announces that things have really taken off and they will pay out the previous bonus period, in addition to the current bonus period. The only problem is, I literally handed in my resignation that day. I inquire to find out if I’ll be receiving my bonus from the previous bonus period, and they say, ‘are you kidding? You just quit.’ I call a lawyer and dug up the original email where I questioned the bonus. I’m so happy I saved that email, I couldn’t believe how much it helped me.