Trusting Your Gut—and Letting It Lead the Way

If there’s one theme that kept bubbling up during my conversation with Kanika Chadda-Gupta, it’s this: your gut knows the way.

Kanika’s story is a masterclass in listening to that quiet, persistent voice inside you—even when the outside world doesn’t quite understand.

She started her career on a “safe” path, following her parents’ wishes into international management. But when every business class left her cold, she pivoted toward broadcast journalism. That leap took her from Boston to Miami to CNN in India, where she produced and eventually anchored a prime-time entertainment show. Kanika didn’t wait to be discovered—she worked the hours no one saw, learned every role in the newsroom, and asked for the on-air opportunity she wanted.

Her intuition didn’t stop at career moves. It guided her across the world again when love entered the picture, nudging her to pick New York over Los Angeles even without a job in hand. It protected her life when doctors dismissed the ectopic pregnancy she sensed immediately. And it opened the door to the family she’d always envisioned—three kids, including twins she once placed on a vision board without knowing how or when it would happen.

Kanika calls it “mom sense,” but it’s bigger than motherhood. It’s the deep knowing that tells you when to leap, when to speak up, when to stay still. She pairs that intuition with a practice of manifesting: seeing the life she wants in vivid detail, using all five senses to imagine it as if it’s already here.

What I love most is how she brings that same intention to parenting. She keeps journals with each child—little back-and-forth notes and drawings now, but she knows they’ll become lifelines for the heavy conversations of adolescence. It’s the kind of open, trusting relationship she longed for growing up, and she’s creating it on purpose.

Kanika reminded me that manifesting isn’t just about big goals like careers and houses (though she’s manifested those beautifully). It’s also about the quiet choices: sipping tea on a back porch you once only imagined, or sitting still long enough to hear your own heart.

If you’ve been waiting for a sign to trust your gut, consider this it.

Much love,

Gayle