Seven Ways to Harness the Power of your Intuition
We've all had those moments in life where something within just spoke and urged us to listen. Gut feelings are often talked about and even accepted as part of our human experience, yet so many of us continue to feel the pull of the rationale and allow logic to dictate our next steps. How are we at odds with something so innately inherited? How has our intuition taken a back seat?
When you take a look at the natural world, you quickly see how instinctual it all truly is. The harmony that is achieved in each of the Earth’s ecosystems needs no logic, it all functions and flows without instruction. Even our beloved pets display instinct and intuition, knowing when to comfort, sensing danger and being alert to the simple energy of people and things that come into their path. Our bond with them develops a language all its own and we know what they need just as much as they are in tune with us. Intuition is alive and well when we begin to see it through the lens of our planetary cohabiters, we accept this as completely natural.
Cue us humans, operating against the noise and flow of our societal world. Our complex lives tell us to throw away the intuition in favour of logic and methodical thinking. As we grow, we begin to make decisions based on the pros and cons, what the odds are in favour of and make risk assessments of sorts to get to the answers. We also follow a structure to achieve, believing in the proven steps of success in order to get to our goals. Of course there are the voices out there telling us to follow our hearts, listen to our gut and take leaps of faith, but the truth is so many people are afraid to abandon their brains and trust a deep feeling. It all feels a little too wild for our liking and far too against the grain to be a proven method of success.
The difference between us and the natural world is the world we have created for us humans to exist in. Our daily world is filled with subtle and not so subtle messages that shape and fill our minds with a ton of distractions. We are pushed beyond our mental and emotional limits at times just to survive another day and the demands of our everyday life seem to never end. Our mind is consumed with our to do lists, our work deadlines, family obligations, chores, errands, shopping lists, social dynamics, media, the list goes on and on. It’s no wonder we have abandoned our intuition in favour of logic, there’s a very demanding world out there to keep up with.
So how do we cut through the noise and distractions and tune back into our intuition? Here are seven ways you can begin to listen to your inner wisdom.
How do you feel? In the first few moments of a choice or situation, your body will begin to tell you how it feels as you navigate the decision at hand. Those moments before your mind takes hold and races you through the choices, there is a reaction that begins to tell the true story of how you feel. What we need to do is extend these moments and slow down our thoughts, before we race to find the best solution we need to simply look within to see how we feel first. Our emotions may not be the first thing that speaks, it may be a physical response such as a tight chest, a tingling sensation, a feeling of a heavy stomach or just an uncomfortable or pleasurable sensation washing over. You may simply feel heavier or lighter. Learn to sit with a decision first and give yourself a moment to really grapple these feelings, whatever they are. Trust what you feel, even if you cannot relate with it initially.
Tune in. As you begin to let your body ponder how you feel, other signs, thoughts and feelings may begin to surface to deepen the information. Allow yourself a moment to let whatever surfaces to be acknowledged, even when it doesn’t seem to correlate at first. Things can often be linked without us realising or we may discover information we didn’t actually know in exploring these links. Your intuition is constantly picking up energetic pieces of information and tuning in gives you a chance to explore those.
What do you see, feel or know? Do you see any images, have feelings, or just know something more than you thought you did? Pay close attention to anything that surfaces. Learning to trust these inner messages and feelings is an important step to developing your intuition.
Decide and work it out later. Give yourself permission to trust your intuition and put the pieces together a little later if need be. We don’t always have to have it all figured out. Sometimes the situation just calls for an action and trusting our inner self allows us to be aligned with what feels right, even if we don’t fully understand why. As hindsight is a beautiful thing, time tends to reveal exactly why we felt as we did.
Trust yourself. If there is one common blockage so many people have that stands between them and their intuition, its self trust. Those messages we receive from our external world make it clear that we do not always know what is best for us and that we need to trust the way things work in the world. Except it simply isn’t true and the only sure thing that has created is a lot of self doubt in listening to the truth of our inner and higher selves. We can all agree that what works best for one person, doesn’t always work for another. We all find our unique way of getting to our destination and a one size fits all approach simply doesn’t suit. Trust yourself first and foremost, after all this is your life and your journey.
Let go of other people’s opinions. While people often have the best of intentions, listening in too much to their opinions can do more harm than good. It is easy to convince ourselves that we must have it all wrong when the general consensus is a little different to our own. However well meaning people are, your intuition may be singing to a different tune for good reason. Some of the most successful ventures happened despite the doubts of others and the best outcomes for us are the ones we are personally more invested in and aligned with. Trust what your intuition is telling you, even if it stands out against the crowd.
Failure is experience. If there is one true gift you can give yourself right now, it’s trusting that failure is only going to teach you something valuable. As people, our investment in getting it right the first time can be addictive and we tend to shy away from the bigger leaps of faith just to avoid failure. This is another major reason we often abandon our intuition and take a more logical approach. Yet every person out there has experienced failure in some form, even at the very top of our society chain. In fact, the most successful people in our world have a huge string of failures that led them to the top. We need to turn our fear of failure into the challenge of experience. Every time we fail at something, we gain the knowledge of what does and does not work. This is all the preparation work to allow what does work to truly flourish. Trusting your intuition is going to help you navigate these moments with greater ease and teach you to be the master of your chosen path. Don’t let the fear of failure or being wrong get in your way.
Our intuition, put simply is a natural part of our human experience. It is biologically ours, just as it is with every living thing on this planet. Our modern lifestyles and complicated bustling lives are the reason many people have lost touch with it. Yet forgetting what we’ve been taught and allowing ourselves the opportunity to start with the simple act of dialling into our feelings can lead us right back to reviving what is a natural part of us. Our intuition hasn’t gone anywhere, our logical minds have simply been the dominant force pushing our intuition to the back.
It’s time we begin to feel first and think second.