“Intuition will tell the thinking mind where to look next.” ~ Jonas Salk
How often have you had that “gut” feeling, or that flash of inspiration that carries the answer you’ve been looking for? Pay attention to those flashes, hunches or goosebumps; they’re real and the delivered vision, idea or guidance may be wrapped with wisdom.
Intuition is a natural ability or power that makes it possible to know something without any proof or evidence: a feeling that guides a person to act a certain way without fully understanding why. Our culture doesn’t tend to support or respect intuition, leaning far more to valuing and accepting only what can be proven logically and rationally.
Learning to build that trust muscle when it comes to our intuition takes time and practice. We’ve been taught to ignore our inner knowingness, to disregard what is considered non-rational, to look outside ourselves for answers. Think back to times in your life when you’ve overridden your initial gut feeling and looked back with regret. “If only I’d trusted my gut” or “I knew I was right.”
How do we build that trust muscle when it comes to our intuition? There are practices we can integrate into our lives to allow greater ease and flow when it comes to accessing and accepting our inner wisdom.
Meditate. Don’t panic, you don’t have to sit for hours everyday. Begin with 5 minutes of quiet and work up to a comfortable and sustainable practice on a regular basis. Even taking a minute to stare out the window at the sky, or a tree several times a day is valuable in expanding your connection to your inner landscape, to become familiar with how to recognize your inner voice.If sitting’s not your thing, try a walking meditation. Learn More >
Pay Attention. Practice being an observer of life around you and yourself; consciously choose to be mindful of your way of being in the world. Take time to be aware of how you “feel”. Notice how you behave in different situations; do you tend to act from a conditioned, reactive place rather than from a responsive, open and receptive place? So many of our behaviors are patterns we continually repeat without thinking. Patterns of behavior are often habits. And, the good news is we can change habits. Your intuition can help guide you to create new habits to support you living a more meaningful and lighthearted life.
Question Everything. As you uncover your “default” behavior patterns and decide to make some changes, “How can I do this differently?” becomes your mantra. We tend to hold polarity vision, that familiar black and white, either/or thinking which limits our ability to imagine our behaviors or situations truly shifting. It’s a cocktail for staying stuck. Challenge yourself to go to the edge of all possibility when entertaining new ideas for change. When the desire for change is approached with the excitement of creative possibility the imagination is awakened and new ideas “pop” in. Creativity invokes intuition.
So the next time your mind tries to monopolize your dance card ~ feel that quiet tap on your shoulder and gracefully allow your intuition to cut in and lead you in discovering your next steps.
