There’s something I think we all should really spend more time working with: Intuition.
I think as we move forward, being able to use your intuition is going to be increasingly important. There will be more and more things coming at us that we have to have an opinion about or pay attention to.
For example, what I’m seeing happening is there’s an overwhelming amount of information being fed to us on a constant basis. So, most people form an opinion about this information, probably many times an hour about many different things. This means they sort of jump from one opinion to another, or even the impression of an opinion to the impression of another opinion.
The problem with this is their own opinions get lost in the process.
What this constant barrage of information does is it keeps us at a level where we just sort of float through our experience. We end up not really paying attention to how we actually feel about things. It becomes more and more difficult to connect with our intuition.
In the past, people were better able to use their intuition to guide them through their experiences. Today I think most people don’t even really have any sense of what their intuition is, or how to listen to it. And I think this is deliberately done to keep us hooked on media and commercials and needs and wants and desires.
For most people, intuition is sort of that “gut feeling” about something. Other people describe it as a “nagging feeling” in the back of their head or perhaps a “message” of sorts.
When my clients come to me with a question about something they want to work on, I often turn it back to them and say, “Well, what do you think? And what do you feel?” And often people don’t really have any strong sense of themselves. When we start working on their intuition and start reactivating and re teaching them how to pay attention to what their intuition feels like, they often have the answers themselves.
Another question I ask my clients at the start of every single session is “Can you identify what you need today? Do you know what you need to work on today?”
This question asks you, as the client, to feel into why you’re in my office. Yes, I hold the space. And yes, I have the tools. But at the end of the day, people come to me for a particular reason.
And the people that are aware of whatever that reason is are the ones that get the quickest and the best results. I think this is because their sessions are naturally directed. They know what they need to work on every session… and they listen to what they need by listening to their intuition.
So, how do you improve your connection to your intuition?
The easiest thing to do is meditate every single day.
Meditation is one of those very simple tools you can use to teach yourself to quiet your mind in this sea of information.
Now, I do think meditation is very misunderstood by a lot of people. Because it’s actually not about keeping your brain from going 90 miles an hour or not letting your thoughts wander off. That is all part of the meditation.
Instead, think of meditation like when you reboot the hard drive on your computer. You get back to zero and you reset your whole nervous system, particularly if you do it over the course of several weeks.
It doesn’t take long as a daily practice; my rule of thumb is 15 minutes. Some days I sit longer, some days a few minutes less. Sometimes I’m on a bus or waiting for a train. What’s important is to use these small windows to recalibrate and check in with yourself.
For me, a very, very simple way of doing that is simply listening to the air going in and out of my nose. That helps me refocus my attention. When I find my mind wandering, I return to my breath.
To bring it back to intuition, what meditation does is strengthen your ability to listen to it. What it doesn’t necessarily do is act on your intuition.
For example, you might have a hard time saying no to someone even when your intuition says otherwise. So, you can hear your intuition, but are you really listening? Maybe you don’t want to hurt somebody’s feelings, or maybe you don’t want to be difficult.
In these situations, much of the work we get to do is around permission. Give yourself the permission to slow down. Once you slow down, then give yourself permission to act on your intuition (which is really permission to get out of your own way).
In my experience, intuition never leads you in the wrong direction and when you do listen to your intuition, you have the answers to your questions already.
Now, meditation is a great way to strengthen your intuition, but if you’re disconnected from your body then you won’t be able to listen to or act on your intuition in the first place. Or, if you can feel your intuition and you’re like most people, you either ignore it or encounter fear when you attempt to act on it.
If you’d like help connecting to your body and its intuition… or clearing out the fear you have around acting on your intuition, I want to help you. Send me an email to sign up for a free 30-minute consultation.