Your Intuition Matters
What is your relationship with your intuition?
People with highly developed intuition have unlocked something: they make better, faster decisions, they are happier and more successful, and they move through the world with energetic ease.
It was not so long ago that intuition was an outcast, relegated to the realm of rolled eyes along with everything else that doesn’t come from the rational, thinking mind. Recently, intuition is seeing investment of interest and money as groups including the U.S. military are studying what it is and how it works. It turns out, intuition is awesome.
When I unlocked my intuition, I developed a powerful partner for my life.
Most people, when I ask about their relationship to their intuition, get a little wistful: “I’d like to be more intuitive.” Or else they reveal some frustration: “How do I know if what I’m hearing is my intuition or… something else? Laziness or Fear?”
Exploring your intuition might feel like scuba diving an underwater cave.
I have two primary ways I help people develop their intuition:
1. Forge a relationship with it.
If you have been living your whole life ignoring those inner cues that something isn’t right, it will take time to build mutual trust between you and your intuition. Imagine if you had a friend that you gave really good advice to over and over, and she ignored you every time, even telling you complex reasons why you’re wrong. If she called you up one day begging for advice, would you immediately be excited to help her out? Probably not… So if you are ready to develop a friendship with your intuition, expect it to take some time. Learning how to listen is a process. Expect it to also require doing some things that feel really uncomfortable for you: namely, going with your gut even when your mind is screaming excuses for why it’s wrong.
2. Train it.
Intuition is simply a form of intelligence. It is not a deity. You are not born with fully developed, perfect intuition. Like all intelligence, it learns through experience and education (education is just the experience of others packaged for quicker delivery). One reason we don’t have strong intuition now is because as a child, your intuition was childish, and adults constantly had to redirect you away from your gut feelings and towards more appropriate action. Unfortunately, this resulted in us learning not to trust our intuition (and perpetuating to our children not to trust theirs), rather than graduating into an adult relationship with it. You will have to practice. You will have to make mistakes. That is okay, that is learning. Think about an area in your life where you have excellent ability to make decisions without thinking much about them – whether that’s wilderness travel or in your professional life. You have learned through repeated experience, and education from others, and now the decision making happens automatically, directed by intuition, but it took time.
When I unlocked my intuition, I developed a powerful partner for my life. It turns out, there were many areas of my life where my intuition had been learning all along the way and was ready to step up and shine. There are other areas where my intuition is underdeveloped, and I intentionally work to educate and exercise her, with eyes wide open about what’s working and what’s not, refining her to be an excellent partner and tool for me in the future.
