Intuition is generally what I associate with ‘gut feel’. Women’s intuition has sometimes been played up as a very powerful, and female-only power. But intuition is something that we all experience. Thankfully, because I thought I had lost my intuition.
The dictionary definition of intuition is:
‘the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.’
and
‘a thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feelings, rather than conscious reasoning.’
So it is a knowing that arises due you to subconscious mind. This is interesting, because we know that the subconscious mind processes billions of pieces of information, and filters it for the conscious mind. We don’t have to be consciously aware of everything, or we would become overwhelmed. But it’s not to say that the subconscious mind has disregarded things or forgotten about them.
Hence, the subconscious mind uses intuition to let us ‘know’ something, without our conscious mind ever having thought about it. Because the subconscious knows more than our conscious brain.
For a long time, I thought I was disregarding my intuition. I thought I was using my conscious mind and making reasoned judgments in my life and business. Of course, I was somewhat fooling myself, because we usually act on emotions anyway and then justify it to ourselves.
But, if my gut was telling me something, I would ignore it and often to the opposite. I would do this because of the wrong messages I was getting from other successful business owners who had written books and were know coaching – mostly American men. The messages I was getting from these sources was that your ‘gut feeling’ is wrong, and it’s resistance. So push through the resistance, because it’s holding you back.
Wrong.
I’m now turning this around and really trying to be ‘true’ to myself. I am trusting myself more. I should have more of the answers internally than I give myself credit for. Sometimes, you’ve just got to trust you gut. This is what I’m learning to do more.
But how?
Firstly, if something feels off, then it probably is. If the feeling is persistent, then don’t do it. I’ve particularly been listening to my gut when it comes to staff issues, and when it comes to working with people closely.
I recently joined a coaching program, and it felt wrong. I initially thought I was just talking myself out of it – and in fact one of the coaches said exactly that. But, actually, I was sold into a program that wasn’t right for me. The feeling persisted that it was wrong, and I just had to follow my instinct. I pulled out. I feel a lot of relief – the people weren’t right for me, and it was creating unnecessary guilt and pressure in my life.
Journalling can also help with learning to listen to your instinct, particularly if he are writing whilst thinking on a question, and just letting yourself write, rather than censoring.
And getting really woo woo, I’ve also using guidance cards and tarot cards. I don’t kid myself that I am tapping into the spirit world or anything like that. But I do think that we choose certain cards when we need them, and then our subconscious can give us certain feelings and meanings about the cards. This is really helpful, just starting to trust these feelings and ‘knowings’ that I’ve been getting. Sometimes I feel like it’s a crock of shit, and other times it really lifts me up.
