“The only real valuable thing is intuition.”
– Albert Einstein
Learning to trust your heart and intuition can take a leap of faith. Illustration by Iman Woods
Ever have a nagging feeling that stayed with you? Either you followed it to success or regretted not listening to the little voice inside.
Science has a hard time explaining the inexplicable, however Oprah.com has an eye-opening article citing a study by scientist Barnaby Dunn, PhD proving the science of intuition. The study found that our bodies know something is off long before our minds can process a wide variety of information and come to a conclusion.
In my professional life I’ve long relied on what I affectionately call “gut feelings”. I didn’t realize until researching for this article that I already practice several of the exercises in my professional life that help me stay in touch with my intuition. It’s brought me financial and professional success.
In the past, I would ignore a feeling because it didn’t add up to the evidence in front of me. I always regretted not listening to the hairs standing up on the back of my neck, the heaviness in the pit of my stomach, or the excited butterflies. I do consider myself to be more aware and in touch with my body than most, and I started to notice a pattern.
This article outlines the steps I would unconsciously take. I’m printing this out to remind me to let my intuition make sense of the myriad of information I’m exposed to. I can get just as caught up as the next person wondering if I’m making a mistake.
The most important aspect of trusting your intuition is learning to trust and believe yourself. If you constantly question yourself, tear yourself down, or fear mistakes as ultimate failure, this can be an uphill battle. I can handle business decisions like a pro. Personal decisions leave me indecisive and painfully vulnerable.
You have to practice trusting yourself. You must believe that even mistakes can take you where you need to go.
Recently I decided to apply this phenomenon to personal relationships. For months before deciding my marriage was over, I tried to meditate and imagine what life would be like without him (scary and unknown) or with him (endlessly depressing, hopeless) so I decided scared was better than hopeless. I clung to a sliver of hope that the world beyond would be better.
If you’d like to explore your own intuition:
Find articles and books to read. Reading can introduce you to new information and substantiate things you suspect but haven’t quantified yet. Talk to friends about instances where they were glad they trusted themselves or regretted not heeding a quiet warning. Start asking yourself if you’ve had similar situations. (You have, you just may not recognize them yet.) Journal times it was hard to make a decision. See if you find a pattern.
More excellent articles from Oprah.com learning about intuition:
The One Thing You Can Do to Honor Your Inner Voice
Intuition 101: Developing Your Clairsenses
Ask Deepak: How to Trust Your Intuition
What do you dream of? Try the techniques above and let us know what happens.
Iman
One more thing. If you suffer from low self-esteem like I do/did – then trusting your gut can be hard, because you aren’t confident in your gifts. So the more you work on self confidence and rewriting that internal script so that it becomes more positive, the easier it will be to act on intuition.
This is so true. Many times that “feeling” we have is actually a result of our brain coming to the conclusion based on all the data presented – and it works faster than we do (sounds weird, I know). I was sitting beside a woman on a plane who had achieved great success in her life. As a motivational speaker, I’m always looking for advice from women who have achieved their dreams. So I asked her what was the secret. If she had to boil it down to one most important thing, what would it be? She said, “Trust your gut.” She said that your gut will usually tell you whether you should do something, or whether you shouldn’t. And every time she acted against her gut intuition, it didn’t go well.
I was researching this for a few friends and realized I needed the reminder myself.
Every time I’ve ignored my own intuition in business it has come back to bite me – big time! Thanks for the reminder to listen up when we need to, and the resources too.
Heather