trust your intuition

How Trust Your Intuition

What would I say to my 18-year-old self using only three words:

Trust your intuition.

When I look back at the map of my life so far, tracing my fingers over all of my regrets and missteps, I can see a clear pattern.

Every time I made a decision that turned out to be the wrong decision, my intuition was clearly speaking to me, telling me not to do that thing.

Every single time in my life I felt that another person’s energy was “off,” that person turned out to be someone I wish I’d never been entangled with.

Every time I felt a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach about a job offer, a relationship, a school or workshop opportunity - every time I felt that sinking feeling but ignored it - the sinking feeling turned out to be right.

If I could sit down with my 18-year-old self and get her to believe me, that she should listen to and trust her intuition, my life story would be different.

I would have done different things, lived in different places, and I suspect, would have been happier. (I was not a happy young person.)

Of course, there’s not much sense in looking back and thinking about how things would be different if you’d done this or that.

But there is sense, I think, in looking back and carrying the wisdom you find there into the present day.

What Is Intuition?

So, what does it even mean to trust your intuition?

What is intuition?

A sixth sense, a way of knowing, psychic ability, the way God speaks?

Here’s what Wikipedia says:

“Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning. Different fields use the word “intuition” in very different ways, including but not limited to: direct access to unconscious knowledge; unconscious cognition; inner sensing; inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition; and the ability to understand something instinctively, without any need for conscious reasoning.”

Direct access to unconscious knowledge sounds right to me.

My intuition isn’t rooted in the physical world, scientific observation, the law of averages, or logic.

My intuition is a way of knowing, no more or less valuable than other way of knowing.

My intuition is a sense, an inner sight, an understanding that vibrates at a much faster pace than my other senses.

My intuition is my inner navigation system, my heart compass, wisdom that originates in the eternal part of me.

When my intuition speaks, is someone else - someone on the other side - like a spirit guide or an ancestor or an angel - speaking to me?

I honestly don’t know. Maybe? Some of the time?

But aside from that possibility, my intuition is mine. It is my inner language. It is just like physical sight or touch or hearing.

How We Get Confused

Because intuition doesn’t adhere to logic or science or rules of any kind, it is often dismissed.

When you tell someone you are going to do or not do something because you have a feeling about it, you may find the response is less than supportive.

The primary reason I ignored my intuition all those times is because whatever my intuition was telling me didn’t look good on paper.

Jobs that were a bad fit for me are a great example of this because, we need jobs. Like it or not, we live in Capitalism. We need to earn money in order to survive.

So, if I met the qualifications of a job and the job was offered to me, it didn’t make sense to turn it down right?

In my case, I can think of several examples of walking in to job interviews and knowing immediately that my answer was no.

I felt it in my belly. I felt it in my heart.

I felt it the second I walked into the interview.

The answer was no, but I didn’t believe I had any other options. There were no other offers on the table, so I accepted jobs knowing that I shouldn’t.

I can also think of times, more recently, when my logic was telling me to be to be afraid, but my intuition was saying yes - this is the job for you - say yes.

Which brings me to another reason we get confused about intuition:

Anxiety and fear.

If my family had a family crest, there would be something on there to symbolize anxiety.

I was brought up in an environment where love equalled worry. If you loved someone, you worried about them. You imagined worst case scenarios then you did everything in your power to prevent those scenarios from happening.

Fear was ever-present.

No matter why you have an anxiety disorder - trauma response, heredity, environment - anxiety clouds intuition.

If you’re in worry mode and I tell you to trust your intuition, how can you tell the different between intuition and anxiety?

How do you trust the feeling in your gut, when your gut is always swirling around about some perceived threat?

For me, the answer is in detachment.

What I’ve learned over the years of my dance with anxiety and intuition is that anxiety comes with big sweeping all-consuming emotion, but intuition doesn’t.

Anxiety says, Oh my God, do not go out right now. The roads are slick and you don’t know how to drive on slick roads! You will wreck your car causing your death and the deaths of countless other people. It will be painful and horrifying! Oh my God! Danger! Here let me give you trembling throughout your whole body so you understand that you are incapable to driving a car!

Intuition just slips into the back of my mind when I’m singing along to radio and says, I always turn right here, but I think I’ll turn left today.

I live with a pretty much constant concern about the well being of my animals and low grade anxiety about how to keep them safe, but the day before my cat Veda died, I woke up and knew it was going to happen. I remember telling her I loved her, knowing that she would be gone soon. It was very sad - there was definitely emotion in the knowing - but no panic. I knew it was just what was going to happen, there was nothing I could do about it.

Overall, intuition is much softer, much more gentle than anxiety.

It’s next to impossible to ignore anxiety, but you can ignore intuition all you want.

What Happens When You Trust?

It’s especially easy to ignore your intuition when other people are telling you who you are, what you should do, or what sounds like your best course of action.

It’s easy to say, well, I feel like I should do this, but an authority figure I trust says I should do the opposite, so I’ll go with what they think.

But what happens when you sort out intuition from anxiety and social constructs and other people’s opinions?

What happens when you trust your own intuition instead?

Well, life happens, I believe.

Real life. Authentic life.

The path before you unfolds with a greater ease and clarity.

It certainly doesn’t mean that bad things don’t happen, but it does mean things get just a little bit easier, and probably more fun.

It means experiencing the experiences that are meant for you and avoiding experiences that aren’t meant for you.

Your intuition is your GPS system. You can decide to turn it off and wind around on back road ands end up where you end up, or you can turn it on and reach your destination in a more streamlined way, while avoiding traffic pile-ups.

How You Know You’re Really Listening To Your Intuition

So, let’s say that I am able to time travel and talk to my 18-year-old self. (I don’t know why, but I imagine this meeting happening in my high school dining hall, one of my most least favorite places ever. 18-year-old me is wearing heavy black eyeliner, lots of rubber bangle bracelets, and an Ankh necklace. She sits in a cloud of Marilyn Monroe perfume thinking about how much she wants to blow out of this town and go be famous and adored somewhere. In other words, 18-year-old me is cool as fuck.)

So there we sit and I tell 18 year old me (who doesn’t feel cool at all) that she should trust her intuition.

The first thing I think she’s going to do is confuse intuition with desire.

She wants big love and romance, this girl. She wants to be adored.

She’s going to have to learn that just because a guy is sexy or mysterious, just because she would like to be with him, doesn’t mean she’s supposed to be with him.

Desire is not intuition.

Wanting something is just wanting something and wanting someone does not mean they are your soulmate or your destiny.

And then, there’s going to be the fear thing.

She’s going to have to learn the difference between intuition and fear.

If she asks me how she can tell that an urge or an inkling or an idea is intuitive, I will tell her those two things - it’s not desire, it’s not fear-based.

I will also tell her - it’s not the ego.

Most importantly, intuition will never guide you to bring harm to yourself or others.

Your intuition will never beat you up, never berate you, call you stupid, or threaten you in any way.

Your intuitive voice is a voice of love.

It’s a voice of guidance, and it’s never spiteful, greedy, or mean.

How To Develop Your Intuition

Intuitive knowing shows up in all sorts of ways - like in your connection to others.

Think of the way parents just instinctively know when something is wrong with a child.

Think of how someone keeps floating into your mind or you feel the urge to call or text them and then they call or text you.

It shows up when you find yourself completing a task without ever having been trained or educated about how to do it - in the things that come naturally to you.

It shows up in your dreams.

It shows up in artwork, when you are in the flow of creation.

Think of the things that happen to your characters when you’re writing, things you didn’t plan or have any idea were going to show up on the page.

Your intuition is a soft yes or no, a walk through this door, not that one.

So how can you develop your intuition?

Listen.

The more time you spend in quiet contemplation, the better. Maybe your intuition is trying to speak to you, but you can’t hear it over the noise of everyday life.

We are not all neurologically the same.

I personally thrive in silent sitting meditation, but for some people movement is better. For some people, music helps.

Find the way into meditation that works for you and spend some time there, listening instead of speaking.

Trust and act.

When you feel the little gnawing sensation telling you to say yes to a coffee invitation or no to a job offer, trust it and take the appropriate action. In this way, you’ll grow a relationship with your intuition and it will become much more clear.

Pay attention to your body.

Your physical body is speaking all the time. You get cold chills, your stomach flips upside down, you feel a warmth in your heart, your scalp tingles.

You feel a certain way when you walk into certain spaces.

You feel differently in the presence of different people.

Have you ever been in a room and felt like you couldn’t get out fast enough?

Have you ever walked into a space and thought you could stay there forever?

What was happening in your body the last time you were in conflict with someone?

What was happening in your body the last time you received an amazing gift?

Notice these body signals, keep track of them, journal, and decode your body’s language.

Ask.

Seriously. Just ask.

Say, Please help me develop/trust/know my intuition.

Who are you asking? God? Your higher self? The universe? The trees?

It doesn’t matter.

You’re asking Goodness. You’re asking Love.

Asking is a way of opening.

Love and care for yourself.

This might be the most difficult one of all, but there is a huge connection between your intuition and your self-esteem.

The intuitive voice that speaks to you, is you after all.

In order to really listen to that voice and trust it, you have to trust yourself. You have to honor your own wisdom. You have to respect yourself enough to know that you are trustworthy.

If it is Love that is guiding you, you must be willing to accept that Love.

So if I only had three words to speak to 18-year-old me, I would tell her to trust her intuition.

If I only had two words, they would be lighten up.

This all black wearing melodramatic 18-year old self probably wouldn’t receive that very well, but I would love for her to embrace playfulness a little bit more.

I would love for her to know that life doesn’t have to be deadly serious all the time, that mistakes are just mistakes, that her perfection is not required.

Or maybe I would tell her, be yourself.

Don’t try to be something you’re not.

It’s fun to play with identity and try stuff on for size, but don’t compare yourself to other people and decide your differences are wrong, or try to emulate other people in an attempt to get them to like you…this never turns out well.

(I would also tell her to hang on to all of her clothes because they would be super cool vintage now, but that’s a lot of words and has nothing to with intuition and this post is long enough already…)

I’m curious.

So, what would you say to your 18-year-old self?