Intuition takes many forms, but the one you’re most familiar with is that gut feeling that you should or shouldn’t do something. There is a reason you’ve heard the phrase to trust your gut, because intuition can be very helpful in making difficult decisions. Throughout our evolution intuition has developed to assist humans in determining why people make certain actions, and it can help us to understand the motives beneath somebody’s actions. When we know internally that somebody is yelling because they are upset, we can react appropriately to fight back, try to calm them, or flee from the situation. Intuition can be used not only to help you stay safe and healthy, but it can also be use to make smarter investments, make the right career moves, and choose the right partner or spouse. What’s great about intuition is that you can learn to hone this set of skills and be ready to make the best choices in any situation. Read on to learn about proven ways to build your intuition and use it every day.
1. Listen To Your Body
Your intuition will manifest itself by causing your body to have physical reactions to the situation you are in. Pay attention to your body and how it is reacting and you can get an idea of what your intuition is trying to tell you. For example, positive intuition typically shows up as having goose bumps, feeling relaxed, or being emotionally or physically drawn to a place or a person. Negative intuition will show up as feeling tense, having a chills, or getting a lump in your throat. These are all signs of your body preparing itself for something bad.
2. Trust Your Gut
There’s that word again, but what does it mean to trust your gut? Paying attention to your stomach and how it feels when you are in a situation can reveal a lot about how your intuition is responding to the decisions you’re about to make. Feeling tense, nauseous, having cramps or heartburn can be signs that your body is trying to warn you about something negative that may happen. One thought on why your gut is so important to intuition is that the stomach and intestines are connected to the enteric nerve system that is responsible for transmitting not only hunger up to your brain, but for bringing down signals for your stomach to tie up in knots when you’re nervous.
3. Ignore Negativity
It’s very hard to do, but being able to step outside of negative feelings when you’re in a rough situation can help immensely in allowing you to pay closer attention to your intuition. Negative feelings take a lot of work for your body to process and when you are focused on negativity you’re unable to notice smaller cues from your body that are related to intuition. If you have time, work through your negative feelings and think about how and why you feel the way you do, then pay attention to your intuition to learn how to move forward. If you don’t have time to work through your negative feelings then by all means don’t just ignore them forever, but work hard to set them aside so you can listen to your body and make the right call on making a decision for the situation you’re in now.
4. Practice Intuition By Creating Time For It
It’s tough to rely on your intuition when you aren’t used to paying attention to it in the first place. Spending time to practice using intuition is the first real step to being better at relying on it when it matters. Find some quiet space where you can calm down, relax, and pay attention to your body and how it feels. Begin to think about big decisions that are troubling you and pay attention to the changes you feel as you think about the decision. You’ll begin to notice your physical reactions to your thoughts that are actually signs of your intuition kicking in. Try doing this a few times until you get a good grip on how your body feels when your intuition begins to respond, and then you’ll know what to look for when you are in a real life situation where you should trust your intuition.
5. Start Small, In An Area You Know Well
Begin with areas that you are very familiar with when relying on your intuition. Most people have a better time making an intuitive decision when it’s about a subject they know very well. Intuition is fundamentally an unconscious response to a situation you are in, and you can process knowledge faster when you already know what the possible courses of action are. For example, if you’re an attorney and you’re watching an episode of your favorite courtroom drama you might react right away when you see something happen on screen that was wrong and yell at the TV, “I object!” Most people who are not lawyers wouldn’t know that anything wrong had happened but because you’re trained in the law you know right away that something was off and could react intuitively. This can apply to anything you may be an expert in so start small and work your way out from there.
6. Visualize The Possibilities
Visualization is a powerful tool you have to assist your intuition. After you’ve become comfortable with how your intuition works, what it feels like in positive and negative situations, and what to do with those physical feelings you can emphasize these feelings by using visualization. All you have to do is to imagine the steps of making the decisions you’re contemplating and go step by step through the process in your mind all the way through the probable outcome of making that decision. At each step pay attention to how your body is reacting and what your intuition is telling you. By doing this for each of the possible choices you can make you’ll be able to focus in on your intuition and what it is telling you about each choice.
7. Sleep Well
This sounds a little obvious, but if you are well rested you’ll be less distracted by other physical responses to being tired. A lot of physical feelings that are tied to intuition are also similar to feelings of when you are tired. It can be easy to confuse the two feelings and not be able to rely on your intuition when you’re too exhausted to use it. Another reason to get plenty of sleep is that your intuition often kicks in when you’re about to fall asleep or when you’re just waking up. Try keeping a notepad next to your bed and when you feel your intuition begin to process through important events of the day make notes on how you feel and what you think your gut is telling you. This information can be very helpful in your decision making process.
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