Intuitive Life
The 5 Core Principles to Lead An Intuitive Life
How can you lead a more intuitive life? Intuition is the power or the ability of attaining direct knowledge without evident rational thought of and interference. So what happens is often when we have an intuitive answer, we doubt it because we don't have any tangible proof for it.
And this is something you've probably experienced in your life and in your work where you've had a gut feeling that this is maybe something you should do or shouldn't do, but because you don't have any tangible proof for it, you don't follow your intuition. Most of the time in those cases, we end up regretting not following our intuition, and something else unfolds that proves that our intuition was correct even though there wasn't any tangible proof for it. One of the main reasons for this is the subconscious mind is 90% of our thinking. So 90% of our thoughts aren't conscious. They're unconscious.
Intuition can help us with our decision making, with leading our life intuitively, with pretty much everything we do in our life. It's not just a matter of using our intuition and subconscious mind for reflexes on the street, but it's also something we can do when we have important decisions in our life. So let's explore the 5 core principles that we can follow to help us to tap into our intuition. The very first principle is permission and self awareness.
1. Permission & Self-Awareness
It all begins by giving yourself the permission to follow your intuition. And if this is not something that you're used to doing, it takes quite a lot of courage and quite a lot of practice, because on the moment, it might come in conflict with what your tangible rational mind is telling you.
Maybe you have this potential project or client that you could be working with, and your intuition is telling you not to do it. But everything from a tangible, logical, rational perspective is saying this is a great decision. So suddenly you have this inner conflict between your gut feeling, your intuition, and the external or other part of your brain that is logical and rational.
So if you haven't given yourself the permission to lead a more intuitive life, every time you will have this type of inner conflict, you might end up following the logical rational side of you because it feels safer. And this is something that is very important when it comes to intuition. Sometimes it doesn't feel that safe, because it might be telling you, or you might have this inner feeling to do something that's radically out of your comfort zone, or to turn down something that looked like a great opportunity, or to explore totally in your approach of doing something in your business.
But what you'll find time and time again, and Steve Jobs is a great example of this, is the people that were the most intuitive and the most innovative in their field, in their business, generally got the best results and faster, because they weren't waiting for their logical brain and their prefrontal cortex to figure everything out. They were tuning into everything on multiple levels.
This doesn't mean ignore totally your logical brain. There's a lot of great things we can do through our rational thinking and the prefrontal cortex, but it means don't rely only on this. And if you have this inner gut feeling or intuition to go in a totally different direction, Listen. Listen and explore, and give yourself the permission to listen to it. And I think this is something that we don't do often enough.
Self-awareness comes from exploring your inner world. What's going on in my inner world? What are my thoughts on this topic? How do I feel in my body? One of the practices I started with when I was first training as a coach years years years ago was to tune in to my emotions in the body. Where do I feel this fear, the joy, anger, disappointment, and sadness?
Sometimes we might feel aversion and resistance to doing certain activities because they are highly demanding, and they require a lot of energy and effort. When we don't feel like doing these things, that's not our intuition. That's just our body trying to preserve its energy and say, okay. This requires quite a bit of effort. Let's not do it, or maybe it can wait.
2. Alignment
Once we start to notice these different feelings, we can also tune in and see, is this aligned with my values, my beliefs, what I feel is important? And there's a very simple tool and exercise that I often do with my clients, which is if you're at a crossroad and you're hesitating between 2 different directions, 2 different possibilities, Maybe it's between 2 different jobs. Maybe it's between living in 2 different countries. When this happens, you can visualize both of these scenarios, one after the next, and just see what happens in your body as you visualize yourself living in one country or living in the other country.
Do you feel an expansion, an opening, a sense of joy or lightness? Or do you feel your whole body closing down and it feels heavy and dense? Every single time I've done this exercise with some of my clients, they've come to a decision within seconds or minutes, and sometimes there has been a decision that has been waiting on their mind for months.
By listening to your body, by having this somatic awareness, you can make decisions so much more effectively. The only thing is to trust. To trust that what your body says is aligned and will lead you to the best outcomes.
We need to tune in and see what would make us feel more expansive in this current situation. What would shift our energy here? So in this second core principle of leading an intuitive life, there's this notion of alignment, and there's this notion of energy. Follow what energizes you most. Of course, this is within reason.
3. Slowing Down & Reflection
This third principle, and this is one I worked on a lot, is slowing down and reflection. Because the truth is intuition is more like a small, subtle voice. And if you're rushing all the time and you're doing everything in a very busy, hectic pace, you won't hear your intuition because it will be whispering different thoughts, ideas, concept, but you're so busy rushing and being busy that you don't hear what's coming through. So with that slowing down, it's not possible to lead an intuitive life.
From this place of deeper reflection, you can start to use inquiry. And inquiry is when you directly ask yourself, what would make this next step easier?
What is most aligned for me right now? What is alive in me at the moment? What am I guided to be doing? What is something I can put in place to overcome this obstacle? What is something that I've been putting on hold for too long, and it's time for me to take action?
All of these different questions, you can tune into and ask yourself from this place of deeper reflection, more space, more slowing down, and this inquiry will give you certain answers. Most of the time, we ask ourselves the wrong questions. We ask ourselves, why is this so bad? Why is this always happening to me? Why can't this work?
When you start to ask these questions, you start to get those answers.
We all have the inner answers to all of our questions. I guarantee that any specific problem you're struggling with, maybe in terms of your business or your work, maybe it's work overload or delegating to different people or managing a relationship with a cofounder or finding a new innovative strategy about your business direction. All of these different things, you have the answers within you.
The only thing lacking is clarity that you get by slowing down and courage to then do it. Those are 2 very different things. But first, we need the clarity from slowing down and reflection. And once we have that clarity, then it takes courage to take the actions. And this is actually the 4th principle here on leading an intuitive life, which is the courage.
4. Courage
“Follow your instincts, that's where true wisdom manifests itself.” Oprah Winfrey.
Once you have that inner clarity through slowing down, by then following that gut feeling, taking action, being brave, honoring that intuition, honoring your true self, it takes courage. All growth is a leap in the dark. Every time you grow, every time you do something totally out of your comfort zone, it's a leap in the dark because there's uncertainty. You don't know what the outcome will be because you haven't done it until now.
Courage is a habit. If every single time you follow that intuitive calling, you follow that aligned action, and you do it, you develop the habit of courage. Because courage is simply taking action in spite of fear. So if every time you feel fear, again, for something aligned, I'm not saying jump off a bridge. That is normal fear to keep you alive, but I'm saying, maybe reach out to that person that intimidates you. Maybe ask this other person for a favor. Maybe put down some boundaries here with your boss, or your colleagues, or your co founder.
These things take courage, And when we develop the habit to take action in spite of that fear, we become braver. Because then we know we can trust ourselves to take courageous action, because we've done it in the past. And we've survived. And we've realized that it felt great because often it's highly rewarding when we do these things, so let's do it again.
Notice if you are taking action from fear or trust, ask yourself: Is this coming from a place of fear, or is this coming from a place of trust? And if it comes from a place of fear, don't allow it to take over and monopolize your thoughts and actions.
If it's coming from a place of trust, of deep trust, of inner guidance, then I will follow it. Again, within reason. So if your intuition is tell suddenly telling you to quit your job tomorrow, that might be great, or maybe it works, or maybe it's okay, quitting it soon and having a backup plan at the same time. So I'm not saying to blindly follow our intuition. I'm just saying to listen very carefully to the intuition, see if it comes from a place of trust, and then you can add a bit of the logical mind and make both meet.
But don't totally squash the intuition because, generally, that's what leads to regrets. Trust that it's okay not to have all the answers, and embrace that uncertainty that often comes from these big leaps. This is still within the 4th principle of courage. We want to embrace this uncertainty. Know that all growth is a leap in the dark, and be okay with that.
And then let your intuition guide you through ambiguity. A lot of amazing things start to happen when you do that on so many different levels.
5. Be open to receive
The 5th principle, the last principle, is being open to receive. This comes from letting go of all overthinking and embracing the decisions that feel right and wrong, and noticing when you have this intuition, being open to receiving it.
Follow ‘Wu Wei’ - Flow instead of Force. Feel what is most aligned in any given moment, without forcing it.
This doesn't mean being complacent. It doesn't mean just doing the easy things. It means following that inner flow, that inner guidance, that alignment with life. And being open to noticing also certain signs, certain synchronicities, paying attention to them. Because if you don't pay attention to them, you won't see what signs are coming up that you could be using to guide your intuition, to guide your life.
Because intuition is both within, but it's also around us. It's also noticing if several people mention the same book to you during the course of a week, maybe it's sign that you could read that book. You can choose to interpret it as you wish. You can choose to see this as a coincidence if you want to, or you can choose to see that somehow life is communicating with you, and that you can take these signs on board.
I've noticed that when I listen to these signs and synchronicities, some amazing things then happen and follow. Maybe it's connecting with that person, or reading that book, or going to that event, or checking out that working environment, or traveling to that place. It always leads to something really wonderful when I listen to these signs and synchronicities.
Thank you for reading,
Be Bold.
Bee Focused.
Enjoy The Ride!
Katie
👏