How To Trust your intuition
‘Think of calming your thoughts as a tidal wave subsiding.’
I don’t know about you, but my anxiety runs my life most of the time. From the way I dress to my hairstyles (that I switch up every 5 business days), I am constantly overthinking and running scenarios like they are trailers before the movie that is my life. Yes, I am sick and tired of this. No, I do not have a clear solution for you here. So if you thought I was going to have the answers for your similar issues, I don’t. I won’t pretend to have degrees in psychology and a full understanding of even my own psyche. But I will bring you along in this post to try and discover why I (we) are like this and some ways that we (I) can cope better with the anxious thoughts that rule the world.
Now, you might ask yourself why is this woman talking about anxiety when the title is about intuition? Well, my anxiety is the wall that keeps me from following my intuition let alone trusting in myself enough to believe that I know the right way to go or the right thing to do. Anxiety is a barrier that reinforces my self-doubt, and when you doubt your every thought and are debilitated in your decision making, how can you know what intuition is?
I’m glad you asked - intuition is
Now that we know what intuition is, let’s break it down to understand how we are using it incorrectly or not using it at all. Let’s start with the first definition and the word ‘understand’. A lot of the times, this is what trips me up because wanting to understand is what keeps anxiety knocking at my front door. It is unfortunate how many hours we can spend up late at night trying to gain understanding of why or how we need to do something and .. oh right after understanding is ‘instinct’ so says the definition. So this is a tough portion because instinct can mean different things to all of us. Where do you go for instinct? You should be looking for an internal source but a lot of us tend to look for external sources of what our instincts should be. It’s so hard, I know because we carry the baggage of our own past experiences and also the baggage of those who came before us. Often, we are taught by family members or close friends what to believe in and where to get your ‘instinct’ from. This is also where my overthinking kicks in so how do we tame that to connect with our true internal compass to tap into instinct? Lucky for us, I found external resources to help tap in to the internal source:
Mel Robbins describes this as “Synchronicity.”
Meditation is a great way to clear the highway of thoughts from your mind. I like to picture myself driving in my car with the windows down through a busy city with traffic to an open two lane road with an open blue sky. I am the only one driving to the top of a mountain (or to a clearwater beach), whatever works for you. Meditating in a dark room at night with sound bowls playing is also so great to connect with yourself and clear your mind. A great guided meditation here
Repeating Phrases like “slow down” or “it’s out of your control” internally is another great way to be the guy in the read directing traffic when the lights are down and chaos ensues. We want to have more control and mindfulness of when our minds are spiraling. It’s ok if you catch it when it is 5 thoughts later and you are on the fifth scenario of one singular thought.
Write down your First thought when it comes to you or when it comes back to you. I often have an aha moment when I think of something I want or need and instead of creating the scenarios of who, what, when, where and why; I will write it down and let it sit. If that same thought comes back to me, I know it is in sync with what is meant for me and I can trust that is my intuition yelling now to make a decision.
trust
Do you trust in your instincts? I know, that is a loaded question. Deep sighs to our self doubt and our inquisitive nature. I hear whispers of “but what if..” and “how do I know..” The real question is how do we shut this line of questioning up and let go? How do we trust? We all have our baggage as I mentioned before. This baggage comes with various loads of dirty laundry that you are bringing home from vacation (the life you’ve lived). Fine, I will give an example. Your belief system assigned to men could be that there are no good men left on planet earth because all of the good men you know are married are you thought you knew good men but the ones you know all have cheated on their wives once. So, when you meet a man who has a seemingly pure heart and they have people who vouch that he is a kind guy, the kind you would want to marry, you doubt them. You doubt yourself, him and you doubt your initial intuition that is your love for him.
We can vary from one extreme belief to another but the gist is that we claim to know these universal truths. I believe that this is for our own protection. I don’t want to fail because I equate failure with putting myself in danger or making myself vulnerable. We decide on these truths and they get in the way of our trust in ourselves and whatever may guide us. This in turn, means that we are putting fear and protection before our own true intuition. It is okay to have fear, but not when it overpowers your initial excitement, we do need to question the evolution of emotion.
Once we get ourselves to a place of connection with our source of truth and direction for synchronicity, we are not able to take a leap and make decisions based solely on that. Here is what I found on how we can gain trust with ourselves and our choices:
We are all on this journey together. It is important to remember that it is your first time on earth along with everyone else. No one is living a perfect experience of knowing what to do at all times with 100% confidence. The truth is that we have to practice confidence and trust in our intuition every day. I will be continuing my journey of understanding ways to help myself and anyone reading.
-Thank you for joining me-
