You might be wondering what intuition has got to do with soul wellness. The answer is…a hell of a lot!
Intuition is a natural ability that we all have, although some have it stronger than others. As with a lot of innate characteristics, this can be put down to survival. When we were cavemen and women ,we needed to protect ourselves from predators and our intuition was a big part of helping us to do this. Nowadays, we don’t need intuition as much, but it can still be a very useful tool, if we learn to listen to it.
What is intuition?
Intuition is that gut feeling we have. Sometimes, we get butterflies in our tummies and our hair seems to stand on end. Or maybe, you get a strong urge to do something or avoid doing something. It can sometimes be a sort of voice in our heads like the voice we get when we do internal dialogue, but it seems to be coming from somewhere else. Less extreme ways our intuition can give us nudges is when we might feel shivers or become uneasy in a certain place or with some people.
Again, this is our survival instinct at work and it is thought to be linked to the subconscious mind. Everything that has ever happened to us is stored in the subconscious mind, as you know and this includes past experiences of danger, some which are from early childhood which we may have consciously forgotten about. You should also know by now, if you are a regular visitor to this website, that we learn from experience and some of this is all in our unconscious. This is where our intuition can help us.
Why should we trust our intuition?
I think this is a silly question and this is because I know, from my own personal experiences, that it pays to trust it. I can tell you so many stories about when I trusted it and it paid of and also when I didn’t listen to it and things went wrong but I won’t bore you with that here otherwise it would be a novel rather than a blog post! I can honestly say, though, that I have now learned to trust it and even if it seems irrational, I always go with my gut. Even if it is a small thing. I remember not so long ago, for example, that I went out with my dog with the intention of taking her for a really long walk as it was a pleasant evening, but when I got half way round I got a strong urge to go back home. I didn’t know why but I trusted my gut and I had literally just stepped into my house when the weather turned suddenly and a huge hailstone storm started. My poor dog would have had her little body pelted with stones! After that it poured down really heavily and the wind got stronger and it would have been terrible for us! I am so glad that I listened to my gut as there was no sign at all that the weather was going to turn like that. Obviously, my subconscious knew that the this would happen probably based on similar situations in the past. This is just one example of how your intuition can help you too.
I don’t have any intuition though!
A lot of people don’t think they have a sense of intuition. I know friends of mine who think this and I tell them that they do – we all do as it is an inbuilt survival mechanism and works in our subconscious but still they struggle to listen to it. I am telling you what I tell them. You need to train yourself. You are probably so busy rushing around each day that you don’t give yourself any time to do this. You need to find some quiet time and then you can start to pay attention to the thoughts in your head. You should also think about any feelings in your body. You can really test yourself by going to a new place. I usually get good feelings when I go into an empty church, for example. Do you feel relaxed or uneasy?
Try to meet new people as well or go to a crowded place and watch the people go by. Do any of them make you feel nervous? These are all signs that your intuition is at work. You can also do other exercises to develop your intuition. One of them you might have seen are the Zener cards that are often used by psychologists to test people’s psychic skills. Again, psychic ability is thought to be just a heightened sense of intuition, which we all have therefore making us all naturally psychic.
You can test yourself using these cards or maybe get together with a friend and try to guess what number they have chosen between 1 and 10 for example. These exercises can all help you to work with the feelings you get about things and this will strengthen you gut feelings. A lot of it works by subconsciously picking up signals from the other person’s body language. I will be doing more articles and possibly some courses on developing intuition and reading people using body language later on.
I want you to start paying attention to the world around you this weekend and if you ever get an uneasy feeling or strong urge to avoid something or to do something then I suggest you pay attention to this and do what your intuition tells you as it is just your subconscious mind trying to protect you. You will most probably be glad you listened!
If you want to develop your own intuitive skills or become an intuitive coach, click HERE