Tap Into Your Intuition
Regular self-reflection can help enhance self-awareness and increase the ability to tap into your intuition with more ease and confidence. Being consumed by constant daily external data and influences can also block our ability to tap into our intuition effectively.
If you feel you are allowing other sources influence you in your life and decision-making rather than what it is that you want for yourself. Or, if you often make decisions because you think it is the right thing, but it is not what you want in your heart.
Download the “Self-Reflection Workbook” and go to the “Tap Into Your Intuition” worksheet to follow along with the tips provided in this post. This blog post is part of the Reflect series by Bloom Brilliance. Click here to read more from the Reflect series.
Read on to discover practical ways to listen to and tap into your intuition.
What is Intuition?
In the book The Highly Sensitive Person, Author, Elaine N. Aron refers to intuition as the “subtle meaning of the facts.” Explaining this further she says: “This greater awareness of the subtle tends to make you more intuitive, which simply means picking up and working through information in a semi-conscious and unconscious way. The result is that you “just know” without realizing how.”
Malcolm Gladwell, in the book, “Blink”says (intuition) is the “unconscious that is behind a locked door that we will never fully understand or comprehend.”
Scholars on intuition demonstrate intuition and insight in leadership decision-making in that “There are situations, in which decision makers arrive at an idea or a decision not by analytically inferring the solution but by either sensing the correct solution without being able to give reasons for it, or by realizing the solution all of a sudden without being able to report on the solution process. Roughly, the former phenomenon has been called intuition, the latter insight.” (Zander T, Ollinger M and Volz KG)1
Intuitive knowledge can be described as one’s expertise or experience that allows them to know instinctively and quickly the right course of action or decision to make. Intuitive trust can be described as the knowing that whatever it is that you are working on or going through will come together or work itself out. Researchers on intuition “argue that when one achieves a high level of expertise, intuition naturally emerges and at the highest level it becomes the dominant form of knowledge” (Dörfler V, and Ackermann F)2
An example is a professional who is an expert in their vocation and are able to make decisions quickly when needed based on their experiences, education, and their successes and failures. This experience enables the professional to gather information quickly and relate it to what is in front of them. Thus, enhances their ability to make quick ‘intuitive’ decisions.
In the context of self-discovery and reflection, having an internal knowledge about oneself (being your own expert) is beneficial to be able to trust and follow your intuition more quickly and instinctively. Personal intuitive knowledge can come through forms such as life experiences and knowing oneself enough to be living in constant alignment with your values, beliefs, needs and wants.
So, that just knowing feeling integrated with intuitive knowledge, together, can allow for one to follow through on their “gut” feelings.
“If we are to learn to improve the quality of the decisions we make, we need to accept the mysterious nature of our snap judgments. We need to respect the fact that it is possible to know without knowing why we know and accept that-sometimes-we’re better off that way.”
– Malcolm Gladwell
Now that we have observed some definitions on intuition, How do we listen and pay more attention to our intuition?
Listening to your intuition
Recently, I started thinking about intuition while on a morning walk. I realized there was so much noise going on in my own head. There were concerns about work, deadlines, and things I needed to get done. I wasn’t allowing any open space in my mind. I thought to myself that there was a time when I was able to just sit and think, listen to music, or go for a walk and let my mind be open and free. Now, I feel I always have to be doing something or otherwise occupying my mind. Even making the effort to go for a walk was a struggle because I knew it was taking me away from other things I felt needed to take up my mental energy.
As I started thinking about areas in my life where I felt stuck and where I had to make some tough decisions, I realized I haven’t been deeply listening to my inner voice. I didn’t have the same intuitive trust that I used to.
Why do we so often choose to ignore that feeling we experience in our gut? My thoughts are that over time, too many other distractions leave little room for the unconscious to do its work. Thus, we shut it out – which eventually becomes a habit.
Sometimes I know what my gut is telling me, but I ignore it. This could be because I am either fearful about something or lack intuitive trust in myself. As a result, I let external sources and fear guide me rather than my own internal voice.
I advocate for reflecting on the self often because it helps to deter from outside influences. It also allows one to pay attention to what is actually going on inside themselves. This is why I feel why consistent self-reflection can help enhance personal intuition.
I’ve been trying out different ways lately to help tap into and enhance my intuition more. Do you find yourself feeling the need to listen to and tap into your intuition more often? Below are some practical ways to help tap into your intuition.
Helpful tips to tap into your intuition
Write in your Journal
To me, writing down my thoughts helps release stress and energy. After I write just a couple sentences, I start to feel a sense of relief and my mind feels clearer. My journal pages capture my true authenticity. Connecting with myself helps bring about a deeper sense of personal knowing and trust. If you want to raise your intuition, I suggest writing in your journal on a consistent basis. As it will help bring about a deeper sense of personal knowledge and clarity in your life.
Allow Space (to think)
Sometimes taking a little space away from work, others, social media, and other outside sources can open up personal insights.
Allowing just a few minutes each morning, evening, or during the day, may help hone into your inner self.
Below are a few suggestions of how I like to allow space into my day:
- In the morning, after I pour my first cup of coffee, I sit down and enjoy the quiet uninterrupted space. It can be anywhere from 5 to 30 minutes where I breath, sip my coffee, think, or just gaze. I do not look at my phone, or open a book, or my computer, or talk to anybody. I just sit there and soak up the quietness and mental space.
- In the afternoons, I ensure I take breaks throughout my work day. I usually do this by going outside for a walk by myself or to just step away from my desk and do some other mundane things to clear my mind. I find that when I step away, even if it is just a few minutes, I come back to work clearer and more efficient.
- In the evenings after work, I will lay on my couch and gaze out the window to gather my thoughts while I transition; or I will do some other transition that opens my mental space such as cooking dinner (which can be a very Zen activity), take a relaxing warm shower to wash the day off, or sometimes even take a nap.
Try not to allow distractions enter such as going on the computer or phone, checking email or social media. I try to pick times where there most likely will not be any distractions or other people around.
Other ways to create space is to go in nature, for a walk or hike, meditate, plan a free day to yourself (to do nothing and with no agenda), or simply taking five minutes to breathe. Allowing mental space also helps consuming thoughts take a rest. It may just enhance the ability to come up with answers to a difficult situation or in making a tough decision. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, author of the book “Rest” says:
“Brain scientists have discovered that when you loosen your attention and let your mind wander, a set of brain regions called the default mode network kicks into high gear, and it feels like your brain may just go quiet, but actually it’s super active, you’re just not conscious of it.
The default mode network helps us organize past memories, think about the future, and it works on unsolved problems that have recently occupied our conscious attention. You know when you get stuck on a problem or something you are trying to remember, only to have the answer suddenly pop into your head a little later after you’ve stopped thinking about it and are doing something else? Well, that is the default mode network going to work, after you’ve turned your attention elsewhere. If you are bothered by an unanswered question, the default mode is tempted to take it up and to keep working on it.”
– Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, “Rest”
Be mindful to how your body is feeling
“mindfulness is attention to the river of now: your ongoing experience of what’s happening in your mind, your body, and the environment that surrounds you.”
– Mind and Emotions, McKay, Fanning, Ona
Our body can tell us lots of things if we listen to it. Pay attention to the next time you feel that sinking pit in your stomach or where your body tenses up. Take a moment to write these physical responses down and what was going on when you felt those sensations. Look for repeatable patterns. In your self-reflection journal, reflect and write about what it is you are actually feeling to get to the root of it. By listening to our bodies, awareness of feelings or emotions that we are holding onto might arise. Perhaps it is a repeatable stressor. This awareness can help you take action to address or ease the stressor.
Analyze your dreams
“In each of us is another we do not know. He speaks to us in dreams and tells us how differently he sees us from the way we see ourselves”
– Carl Jung
Dream settings and dream symbols have a lot of information in them that is worth paying attention to. Think of as a sort of intuitive knowledge that comes from our unconscious mind offering insights to our conscious waking selves.
Dream symbols usually are not straight forward. That’s why it is important to look up symbols in a dream dictionary. It’s as if your unconscious is handing these symbols to your conscious self – asking you to pay attention to them. By doing so, it raises your intuition.
There are a lot of dream resources out there. Two of my favorite resources are: “The Element Encyclopedia of 20,000 Dreams: The Ultimate A-Z to Interpret the Secrets of Your Dreams” by Theresa Cheung, and “The Complete Dream Book: Discover What your Dreams Tell about You and Your Life” by Gillian Holloway, Ph.D. I use these two interchangeably and have used them for years.
If you prefer online dream encyclopedia’s, I found these online resources:
https://www.dreamdictionary.org/
https://journeyintodreams.com/dream-dictionary/.
A simple way to reflect on your dreams is to write down your dream when you first wake up. Then make note of any symbols that stuck out. Look up the scenarios and symbols in a dream encyclopedia and write down their meanings. Next, think about how the meanings apply to your life. Is there some truth in what you found to what is going on in your life? How can this dream help guide you?
Download the Self Reflection Workbook and complete the prompts on the “Tap into your Intuition” Worksheet.
To dig deeper into your intuition, complete the prompts in the “Tap into your Intuition” worksheet. This worksheet will help you think about what is going on currently and how you are truly feeling about it. Try not to hold back. Maybe some things will pop up that you are uncomfortable with. Those feelings are helping you get to the root of things. You may realize that you tap into your intuition more often than you think. There is also an activity that helps you work through a time when you trusted and followed your intuition. It might give you a reminder of what it feels like to trust and know your inner self.
Remember, a lot of our intuition comes from things we already know and our past experiences. It also comes from things that we know deep down about how we feel. Sometimes, it just takes cutting out noise and listening to your deeper self.
If you haven’t already, check out more on the Reflect series here.
Check back often for more posts from the “Reflect” series.
Sage
References
- Zander T, Ollinger M and Volz KG (2016) Intuition and Insight: Two Processes That Build on Each Other or Fundamentally Differ? Front. Psychol., 7:1395. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01395
- Dörfler V, and Ackermann F (2012) Understanding intuition: The case for two forms of intuition. Sage, 43(5) 545 –564. DOI: 10.1177/1350507611434686