What Is Intuition – Are You Intuitive

Have you ever heard an inner voice that told you to do this or not to do that? Did you pay attention to it? This is a little voice that says, “Take this route instead tonight,” or “Don’t push onto that crowded bus, go and get a coffee and wait for the next one,” or “Don’t go down that street,”. Your intuition is that little voice (or it could be pictures, or a hunch, or a video or words) that gives you ideas and suggestions that will improve your life in some way, big or small. It might help you avoid a traffic jam or an accident or even a mugging.

Why Become More Intuitive

Your intuition always has your best interests at heart, it will NEVER tell you to do something harmful to you or others, if it does, ignore it, it is not your intuition working. Using your intuition can stretch you beyond your comfort zone, but never more than you’re capable of. You will be challenged but also supported. It can be scary but it will also gently warn when to stop or turn around. Tuning into your intuition and being guided by it can help you feel at ease with yourself and all your life experiences and make “challenges” much easier. You may also be surprised how good fortune just lands in your lap (synchronicity).

How To Improve Your Intuition

If you feel you have never heard any little voice that could be your intuition calling, then learning to recognize and listen to it will require time, patience and practice, just like building up stamina or muscle. Watch out for ideas, feelings or hunches, that crop up. Be aware of the voice that accompanies it. Is it gentle, positive, supportive? Start small, don’t make those huge, life-changing decisions if you are just starting out. Practice and trust and starting out on the small things will help you learn that the little voice is telling you that something is the right thing to do and it is working in your best interests. As you work on and with your intuition, any worries or anxieties you may have should lessen, you’ll learn to trust that situations will all work out well, and maybe even better than you imagined!

Using Your Journal To Develop Your Intuition

9 Steps To Develop Your Intuition

You already have it, you just need to recognize this and then you can start developing it. Did you ever get “a feeling” about something – maybe something not right, or choosing a different way to do something? That could have been your intuition at work. It’s your mind using all of its abilities, not just those pieces of information that consciously you are aware of. How do you know whether you can you trust intuition? And whether you can improve it?

1. Recognize it and encourage it.
2. Set aside a small amount of time each day to listen to your intuition
3. Give it good information to work with, that is, study the areas in which you want to use it, before expecting good answers or before trusting your hunches
4. Use meditation to give yourself the peace and quiet that will allow that little voice to be heard more clearly
5. Ask questions that you would like your intuition to provide answers on
6. Use your journal to immediately write down the questions and any answers you receive. Like dreams, hunches fade quickly.
7. Study it to make it more trustworthy. There may be some areas your intuition is better at than others, maybe good with stock picks or poor with people. Become intuitive about your intuition. Question your hunches, study the feelings you get about them and you may be able to improve your intuition because you recognise areas where old feelings are affecting it.
8. Take action on your hunches and record the results
9. Try to find areas in your own life where you intuitively operate.

I’m In Denial – Now What?

This was told to me by someone I knew some years ago:

Agnes’s Story

“I know others have told me to lose weight. Even my doctor has told me to lose weight. I thought he said ‘wait, wait’ and I asked, ‘wait for what?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘The problem is W E I G H T! You need to lose weight, not wait for something to happen. Although if you do wait, it’s likely to be diabetes or a heart attack!’

So I have acknowledged that I need to lose weight, well … at least I heard my doctor say that and some of my friends too, but it’s too hard. I’ve tried before and failed. I was hungry all the time. I even went to exercise classes but nothing worked, I didn’t lose a single ounce. Now what?”

Agnes was in denial.

Overcoming Denial

The virtuous spiral can be exited at any point if you choose and denying there is a problem is a choice. You may not think it much of a choice but nevertheless, you have chosen to leave. You may argue that “nothing worked before, so it won’t work now”, or “it’s too hard”, but those, and other phrases are just your body whining because it doesn’t want to have to leave its comfort zone.

Comfort Zone – What Comfort Zone?

Your comfort zone is where you do what you have always done. It’s where very little changes, where you eat the kinds of things you have always eaten, where you refuse to learn anything new because “it won’t make any difference” and where you hover between the fire and the ice, so you’re not too hot and not too cold, even though you may not be truly comfortable there, at least you’re not frozen or burnt. It also includes searching out those “sweet treats” or “allowable sins”, so you can keep your sweet tooth in the comfort to which it has become accustomed.

But NOTHING CHANGES there, unless something is forced upon you. That something may be slowly progressive, like joint pain, creaking knees and increasing breathlessness. They may be brushed off as “Just getting old” but the something could also be a dramatic event like a heart attack or a stroke or a diagnosis of diabetes.

That is what you are choosing when you deny that change needs to be made. Your choice to do nothing does not guarantee that things will stay the same, though they may. Your choice to do nothing ALSO contains the possibility of something dramatic happening to you through your inaction.

What Next?

Agnes decided to take up a new exercise. She got herself a bike and used it for doing her shopping and travelling back and forth to her part time, local job. She lost her weight, by deciding to find something DIFFERENT to do that would give her more exercise and help her lose weight and of course by USING it. The best exercise or road bike in the world won’t help if it doesn’t get used.

QUESTION

The next stop on the virtuous spiral is to “Question”. You can use this to get yourself out of denial. Ask yourself WHY people (especially your doctor) might be telling you to lose weight. It’s definitely a topic few friends will bring up unless they are very close and concerned about your health. Most spouses won’t mention it either unless they are deliberately trying to upset you or get at you. Ask yourself whether your friends or partner might be deliberately trying to make you unhappy or whether they have your true interests at heart. If you think they are trying to help, then ask WHY they want you to lose weight.

Why Do I Need To Lose Weight?

Only you can answer this. Some of your answers might be:

• I don’t have the energy to do my daily jobs, work or housework
• I am finding it difficult to climb stairs or get breathless if I move far
• My knees or hips or both hurt because of the extra weight being carried
• My clothes don’t fit any more and I find it hard to get new ones that fit me
• My doctor has told me I have high blood pressure, or I am prediabetic
• My doctor or health adviser has said I need to lose weight
• I can’t bend down or reach to do up my clothes at the back
• A close relative has diabetes or has suffered a major illness because of overweight
• I don’t like to have my photograph taken and I wince when I see ones taken without me knowing

So Now What?

If you have provided yourself with some questions, now you need to get the information to answer these, so you have taken yourself on round the virtuous spiral to the next step – get information.