How do you know when you’re truly listening to your intuition?
Have you noticed that sometimes your intuition is wrong?
It’s not really wrong, it’s just we humans mistaking something else for our intuition.
I don’t count on my intuition to make my decisions for me, but if it decides to help me along, I don’t mind at all.
Primarily I see intuition as a suggestion tool. It hints and nudges you to look at new things by affecting your feelings and thoughts.
The clearer your mind is, the better you are able to receive intuitive guidance, inspiration and all those fancy things associated with spirituality.
I don’t really see them as something esoteric. They are just tools that help me live my life.
A lot of people are apprehensive just by the mere fact that it has something to do with spirituality.
The cool thing is that you don’t have to see it that way. I use these things because they produce results and they feel good. With that said, here are the four simple tips I promised you:
4 Tips on How to Enhance Your Intuition
1. Patience. I tend to rush things. I want everything to happen instantly, so being patient is something that I’ve had a lot of trouble with. If I can learn to be at least somewhat patient, I know you can. When we rush things, we tend to overlook a lot of factors, which naturally leads to our intuition being blocked out.
2. Listen. Intuitive guidance can come in many different forms. It can come to you as a T.V commercial or as a bird flying past that provokes a specific thought within you that feels significant. The possibilities are endless. As your mind starts to become more open and receptive, you will see more and more intuitive signals, but beware, because it is easy to create them yourself and mistake them for the real thing.
3. Find Your Signal. To add extra credibility to your intuitive messages, find you personal confirmation signal(s). I have two very basic signals that I have come to rely on. One is chills running down my spine and the other is simply feeling incredibly good and uplifted. For example, if I am looking for an apartment, I might be looking at pictures and suddenly get a chill down my spine accompanied by a river of good feelings. That tells me that I might want to look closer at that specific apartment.
4. Meditation. As you’ve probably noticed, our thoughts and feelings can easily distort the messages we get. This is where meditation comes in. Starting your day with 10-15 minutes of meditation clears your mind and sets the tone for the whole day. If you don’t know how to start, check out my article on how to meditate.
Observe and Write Down
We’re all unique, so it’s only natural that our intuition will be unique as well. You will receive different confirmation signals than I do and you may get your intuitive e-mail in another form. You never know until you start being present and listening to your body and being aware of your surroundings.
The biggest frustration I had in the beginning was thinking that something was my intuition talking to me when it wasn’t. This is natural and bound to happen. It happens to me all the time.
What can you do?
Shrug it off and smile :).
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I know where you’re coming from about patience. I have a lot of trouble with this when it comes to wanting to watch a movie that I don’t have yet. I want to go rent it or want to get it from Netflix and have to wait for it to be sent to me. It drives me crazy so I simply tell myself that if it’s something I want to see that bad, it’s worth the wait.
This is just a little about how impatient I can be.
Good article, Henri. Always love reading what you write! 🙂
Oh yeah. I have that too, but I tend to just forget about what movie I wanted to see. Then when I re-discover it it’s a nice surprise.
One thing that irritates me is how long I have to wait for books, but I think that problem has been solved by the Kindle. I just have to get around to buying one. Maybe I’ll win a contest first 😉
I think intuition is a sort of expert status built in with us. Intuition can be developed as well, for example when you just start out with something new you can rarely rely on your intuition, because you haven’t developed it yet, but once you are more experienced you can use it.
Excellent point. I think there’s many different types of intuition. There’s the one that is more esoteric, then there’s the one you mentioned that comes from experience, which is of great importance!
Another thing i would suggest to add to thelist of tools for increasing intuition is don’t hesitate. This is not the opposite of being paient by any means instead it means after waiting for the moment to be right acting quickly and decisively. Some times our intuition gives us a clear nudge that the time is now and we must be ready to act when we feel that. The more we learn to trust that scents and at see results from trusting it the easier it becomes to hear it.
Yup, not hesitating is big. A good sign that your intuition is “true” is the fact that it will compel you to take action, but sometimes hesitation can come in the way for sure.
Nice article. Especially the last line. Exercise it, learn to trust it and like Quinn says, go ahead and act on it. Nice work Henri.
Thanks Erin 🙂
Henri,
I am a fan of your writing. This post about intuition is yet another hit out of the park!
Intuition is, I am afraid, considered to be the “Darth Vader” of our modern age.
From early on, we are told, “show me the numbers.” Authority figures tell us to “cut to the chase and show me the evidence. Where is the data?”
However, intuition works without proof or evidence. Intuition is another way of knowing. Poker champions like you can know how to roll the dice or figure out an opponent just by the look on their faces, tone of voice, body language, etc. You learn to trust your gut, and you instinct will figure out a solution for you.
Sometimes, it just feels right. When I go for a walk, my legs move intuitively without my conscious awareness. I don’t need to “program” my legs to do the work.
Intuition can also work in another way: some time ago, I was just thinking about a friend, and he called me first thing in the morning. We all have had such experiences. You can label it any which way, but our rational mind cannot grasp it.
Tiger Woods (oops) and Andre Agassi (oops) know they are going to score (oops) in their respective games (golf, tennis) because they have a feeling about it.
Despite their rush to judgment, management scholars have also started to pay closer attention to the role of intuition in companies: time and again, managers have revealed they play their hunches while taking major decisions. This is not something that is taught or encouraged in Harvard Business School! Thanks.
You’re dead on, Archan. We’re taught from an early age to neglect our hunches and intuitions, but it’s coming back into fashion now. Like you said, sometimes you just know. Pay attention when that happens.
I’ve been really getting in touch with my spiritual side recently and using similar ideas to those in this post I’ve gained a great deal of clarity and, now that you mention, I will occasionally let myself be guided by my intuition if it’s pointing me in the right direction.
One of the biggest issues for me was point 1. Patience is something I’ve always struggled with. I wanted it all and I wanted it now. There is great deal of stress and mental fog that persists when you have no patience.
As part of my “no complaints” challenge this month, I’ve really learned to control my patience and realised that the journey is the best part of this whole process. Not the destination. My mind is clearer now, I’m not angry, stressed or tense.
If I feel this good just from overcoming your first point, imagine how I’ll feel when I’ve fully implemented 2 and 3 (already do 4)!
Great post Henri….again!
🙂
I can relate to the patience, it’s not my strongest point either. As you use more and more of these things in your life, the momentum will build.
I’ve learnt over time to trust my gut. I get gut feelings a lot about things and I’ve come to find that if I follow them that they nearly always turn out to be good, sometimes amazing.
When you fine tune your gut feeling you can really start to amaze yourself, just like you’ve discovered. My feeling comes more from the heart. It’s interesting how different our experiences are and still stay the same ;).
Awesome stuff. That talk looks interesting. I like it when people explain these seemingly spiritual things and show that they are explainable.
Hi Henri.
That’s a good one there about finding our signal. Sometimes I get a certain feeling like I am in a good position, place, or have found a cool opportunity, so I listen to those feelings more now. There was a time when I would feel that and then wonder what to do. Now I know to at least try and implement what feels right. I also have a pretty good sense of others and their interests after realizing we are all connected in some way.
I haven’t tried meditating after waking up. That sounds like it might be a smart thing to do.
Meditation is very smart!
Heya Henri 🙂
Hope you’re settling in to your new home. 🙂 Another really great post … I have thought about writing about this topic too, but had felt a bit unsure how to explain things … you have done this really well, again interfusing the inspirational with the practical.
Cheers
Jen
Settling excellently over here. You should write about intuition as well. Let it come out and see what happens!
Henri,
Patience is one of the most valuable skills I’ve learned when it comes to enhancing intuition. Surfing teaches you massive amounts of patience because you are put on the schedule of mother nature. Add that to presence (my own meditation) and you have seriously enhanced intuition . Great tips.
I can imagine surfing would do that to you. It’s funny how the things we love to do teach us so much about life. Like poker did for me and surfing is doing for you.
Interesting post. Would be fun to see a post about enhancing sensory skills, kind of the opposite of intuition.
-Andrew
Experience counts too. Many sales persons, doctors, and HR Managers have good intuition about people. They learnt from their experience and able to size up a person in less than a minute.
I like to listen to my intuition naturally because it is helping me in some ways when I seek for guidance. Although, not all the times giving me correct message, but its still helping me in my present and future.