How To Listen To Your Intuition

We’ve heard the adage “women’s intuition” and perhaps we’ve experienced the satisfaction of following our intuition and finding it was right.  How often though, do we bury that internal guide? How often do we refuse to listen to our inner voice?  Do we trust the opinions of others over ourselves?

For generations women learned at the feet of their mother’s and grandmother’s that there is a pure perception of truth, devoid of outside reason that lives within us.  They were taught to listen to that part of their self when coming to a cross road.  What their mother’s, grandmother’s, great-grandmother’s and generations of women before them embraced was their “femaleness”.
They knew that being different from men didn’t make them less than men. It made them powerful women in their own right.

Do you trust your intuition?

Somewhere along the line (probably starting with our fathers) we were told (verbally or non-verbally) that our intuition didn’t count.  We needed to listen to “reason”.  We needed to “investigate” and “research” before making decisions.  Be “logical”.  Some of the women in our lives echoed these sentiments.  We began to stifle that pure reason in exchange for logic, outside opinions and outside information and validation.  Underneath it all our gut still talked to us, or intuition sat silently waiting for us to recognize it’s importance. Now, I’m not saying that using logic, gathering information and listening to other opinions is wrong.  But to bury that basic instinct that lies within us definitely is wrong.

Learning to trust our intuition

Maybe you’ve learned to ignore your gut feeling.  Maybe you you’ve felt your intuition speaking to you and just want to learn to listen to it.  How do we learn or re-learn finding and listening to our own intuition?

Learning to trust ourselves and our feelings is key.  Some things to try:

• Meditation – Sit quietly and listen.  Start by trying to do this for one minute per day.  Notice what you’re thinking about, what your emotions are.
• Taking a walk – Walking alone to clear your head can give your intuition a way to surface.
• Journal – write about how you feel.  You might find your writing stiff at first. Don’t give up! Remember that you are safe in your journal – say what you feel.
• Tarot Cards – Discover this ancient art of clarifying your feelings.  Contrary to popular belief, tarot cards are not “fortune telling”.   The beautifully illustrated cards can help to bring out feelings related to a particular situation in your life.
• Create – Creating with our hands, picking up the brush, the needles, the “tools” we create with gives a sense of calmness.  In the act of creating the silence of focus becomes the stimulus for feeling that which is below our conscious level.

Trusting in ourselves and our instincts is one of the most important gifts we can give ourselves as women.  We can pass this gift to our daughters and other women in our lives by helping them to trust themselves too.

Have there been times in your life when you followed your intuition or wished you had?
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