Trusting Your Instincts Gut Feeling, When Intuition Works Wonders
Many successful people have relied on their gut feel during certain critical situations to choose the more rewarding decision. Many life lessons are borne witness of the power of intuition as your guide even when the odds are against you.
Intuition is different from thinking because you already KNOW something is wrong OR right without knowing. How many times have you encountered situations where what you felt was played out to be more accurate than what was seeming or what looked good on paper?
One of Marilyn Monroe's famous quotes was about trusting one's female instincts.
Learning to listen to your internal radar sniffs out bogeys before they can get you into trouble and can even be a more rewarding decision making process for certain kinds of situations. Like a guardian angel telling you being patient for an extra month will work out fine despite what everyone thinks and says. Or a whisper in your soul that warns you that smile offered to you is false and this stranger is up to no good.
Some new age gurus often take advantage of teaching unconscious reasoning pr intuition as some kind of pseudo-spiritual mystic guidance of some powerful life energy...
But this kind of thinking comes with more pitfalls than rewards.
Just like animals, humans have a way of sensing danger and opportunities just using gut feel. There is a growing body of solid research showing us that intuition is a critical aspect of how we humans survive in our environment. Whether for soldiers in the heat of battle, businessmen taking risks for their money, or an artist putting paint on a canvass.
Some advice on how to tune into your natural instinct for knowing good things and sensing trouble:
Think: Gut feel is often an inspired action. Thinking often will guide you to explore what you know and what you don't know and sometimes your instincts will guide you in a moment that some things are worth the risk or exploring a choice might be more rewarding than you expect. Or that you may not know enough and that you need to take time and learn how it works for you.
Arts and Crafts: Doodling and writing thoughts or a story down has been studied by behavioral and health practitioners to improve mental and emotional states. Get yourself painting if you like. Making music wires the brain differently from non-musicians and helps you be more creatively smarter AND better with math intuitively without you knowing it. Arts and crafts allow you to feel out a work process by intuition just by playing and gets you more rewarding results.
Listening: Paying attention to how people behave and talk often reveal insights that your instincts can count on. People watching is one thing some succesful writers and actors do in their downtime, while sitting down in a restaurant during the course of a meal, or hanging out at the mall. You figure out more by just listening with your eyes and ears. Sitting alone in silence listening to yourself think is also one activity that helps you know better.
Don't be a Robot: Your body tells you when it needs sleep, in need of a holiday, or getting the flu. It tells you when you're having a blast and when something isn't worth the trouble. Pay attention. Enjoy your moments. Take care of yourself. Avoid situations and people that give you negative vibes. Don't dig yourself in a hole. Or get stuck in ways.
Wu Wei: The Chinese have a proverb about accomplishing plenty and doing little. Conscious non-action. Wu-Wei is translated as the deliberate and principled decision to do nothing for a reason. How does this work? If you can go out in your garden and just spend some time to relax or visit the local park and sit on a bench and woolgather, that is the best downtime spent to put things together in your mind. Sometimes daydreaming and keeping in touch with nature allows you to feel the grand scheme of things and give you a better perspective. Or blow soap bubbles like a child and marvel at how nothing doing can bring so much joy and inspiration.
En Taro Adun!: A well-known warcry by the video game generation (Starcraft), which half-translates to "Let's have at it!" Life happens in its own time and you can't control every detail and you don't need to control every detail or you'll go crazy or work everything wrong. Relax and let things happen. Even when things are going bonkers. Part of living and learning is the EXPERIENCE of it all...trouble and success. Like a samurai warrior ready for battle.
Be of Good Cheer: The best advice Jesus gave in the Bible was: Don't Worry! He overcame the world, and so can you; if you can smile and keep a good mood despite setbacks. Miracles aren't a one out of a million thing, they happen everyday. You got good odds to work things out and be rewarded. When you get screwed, you can still joke about it, move on and find another opportunity.
Intuition can work in your favor if you nurture habits that keep your body healthy, your mind sharp, and your spirit optimistic. No matter your purpose, being able to figure out and think well, enduring adversity, and staying in shape, all work in your favor. Too much mental stress, giving up when the going gets tough, and grinding your body into the grave, never rewarded anyone.
Reward yourself with better decisions by using your intuition and when things don't happen, something inside will tell you there's a better opportunity that builds on top of it.
