Making The Right Decisions By Using Your Intuition
Apr 12, 2022
How would you like to start making “the right” decisions, ones that you won’t later regret? In this post, I’m going to share with you how you can trust that you’re making the right decisions. That way you can start trusting yourself to make decisions with confidence and best of all, without regrets.
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During these difficult times, you’re feeling confused, hurt, and trying to rationally figure out the “right” thing to do. What tends to happen is that you end up being more confused, indecisive and you tend to avoid taking any action. You may even talk yourself out of what you feel you need to do.
Making such a major life decision requires that you not only engage the logical and rational mind by doing research and making an informed decision. It also requires that you also go beyond just your conscious level of thinking and make decisions with your heart, on a more soulful level, that goes beyond your rational mind.
You'll need to make a decision that’s a “yes” on all levels.
Working with your intuition is something that isn’t always easy to get to especially if you aren’t used to working with your intuition. It may be hard at first to decipher whether it’s your head or your intuition. What if you know what you’re being guided towards, how do you trust it and actually follow through?
What your intuition is and how it works
Intuition has many definitions. The definition I’ll use for our purposes is that it’s the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
The term itself literally means, “inner teacher.”
It’s actually a very natural ability that we are all born with. You can call it a gut feeling, a hunch, instinct, or messages from your higher self or God.
Can you remember a time when you could just feel that something was off about someone or a situation? Maybe you sensed that your husband is seeing someone else, or is hiding something but you had no logical reason to believe it, no evidence for it. Maybe you had the urge to call someone and next thing you know they’re calling you in that exact moment. Perhaps you got the message to take a different route to work and on that route, you came across something that was the answer that you had been searching for to something important, or you avoided an accident. We’ve all had experiences where we got the hit to do something or not do it and it seemed to come out of nowhere.
Our intuition is usually the strongest when we’re children. As we grow it gets blocked for many of us since we’re taught to use logic and evidence-based reasoning mostly. We get conditioned to tune out our hunches and nudges and trust what’s been scientifically proven instead since society says that that’s more reliable.
In actuality, intuition is just as reliable and is always nudging us in the right direction. Intuition and intellect do complement one another too. You can think of analysis, logic and reason to be more like linear thinking– it’s practical, it makes sense, but it’s also limited. You can know only as much information as you pick up from your 5 senses or that can be scientifically measured.
On the other hand, though, intuition is more expansion, it goes beyond what the mind can conceive. It might not make sense and it may not be all that clear either, but when you start working with your intuition and follow its guidance, you’ll be amazed at the synchronicities and “good luck” that start happening.
You’ll simply find yourself at the right place, right time. You’ll know things and just have no idea how you were so accurate. You’ll start having more faith in yourself and with life in general, feeling like the universe has your back, because it does.
Is it your head or heart?
It's hard to not only hear your intuition but also trust it when you've been conditioned to abandon yourself. If you're outwardly focused, always trying to please others, constantly seeking advice from others, and deferring to what they think instead of your own judgments. If this is you, don't worry.
Taking small steps to reconnect to yourself can help to strengthen your connection with your own inner knowing.
Start working with your intuition because listening to your intuition is an act of self-love. It's about trusting the deepest truth and wisdom that’s already within you.
Like a muscle, you can develop and strengthen your ability to recognize and trust your intuitive messages. They're always trying to guide you in the direction that your soul wants to go in. This is how you’ll be able to have more confidence in your decisions and be able to trust the answers you receive intuitively.
Be sure to start small though.
Trying to decide such a pivotal decision like whether to stay married or get a divorce is a big deal and it can trigger a lot of anxiety, fear, and intense emotions. Instead, I encourage you to start making decisions on smaller issues and go in the direction that you feel directed to take. Follow your inclinations and be more curious, that’s how your intuition works.
Learning how to get in touch with your intuition and knowing how it shows up for you will help you build confidence and a strong relationship with your deeper self. That way you’ll feel more confident and not hesitant to trust the intuitive guidance you get on more life-changing decisions.
How You Can Start Working With Your Intuition To Strengthen It
1. Be open to receiving your intuitive messages
You’re already intuitive. Your intuition is always sending you messages whether you realize it or not. What helps is to suspend the need to rationalize everything. This is the left side of the brain that’s active which is the part that deals with logic, reasoning and language. When you choose to open up to your intuition, you’re engaging more of the right hemisphere of your brain which is responsible for emotions, senses, music, art, and creative thoughts.
So set the intention that you’re willing to tune in to your intuition and open to its messages for guidance. Sonia Choquette has a great mantra for this, she suggests repeating to yourself that you accept, expect, trust and act on your intuition. You accept that your intuition is always available to you. You expect it to send you messages, you trust the messages you receive and you act on them. Implementing this mantra helps to start connecting with that deeper part of you.
2. Practice quieting your mind more often
It helps to distinguish the voice of fear v.s. your intuition. I definitely believe fear is important, it’s the part of our survival mechanism that tries to protect us from perceived harm. It’s your ego and instincts that are designed to keep you safe. Fear-based thoughts and emotions come from an activated nervous system and the messages tend to be urgent and loud.
Fear says I should do this, I have to do that. Typically the thought will have an underlying feeling of anxiety or overwhelm. It tends to be motivated by our conditioning from the past, our subconscious blocks, the ego and habitual patterns of people-pleasing or how we deal (or not deal) with conflict.
Intuitive messages on the other hand are calm, gentle and subtle. Intuition says, “Go this way.” “Try again.” “Not right now.” “Yes.” “No.” Very direct, calm and to the point.
Fear tries to keep you safe and small. Intuition wants you to grow and expand. It’ll push you past your comfort zone which can feel freeing but also terrifying. There is a fine line between fear and intuition.
It’s hard to miss the subtlessness with all the mental chatter we have all day long. This is true too when your nervous system is active and you’re in survival mode which we all fall into when we’re stressed and overwhelmed.
That’s why it helps to carve out time each day for 5-20 minutes of meditation, yoga, deep breathing, or exercise. Even simply practicing just stillness and solitude can do wonders. These activities help strengthen your awareness, pick up on information that is in between thoughts and it drops you into your body rather than living in your head.
The body has so much wisdom too so it’s important to start paying attention to your feelings and senses too. One other note here is to take care of your body– eat nutritious meals, drink more water, exercise, sleep more. All of these will help to nourish your body, regulate your nervous system and think more clearly.
3. Pay attention to how you receive your intuitive guidance
Even though we all receive intuitive messages, how we receive them can vary. It’s different for everyone. But I want to give you an idea of the 4 different ways we pick up on messages so that way you can pay attention to which are the strongest for you.
There are actually other more subtle senses too that our nervous system uses to process energy, they’re called the “clairs.”
There is clairsentience, clairvoyance, clairaudience and claircognizance.
Clairsentience means “clear feeling.” It's when we use our physical and emotional feelings to pick up on information and respond to it. That’s why you’ll hear people say they got a gut feeling about something or they tell you to follow your heart.
Both your brain and your gut have their wisdom and send messages to the brain that influence your thinking. If you pick up on vibes, hunches, or even physical sensations like a tightening in your body or even a lightness or a feeling of joy or peace, there is a message in those feelings and emotions.
I sometimes get what feels like someone literally punched me in the gut when I think about something that triggers dread. Keep in mind that emotions can also lead to physical sensations. For example, when you feel excited about something, your body is energized or you get those butterfly feelings.
On the other hand, let’s say you feel fearful or angry about something, your body will tense up and trigger the automatic fight, flight, or freeze response. That can also happen when something feels off like a person or place that just rubs you the wrong way but you can’t really pinpoint why.
Clairvoyance means “clear seeing.” This can come in the form of flashes of images that you see with your mind’s eye, vivid dreams, symbols or signs. It means that your sense of sight is how you tend to pick up on subtle information, although a lot of the time you’ll see images with your eyes closed.
A common tendency of clairvoyant people is that they’re visually inclined. They’re sensitive to bright lights and bright sunny days without sunglasses. They notice and appreciate beauty, as well as value visual balance and order.
Clairaudience means “clear hearing.” You could receive messages through song lyrics you hear or that pop up in your mind, maybe you hear someone say something but no one is there.
The sounds can come externally or as a voice inside your head, typically it’ll be your own voice. If this tends to be your primary channel for intuition, know that you aren’t crazy. You aren’t making it up and it’s more than just your own thoughts, they’re messages from the divine (however you choose to define it).
People who are clairaudient tend to be sensitive to certain sounds and loud volumes. They prefer quiet places and avoid being around people who use harsh language or negative talk such as gossiping.
Claircognizance means “clear thinking or knowing.” This is when you automatically receive information almost like an instant download. You don’t know how or why you know something but you just do. Oftentimes people who are claircognizant are teased as being a “know it all.”
Some examples of claircognizance are meeting someone new and instantly knowing certain information about them to you would have no reason to know, or receiving inspired “million dollar” ideas that seem to come from out of nowhere, or knowing facts about something without any prior knowledge or research. It’s important to trust this information even if it doesn’t make logical sense to you.
Keep in mind that you could very well be using all of these subtle senses since we are all physiologically wired with these senses. You may have a couple that are more dominant. Sometimes if your intuition sends you a message one way but you don’t follow it, it could try to get your attention in other ways. It just depends on which are more developed and stronger for you.
Also, if you get an intuitive hit but it isn’t clear, you can always ask for a clearer message or sign. What matters is that you’re open to receiving messages.
You can use your imagination too and play games on trivial things for fun to strengthen your intuition. Have fun playing around and being curious since it’s these little games that help you to see how your intuition shows up for you and strengthen it the more you trust it.
Intuition is always the first thing that comes up before we analyze it away with our logical brain.
4. Keep a journal and track your intuitive messages
Keep an evidence journal. Anytime you pick up on an intuitive message, a sign, synchronicity, hunch or however it shows up for you, keep a record of it. Write down the details of it. As you keep track, you’ll start becoming aware of all the ways your intuition shows up for you, how it feels, how it communicates, whether you listened to it or not and what resulted from it. With this awareness, it’ll get easier to recognize what’s the voice of intuition and what is fear and ego.
5. Act on your nudges
It’s not enough to get intuitive messages, you have to act on them. That’s what will get you results and start building trust that you’re headed in the right direction. So whenever you get a nudge, a hunch, something that calls to you even if it makes zero sense, follow it. See where it takes you. Don’t question it or fight against it. If you feel prompted to do something and it seems harmless, go for it. See where it leads you, you may have unexpected blessings that are waiting for you.
Part 2 will go into a step-by-step process for working with your intuition when you’re trying to decide whether to stay in your marriage or end it as well as what you can do if your intuition points in a direction that you're scared to go in.
All the best,
