Your New Best Friend: Your Gut! (Tool #4, Intuition)

It’s no secret that I’m not into a one-size-fits-all system for dealing with the ups and downs of life. At the same time, it’s important for me to remind myself of the qualities I’ve strived to cultivate over the years: ones that have brought me a greater sense of passion, purpose, joy, and connection. This is the fourth in a series of blogs that detail how I personally incorporate the seven tools of my book, Your Messy Brilliance: 7 Tools for the Perfectly Imperfect Woman, into my life.  I invite you to take a deep dive with me into the value of Curiosity, Awareness, Acceptance, Intuition, Choice, Manifestation, and Your Infinite Roadmap! Please let me know in the comments how you personally address and engage with each of these important tools in your life. 

I am soooo tired of people putting psychics on a pedestal. Sure, it takes massive skill to channel information that we don’t seem to have immediate access to, but here’s the thing: Everyone has an inner psychic. We simply have to clear through the debris of self-doubt and distraction, pay attention to our feelings, and ground into our body to find it! And when we do, the voice of our gut will prove to be way more powerful and accurate than any psychic’s forecast for us!

Over the years, I’ve done a lot of work to connect with my gut—or as I like to call it, tune into my radio signal. I know for a fact that the more frequently I do this, the stronger my intuition gets. But the more I listen to the voice of fear, or of other people’s judgments, the more it diminishes.

The great news? I’ve learned that I can always tune in, no matter where I’m at in my life.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned, and one that I don’t hear enough teachers discussing, is that the voice of fear is not the voice of your intuition! Don’t get me wrong—the voice of fear can sometimes be necessary when it’s an immediate instinct removing us from harm’s way. But when it comes to making important decisions or getting clear on what we really want, many of us make the mistake of paying more attention to fear than to intuition. Admittedly, it’s kind of hard not to, given that the voice of fear is really, really loud. Sometimes, deafening.

It’s no coincidence that sages of the past have referred to the voice of the soul (which, to me, is synonymous with intuition) as “the still, small voice within.” That’s because your intuition isn’t a mean, loud bully. You’re seldom going to hear it berating you or ordering you to absolutely not do that particular thing. When we experience that kind of urgency, it’s usually the voice of fear.

The voice of intuition, in contrast, is gentle, soft, and neutral. It’s more of a suggestion than a command. It’s more of a, “Sure, you could do this particular thing, but here’s what might happen. So you might want to consider the consequences.”

To me, attuning to the subtlety of your gut feeling is crucial. How often do we ignore that feeling when it comes to our everyday experiences? Usually, we are expecting the skies to open up and reveal the powers that be, pushing us in a particular direction. But our body is giving us little clues all the time when it comes to the choices that might best serve us.

For example, a couple weeks ago, I had a doctor’s appointment that I was feeling kind of hesitant about. I considered canceling, but I shrugged that feeling aside and told myself I just needed to suck it up and go. After all, that would be the rational thing to do. Sure enough, when I was in the procedure room, I heard my small voice say, “You aren’t going to do this today,” I got very irritated and began arguing with myself. Then I had a conversation with myself that went something like this: “I am going to follow through with this procedure because I have been preparing for it for a few months. I’m not listening to you.”

Again, I heard, “You really shouldn’t do this procedure today.” The voice was gentle, but it was persistent.

As the nurse entered the room to do the procedure, I lightly sat down on the table and swung my legs up over the end of it—and the table flipped me over, collapsing on top of me and the nurse, giving me a concussion.

Well, it was clear that I wasn’t going to have the procedure that day. Thank you, universe!

I immediately felt regret for not listening to my gut in the first place. After all, it had been broadcasting its truth so clearly, and listening to it would’ve saved me some pain! But then, I decided to give myself a break. I decided to be like my intuition: persistent but also gentle, nonjudgmental, not caught up with getting it “right.” I decided to honor the choice I’d made and extract the wisdom from my so-called mistake.

In our society, we are conditioned to ignore the gentle hints and give our attention to the screaming voice of fear (this is just as true in our external world, by the way). But when we tune into the subtlety of our gut, we learn to heed the lessons it has for us without heaping further abuse onto ourselves. We learn to say to ourselves, “I’ll be there for you, no matter what you decide.”

To find out more about Intuition and the other tools, be sure to check out my book,  Your Messy Brilliance: 7 Tools for the Perfectly Imperfect Woman. Also, let me know how you’ve explored intuition in your own life! How can you connect with intuition this week? (Hint: Maybe you can take a day to really tune in and listen to how you feel. How does your intuition manifest? Is it a small voice? A gut feeling? A loving guide? In contrast, how does fear manifest? Keep a journal that lets you track the subtle voice of your intuition, as well as the experience of fear. Notice the difference.)