Following your intuition is always a smart idea, yet the path to getting to that can often be circuitous. Our Austin-based Resonance Repatterning expert, Mary Schneider, offers guidance to seeking more internal intuition as the year progresses and you fulfill your intentions.  

THAT INNER VOICE

I recall asking for advice when I was young, and people often responded with, just be yourself. Frustration was the only thing I learned from that. It’s great advice if you know who you are. Yet, I didn’t. Decades would pass before knowing myself morphed into trusting myself. It would be decades more before I heard my own inner voice…my intuition.

How did that happen? It occurred pretty much the same way it happened for others I knew. Trusting ourselves and our inner voice can be a by-product of maturity. Eventually, we grow up. But, there are many other ways, such as making the same mistake again and again and finally learning from it. Or, I made big errors in judgment before listening to my inner voice that suggested I could use some help. That was followed by decades of expensive, albeit valuable, therapy.

A brilliant analyst I knew had an interesting element in her therapy. Clients were never allowed to say, I don’t know. To jump-start intuition, the client was encouraged to reach into their psyche to come up with an answer. Intuition is a muscle just like any other. It, too, can be strengthened. We all have it, but it will atrophy if not ever used. In her article 18 Ways to Develop & Strengthen Your Intuition, Dr. Lissa Rankin writes in Mind Body Green, “We are all equipped with an intuition that is potent, trustworthy, and impeccably attuned to our true path. Whether you use it or not is up to you.”

CONSULT THE HEART

Today, numerous books are available to teach children how to access their inner knowing. These books teach children how to validate their intuitive abilities instead of suppressing them. Accessing one’s intuition is an extraordinary skill to cultivate at such an early stage of development. When a child reaches late adolescence, the utilization of their intuition will be second nature. In addition, scores of children already meditate. Meditation is a great way to acquire our sixth sense. Meditation begets silence, and intuition rises out of the silence. They both originate in the same place within our spiritual core. Decision-making is a natural part of life but is often problematic in many adults without this solid foundation. Albert Einstein said, “The intuitive is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Trusting ourselves and accessing intuition has always been associated with the heart. The center of high intelligence and compassion, the heart, is the seat of our inner knowing and the hub of our spiritual core. Learning to consult the heart and listening to its message allows us entrée into deep inner knowing. What’s fascinating about this process is the more we follow our heart, the clearer the message and the faster the delivery. If we stop for a while, the clarity and delivery may get rusty.

Ruth Umoh on CNBC.com writes, “While (Steve) Jobs was born a little under two months before Albert Einstein’s death, both the visionary co-founder of Apple and the most influential physicist of the 20th century agree that one trait was at the heart of their success: intuition.” Many momentous, life-changing decisions in our history were the result of someone’s intuition. And, undoubtedly, many a war was won or lost with little to go on other than internal intuition.

Learning to trust our intuition is inextricably woven into our core values. If we stay true to our core value system, generally, it is because our intuition drives us in that direction, and we choose to listen. When we choose to override this innate integrity, it can be uncomfortable at best. Intuition is the mechanism designed to aid in self-knowledge. And you know what the Greeks said about that…an unexamined life is not worth living.