How to Develop Your Intuition

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Develop your intuition

The definition of intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

Our intuition is effectively our ‘sixth sense’. Just as we gain our sensory input via smell, taste, our vision, sense of touch and hearing we also have an ‘inner knowing’. Our ‘gut instinct’ comes from outside our conscious awareness and often at a speed our brain is unable to process information at. Our intuition is a form of feedback which can guide us, should we choose to acknowledge it, trust it and act on it.

Why would you want to develop your intuition?

Our intuition helps to guide us and keep us safe. When we listen to our intuition knowing who or what to trust becomes easier. It allows us to hear our inner voice and guidance. This can help greatly in making decisions and staying on the right path for us in life. It can lead us to paths we’d never have considered travelling. Allowing yourself to be guided by your intuitive knowing can lead to greater career and business success. It can enhance our creativity and expand our thinking. When we’re able to tap into our intuition it leads to feeling far more confident within ourselves and being clear on what is right for us. We can use our intuitive knowing in all areas of our life.

How to identify our intuition

Being able to identify our intuition is an important step in the process. We all get our feedback in different ways. It may be a feeling, a thought, a knowing or sense. Some people may get visual or auditory feedback. You might notice it more in your body with physical sensations. Chances are you’ll have a mix of these but maybe one form will be more dominant. It may nudge you and at times it may even shout at you. What’s important is working out how ‘you’ work. And not worrying about how anyone else gets their feedback.

Once you’re clearer on how you get your feedback it’s all about listening out for it, in whatever form it takes. Becoming more mindful not only provides space for your intuitive knowing to pop-up into, it makes it much easier to recognise as well. So the more mindful you become the more you’ll start to notice it.

Top Tip – It’s also much easier to notice when you create windows of quiet within your day. This could be in the form of meditation, journaling or walking in nature etc. You’re also far more likely to notice it when you’re mind isn’t racing at 100mph, or you’re not entirely lost in your thoughts and emotions.

Some things that can get in the way of developing our intuition include:

• Being very logical/left brain driven
• Stressing/worrying a lot
• Always being super busy
• Not paying attention when you do notice your intuition
• An inability to trust that which is not logical
• Really trying/forcing the process instead of letting it flow
• Being afraid of trusting your intuition

Beware your thinking/ego mind

Your thinking mind usually likes logic and for things to make sense (left brain activity). Intuition is less concerned with such things. Another way to think about it is in the terms of masculine (yang) and feminine (yin) energy/characteristics. The logical, structured, need for everything to make sense approach or mindset is very masculine in it’s energy. The intuitive, inner knowing, being guided by your ‘gut feeling’ comes more from your feminine energy.

This is not to say that the thinking mind is ‘bad’. It has an important role to play. It’s about finding a balance between both the yin and yang. The ideal would be that your thinking mind and intuition work together in harmony. This allows you to make the very best choices for you based on all the information available to your system at the time.

Your thinking mind and emotions can get in the way by preventing you from noticing your intuitive feedback

They can also reek havoc when you’ve noticed your intuition giving you guidance but your thinking mind doesn’t want you to listen to it. Why might that be? Well your thinking mind likes to be in charge. It likes to think it runs the show, and in fairness often it does. If it feels your intuition doesn’t match up with what it wants you to do then it will happily muddy the waters. It might do this by trying to discredit your intuitive knowing. It might bring up fears and anxieties about what could happen if you followed your intuitive guidance.

It’s also good to remember that your inner knowing will never come from a place of fear or doubt. That’s your thinking mind too. You may intuitively know something is dangerous but that knowing won’t be clouded by fear.

And you can’t force yourself to become more intuitive. Again, this is likely to be coming from your ego/thinking mind. You need to relax into the process and allow your inner knowing to communicate in its own way, in it’s own time. Chances are it’s already giving you feedback but your conscious mind is getting in the way.

So how can we develop our intuition?

First it’s important to remember that like any ability it will take time to build and strengthen our ‘intuition muscles’. If we’re not used to noticing and acknowledging our inner knowing this would be the first goal. Once we’ve started to notice and acknowledge our intuition we can develop our ability to trust it and act on it. Then you’ll find that the more you act on your intuition the easier it will be to trust it. This creates a nice positive reinforcement cycle.

Some things to help you notice and acknowledge your intuition:

• Creating quiet time for yourself
• Meditating
• Journaling
• Becoming more mindful
• Asking questions and being open to answers as they arise
• Becoming more aware of your thoughts and where they are coming from e.g. is it your ego/thinking mind
• Setting the intention that you want to develop your intuition and be prepared to take some small action daily to support this intention

Building trust in your intuition

Just as it will take some time and practice to start connecting more with your inner knowing it will also take some time and practice to develop your trust in it. The best way to start building your trust is to start small. Start with areas of your life/situations that are small and of little consequence. That way if for any reason your intuition, or what you thought was your intuition, doesn’t come good for you it won’t really matter.

Top Tip – The more familiar you become with your thoughts and self talk the easier it gets to recognise them and differentiate them from your intuitive knowing, so you don’t get caught out.

When you start to listen to your intuitive knowing and act on it in smaller situations the more you can experience how well your intuition can guide you. As you start to build some trust in your inner knowing the easier you’ll find it to listen and act on it in bigger, more important situations. Pay attention not just to your intuition but also to the outcomes of both following your inner knowing and not following it. We’re only human after all and there will be times when, for various reasons, you may not follow your intuitive knowing. And that’s ok. Just pay attention to the outcomes. That way you can get really clear on how well your intuition is serving you when you do follow it. And how things turn out when you don’t follow it.

Cast your mind back…

Can you think of a time when you had a real gut instinct about something. Or just a real sense or knowing about a person or situation? Did you pay attention to that knowing? Was your intuition right?

The more you listen to your intuition and trust it the stronger your connection to your inner knowing will become. Your intuition will develop the more you pay attention to what it’s telling you and act on it.

More ways to develop your intuition

To help you develop your intuition even more there are tools and techniques you can add into your practice. Examples include using a pendulum, muscle testing or swaying as these are all ways to get feedback from your system. These can help you confirm the feedback you’ve already had from your intuitive knowing or indeed help get you on the right track. If these are new ideas to you don’t worry, they’re not essential just extra ways to connect with your body’s inner wisdom (which is one of the reasons Kinesiology is so great 🙂 ).

Working with your chakras can help. Ensuring all your chakras are balanced will be helpful as can supporting your Brow/3rd Eye chakra if it is out of balance. Remember that all your chakras work together. Just focusing on one, in isolation to the others, may create an imbalance. You want to make sure your lower chakras are happy before focusing on the higher chakras. There are lots of ways to support your chakras such as Reiki, yoga, meditation, using colours, * essences (use discount code Angela10 to get 10% off!), essential oils, crystals, foods, sounds etc.

Additional tools to support your intuition

Working with Oracle cards and/or Tarot cards is a really nice way to further support your intuitive knowing. If you already use cards you’ll know what I mean. There are many different types of cards available. So if these are new to you and you’d like to get a deck to work with, always go for a deck that you’re drawn to. It might be the imagery, the words/writing on the cards or the energy of the deck. Either way, use your intuition to find a deck that’s right for you. Then allow the deck to deepen your intuitive knowing and guidance by using it regularly.

Crystals are also great when it comes to developing your intuition. You can use them in conjunction with meditations, supporting your chakras, wearing them/keeping them close to you etc. Every crystal has different properties. Some are known to enhance our intuition, such as amethyst, citrine, moonstone, labradorite, kyanite and turquoise. However, just as I suggested above with selecting an Oracle/Tarot deck it’s always best to be guided by your intuition when choosing crystals. And don’t worry if you’re drawn to a crystal/s that don’t apparently support your intuition. You’re intuition is drawing your attention to them for a reason, so listen to it and trust that they are the right ones for you at that time.

So there you have it

By no means an exhaustive list of ways to develop your intuition, but it should help get you on the right track. Becoming more mindful really does underpin the whole exercise. If you don’t notice your intuition then you can’t acknowledge it, trust it and act on it. If you can’t recognise your thinking/ego mind you won’t be able to tell when it’s that you’re hearing, or when it’s clouding your intuition. This all gets in the way of developing your sixth sense. If this is an area you’d like some help with get in contact. I can support you in both becoming more mindful and developing your intuition.