Trusting Our Intuition
Tips for following our intuition despite uncertainty and unknowns
Trusting your intuition can sometimes be hard because it requires an openness to experience possibilities that might seemingly go against anything you are planning, hoping for, or expecting.
I’ve been going through a big transition in my life and I’ve been witnessing this difficult process for myself. I had been itching to visit China for a few years to spend time with relatives, see how China has developed over the years, and visit places that I’ve never been to before. However, once I arrived in China, I experienced major culture shock for several days and felt very out of place. I wanted to go back to the US as soon as possible! I told my roommate about it and she told me to give myself a week to ground. By the way, she teaches grounding and movement. If you’re curious about her sessions, check out her website.
After one and half weeks in China, I finally started to feel that I was in the right place. I started to sense and experience all the good aspects of being in China. And I got to see my dad in a way that I never had before, leaving me feeling inspired by him and amazed by him. Overall, I’ve been feeling happy. Although I felt happy, my mind was very confused about why this was the case because there wasn’t much logical sense to why I would feel content being in China. My mind wanted to resist accepting this reality. I mean, here in China, there’s a whole bunch of noise and people, the air quality isn’t great, the traffic is awful, the streets and buildings appear old and run-down, the bathrooms don’t provide toilet paper, it’s quite competitive, and the list goes on and on. However, my intuition led me here and it’s taking time for the perks to settle in.
Well, this is the thing with intuition. It can go against anything logical or rational. And oftentimes there is no evidence, fact, or certainty that following our intuition will be easy or that things will work out. Right now, I have absolutely no idea where I’ll be or what I’ll be doing in 1 month, 3 months, 6 months+. It can definitely feel scary to not know, but I have some tips to help you trust and develop your intuition. These are all things that I am also continuously practicing:
Practice backing your intuition for small things and eventually see that it leads to good outcomes. For instance, for dinner yesterday I decided to add an extra order of soup and chicken to an already big order for 3 people. In the end, these 2 dishes were pretty much the only things I could eat because they weren’t spicy.
Hindsight is 20-20. So find evidence of when you have trusted your intuition for bigger decisions. Even though it didn’t make sense at the time or even if you had to go through discomfort, change, and a period of learning at the time, see that the path led you to a much better place than you could have imagined or planned.
Think of the worst case scenario that could happen if you followed your intuition, and see if you would be able to manage, be ok, and live with that scenario. More often than not, the answer would be yes.
Think of the best case scenario that could happen if you DIDN’T follow your intuition. Most likely, not much of your current situation would change.
The mind works using logic and reasoning, so it only speaks and understands this language. Thus, the techniques above use reasoning to help the mind relax and see evidence that following our intuition can be a good thing. Once you’ve practiced the above, you can start to let your intuition guide you for bigger decisions; plus, following it will become more automatic!
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