How To Listen To And Strengthen Your Connection With Your Intuition
Intuition is your inner guidance system that is constantly working to provide you with direction in your life. For many people, it’s not always easy to clearly hear your intuition, or to feel confidence in what you’ve heard if you do receive guidance.
Cultivating your ability to listen to your intuition requires practice to allow you to strengthen the muscle and develop confidence, both in yourself to hear the guidance and in your intuition to provide you with the right direction. The more you practice, the stronger you’ll get.
How does your intuition work?
Different people think about intuition in different ways, but I like to think about it as guidance that is being given to me directly from the universe through thoughts, ideas, feelings, and signs. This guidance is helping me go exactly where it is I want to go, oftentimes in a way that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to find on my own (or may take me quite a bit longer to figure out).
While this guidance is incredibly useful in providing direction, it can be a bit uncomfortable when you first begin following your intuition. This is because your intuition isn’t giving you all of the steps you need to take all at once, or even necessarily giving you the full picture of what will happen once you begin.
You can think of your intuition like the GPS in your car – it typically doesn’t show you the full map of where you’re going with every direction laid out for you all at once. Instead, it consistently gives you one direction after the next, and ultimately you get to the place you are trying to go even though you couldn’t see every single direction for the entire journey.
Your only job is to listen for the next direction and then follow those instructions.
Learning to listen to and trust your intuition will allow you to follow each direction as it is provided to you with the trust and confidence that you’ll ultimately end up at your desired destination.
One important thing to keep in mind is that your intuition isn’t always going to give you the easy road to follow. Sometimes it will, if that is what is best for you in that situation, but other times the path will be a bit more winding, with lessons you need to learn sprinkled along the way so you’ll be who you need to be when you reach your final destination.
No matter which direction your intuition takes you, you can trust that you are being guided on the absolute best path for you. For that reason, it’s very beneficial to learn how to listen to your intuition.
How to feel a response from your intuition physically in your body
An important first step when starting to connect with your intuition is to understand the difference between what a “yes” and a “no” response feels like in your body. Learning how to physically feel the difference between the two will help give you confidence that you are correctly interpreting the answer that you’re being given.
We are comprised of trillions of cells that each generate tiny fragments of energy, and because of this the cells in our bodies can collectively respond to different energies and generate sensations that we can physically feel.
A “yes” response emits a different energy from a “no” response, and those responses will trigger the cells in your body to respond differently in both scenarios.
With some close observation and practice, you can learn how to distinguish what each feels like in your body. Here is a simple exercise you can do to find out how your body physically responds “yes” to something versus “no”:
Before you begin, take a few deep breaths and start to release the thoughts in your mind. You may want to do a body scan, slowly observing the feelings in the top of your head all the way down to your toes. This will clear your mind and allow you to be aware of differences that occur in your body when you complete each of the exercises below.
To find out how your body signals a “yes” to you in physical form, start by telling yourself something that you know to be factually true. One great way to do this is say to yourself “I am [insert your name]”. So I say to myself, “I am Rachel”. Close your eyes and observe what you physically feel in your body. For me, I feel a very light feeling in my body. I feel myself sit up a bit straighter, with my shoulders pulling back ever so slightly to allow me to sit taller and feel a general softness throughout my body.
To find out how your body signals a “no”, do the opposite of the “yes” exercise. This time, say to yourself something that you know to be factually not true. Here you could say to yourself “I am [insert a name that is not your own]”. Close your eyes and observe what you feel in your body. For me, I feel my body contract a bit, my shoulders pulling slightly forward, with a feeling that leans a bit more towards heaviness in my body.
Once you’re aware of the difference in the feeling in your body between a yes and a no, you can start to pay attention to the feelings that arise in your body when you’re asking your intuition a question.
The ability to tune into those feelings and step back and observe how your body is physically reacting will continue to come easier with time, so continue doing this exercise to feel yes and no in your body both with things you already know the answer to and things you’d like to ask your intuition for help with so you can build trust in your ability to recognize what a no feels like versus a yes.
How to strengthen your ability to listen to your intuition
Just like any other muscle in your body, your ability to hear your intuition needs to be strengthened with practice. In addition to practicing listening for a yes or a no, you can continue to strengthen your connection with your intuition in other ways as well.
These don’t have to be big asks to your intuition – in fact, I’d recommend that you start with very simple asks to start to build your trust in your intuition.
Here are some ways you can practice strengthening your intuition through simple day to day activities:
If you’re in the grocery store and don’t know where an item is, ask your intuition to guide you to it. You can do this by asking which aisle to turn down, if you should go left or right, etc.
If you’re driving home and there are multiple routes you could take, ask your intuition which way you should go. Ask if you should go the way you normally go, or if you should take a new route. Ask if you should go straight, turn right, turn left, etc.
Ask questions about simple tasks in your day-to-day routine, like what you should wear that day (or if you should wear a jacket, bring an umbrella, etc.), what you should eat that day, or if you should do laundry that day.
These questions may seem small and mundane at first, but they’re one of the best places you can start for really starting to build the habit of asking your intuition for guidance and building trust in the answers you receive when the stakes are low.
As you start to ask your intuition for guidance on a daily basis, you’ll begin to build both trust in the answers you’re receiving and incorporate this practice into all decisions you make, which will make it feel more comfortable over time to rely on your intuition as you’re making bigger decisions in your life.
The hidden signal to look out for when listening to your intuition
I think there is sometimes a misconception that if you’re listening to your intuition, there is always going to be this strong, good feeling telling you that this is the next right step. While that is partially true, there is another emotion that is usually present that is a good sign you’re hearing guidance from your intuition and moving in the right direction.
That feeling is fear.
Every day, your brain is consistently trying to maintain a state of homeostasis. This means your brain is actively trying to keep you within your comfort zone, because that is where things remain the same, and you are therefore safe.
When you decide you want to change something in your life, this means you’re going to need to do something differently from how you’ve been doing it. Your intuition will help you figure out what that next step is, but as soon as you think about taking that step you will likely experience fear.
This is because your brain is realizing that you are going to do something different than what you’ve been doing by stepping out of your comfort zone, and it doesn’t know what is on the other side, so it immediately assumes danger and tries to prevent you from taking that step in an effort to keep you safe.
When you observe a combination of a hit from your intuition telling you your next step, and immediately notice there is fear paired with that guidance, that is a good indicator that you’ve heard guidance from your intuition and you’re about to take a step out of your comfort zone which is going to move you in the direction of your new goal.
As soon as I realized this pattern of fear showing up when following my intuition, I began to look at it from a new perspective – this fear isn’t a bad thing, it’s actually a really helpful tool I can use to help give me confidence that I’m hearing guidance from my intuition, and I should continue forward with following this guidance.
This fear is a signal to you that you’re about to move out of your comfort zone and uplevel, and it’s a sign that you’re taking action to move in the direction of your dreams.