We all know that, basically, intuition is the understanding of something without the need of conscious reasoning. In the simplest of terms it means knowing something that you have not had prior experience with. You just know it.

Isaac Asimov said of it, “Intuition is the art, peculiar to the human mind, of working out the correct answer from data that is, in itself, incomplete or even, perhaps, misleading.”

But, do you trust your own intuition? In our current world, we are taught to put faith in what we can see, what can be proven, and what trusted sources – like the news tells us. The world has little belief in what isn’t told to us or can’t be quantified.Be can we trust those more than our intuition? How about you, do you trust your own intuition? How do you start?

Getting right with yourself

How is your relationship with your intuition? If you were dropped into a situation you never experienced before, could you find your own way through it without the prior knowledge? Can you use both your instinct and logic to navigate it?

It is natural. A feeling of being in the wrong place at the wrong time is an unpleasant reminder of our intuition rearing its head. Perhaps it was in a more romantic encounter. We have all heard stories of two people meeting for the first time and realizing that they are their soulmate or twin flame, just know that they are the one they are supposed to be with. They always say things like “I just knew it” or “I could feel it.”

What the majority of us fail to realize is that our intuition is like any other muscle, it can be strengthened. The difference comes from it being an emotional intelligence/muscle, with study, attention, and patience you can grow it and use it to further assist you in your life.

With practice, it can be fully acceptable to use your hunches, gut feelings and intuition in business matters. Following these signs shows we are paying attention to Spirit guiding our lives, as we have requested.

Hooked on a feeling

For me, the moment of intuition clarity feels like the bottom drops out of my stomach. Similar to how it feels as you are cresting the top of a hill on a roller coaster. That moment when your stomach feels like it is sharply dropping before you do. Others may feel it like their stomach or heart are jumping in their chests. Some may feel a hardness in the back of their throats.

Whatever the feeling, by paying attention to these physical shifts, our self-calibration tool opens up for us to work with. These shifts can sometimes make a massive difference in how we do things or what we may do to protect ourselves or even when we are trying to get something we want.

A caveat here: Using hunches is not meant to override your intelligence and reasoning skills. It is meant as a tool to help them along. All too often we are told to ignore those feelings as they are not rooted in reality, they are left for those people, referring to nu-agers, pagans, wiccans, or whatever terms you want to use. Most say it is just nerves acting up and to ignore it. There are countless stories of first responders and military personnel who are in the live of danger or life and death situations who depend on these abilities to keep themselves and others safe.

Lee Iacoca (automotive executive and the developer behind the Ford Mustang) was quoted once saying, “The only mistake I ever made was not listening to my gut.”

Try to remember back to times when you had a gut feeling that you didn’t listen to. What mistakes or unpleasantness could you have avoided? Would you have not lost that money on a bet? Perhaps you wouldn’t have let that special someone get away? By taking a moment to check in, center, and gain some insight into what you are feeling, we can enhance our lives in all aspects with just paying attention to our intuition a little more often.

Learning how to trust your intuition

Okay, secret sharing time. If you want to start developing your intuition, either for the first time or to develop it more, there is one thing you have to do. Are you ready for the answer? Here it is.

You have to accept the fact that you already have your intuition…

Mind blowing I know. Remember that if you ever had a hunch about something, that was your intuition speaking to you. What the intuition is is not some mind-shattering discovery, it is only your mind and your mind using more than what you are consciously aware of it using. Okay, so you are still sitting there asking me how you can trust your intuition. How do you improve it and make it stronger? Here are three steps to get you started.

Three steps to develop your intuition

1. Start by recognizing your intuition and encouraging it along. When you get that feeling, acknowledge it. Pay attention to what its telling you, ask it for more.
2. Study it and make it more trustworthy. As those feelings come along, pay attention to them and the situation and see how they intertwine. When the feeling pan out, thank it for the advice and learn to start to trust it more.
3. Give it good information to work with. What? You have to give your intuition information for it to work? Yes, you do have to help it along. That only means analyzing the situation. Look at all sides with an open mind. It is this way we can give our intuition more information to help us make the right choices and/or be a better person.

Using these steps, take a look at your life and find areas you seem to naturally operate well. What is something that you are just naturally good at, without studying it? What is an area in your life that you trust your gut on and it’s almost never wrong? This.. this is your intuition speaking to you. This is where you can learn to develop and make it stronger. This is a good place to foster the growth that can carry over to other areas of your life. 

Your intuition is also a warning device. Think about Peter Parker and his “spidey sense.” When you get the sense that something just isn’t right, remember that is your intuition yelling at you to take a moment and pay attention to what’s going on around you. Telling you to move before the bad guy punches you from behind, so to speak.

Your mind is an amazing device that works to help you notice things you are thinking about. Here is an example. About two years ago, a little more, I was in the process of wanting a new car. At the time I was driving a Chevy Cruze but wanted something different. I fell in love with Kia Souls around 2011 and that came back to mind. As I drove around, with the idea of getting a new car in the back of my head, I saw Kia Souls start to turn up. I looked at cars online dealerships, and the Soul would be the first thing to appear. All before I actually started looking at them in earnest. This is your mind recognizing a thing, it is trained by what we want and do and it learns to find it more often for you. That same process can happen if you watch your intuition, you will start to see it give you insight more often.

That works in the negative, too. Your intuition can also be sort of like a PTSD trigger, here is how. Say you were bitten by a German Shepherd as a child.Since that time, you may have what feels like an intuitive hunch to avoid that kind of dog for the rest of your life. This a combination of your brain and your intuition creating a protective routine for you, even if that was an isolated event with no reason to fear it anymore. This can lead to you doubting and not wanting to encourage your intuition. Remember, you can untrain those negative thoughts, as well.

How to untrained the negative

As I mentioned above, your intuition is like a muscle and can be trained to get stronger and it can also be trained to remove the negativity you may often feed it. Here are a couple ways you can help it along.

Study Your Intuition

Start questioning your hunches. Okay, you are supposed to question them after I said you need to trust them? That may seem counter productive, but in the case of it being over protective about a negative situation, questioning its relevance to your life now is okay. Study those strong feelings about the German Shepherd. This will allow you to realize that it was just a fear of that one situation. Once you get in the habit of studying and paying attention to your intuitive feelings, you will start to see the differences and how to handle them better.

Look at where your intuition seems to work best. Are you always right about a Grammy pick? Start to give your intuition a little credence, prop it up some. On the flip side, if your hunches about, say, people seem to be constantly wrong, don’t follow them. Instead just pay attention more and see what about them your intuition was warning you about and if you misread it. You are still developing your skills, in this case you are developing an intuition about your intuition.

Give Your Intuition Good Information

A combination of your skills, knowledge and experience determine how affection your intuition is and will be. Learn about your subject before you start to expect good hunches or before you decide to act on them. Start with an area you want more insight into. When you have enough information about it in your mind, it will allow your intuition t go to work for you, with or without your conscious participation. Keep feeding it, allow it to grow.

Learning to recognize your intuition will allow you to have hunches and ideas more often. Study it and you will learn when to trust and when to overlook it. Give it good information and you will be rewarded with good hunches and ideas.

This is the simplest plan for developing your intuition.

Me and my shadow

Just like your shadow, your intuition is always with you. Though, depending on the situation, you may not see it but it is there. It is that feeling that we know something without having experienced it before. Many of us have been told it’s just voices in our head and we shouldn’t pay it any mind, but we can see examples around us where listening to it has saved someone from a pain they didn’t want to feel. Intuition is simply knowing something you have had no prior experience with.

Do you trust your own intuition? How did you foster that connection to become more trustworthy? Maybe you want to learn how to trust it more? What eerie feelings have you gotten that turned out to have been true or happened before you knew they would? Let me know in the comments below. Remember that your lessons and experiences could be the gateway for others on their journey.