Tapping into one’s own intuition can seem daunting. At its very core, what does it mean to really “follow” your gut? How can we channel our own truths with honesty and integrity?
Growing up, I always looked up to those who just seemed to ‘know’. As someone who often contemplates my own decision-making, choices, and overall emotions before choosing to act, one-hundred and ten times, it can seem almost impossible to just go with the flow. However, after learning and practicing several modes of energy work, what I learned over time was that half the journey of tapping into our own intuition involves heavily on trust in one's self.
How much do you trust yourself? How much do you fear being ‘wrong’? How do you handle disappointment? How do you navigate life when things don’t go according to plan? For me, those were the key questions I had to answer when beginning to tap into my own intuition.
There were many times in my life where my fear of disappointment, anxiety over failure, and overall distrust in myself stopped me from taking the steps to advocate for what I felt was right for me at a given moment. The lack of trust in myself, although I did not realize it at the time, caused me to be stuck in unwanted situations (both professional + personal). Since then, I learned that trusting your intuition takes some practice and involves knowing yourself quite a bit. So how do we get there? How can we strengthen our inner intuition?
1) Knowing yourself takes effort
Knowing yourself takes a whole lot of effort. When we say we do not know who we are, we do ourselves a disservice. We frame the narrative as if we are someone we have to find or that the truth of ‘who we are’ is somewhere laying far away in the external. However, I believe that knowing ourselves is just realizing who we already are. Without having to look outwardly, we realize that we already have everything that we need within us and that it takes just a little work looking inward in order to discover it.
I believe that the best way to know oneself is through meditation and other meditative exercises. When we frame meditation as a study of ourselves, we allow ourselves to come to conclusions about our life and our own personal truths in a natural, effortless way. (For me) guided meditation has become the most effective way to figure this out. Incorporating even just 15 minutes of guided meditation in the morning right as you wake up and right before you go to bed every day builds discipline, and empowers the effort we are making to learn more about ourselves. When we find meditation to be difficult, it’s important to realize that it’s not that we are incapable of doing the work, but that it's our body’s way of signaling, that there is much work to be done, and it won’t be an easy task. However, it is absolutely worth it on the other end.
2) Trusting yourself involves forgiveness
The hardest part of going with your gut is accepting the consequences, whatever they may be. When we are hard on ourselves for small mistakes, we feed negativity towards our whole being. This makes forgiveness hard. Going with your intuition is taking accountability of your actions and advocating what feels right for you, despite the possibility of falling short of perfection. If every action you make is founded on the goal of being “perfect” -- I find that it is very easy to start walking on eggshells. This does the biggest disservice, and allows anxiety to lead your decision making instead. Oftentimes, I found that the more we try to control our future, the less control we actually have. The most rewarding part of leading with one’s intuition is the feeling of freedom when you take your life into your own hands while letting go of the tight grasp you have on it.
3) Living your truth takes time (and effort, and forgiveness!!)
Living your truth, however it may look, takes time. One 15-minute meditation isn’t going to lead to all your self-discoveries. However, it can be a start. Life is a beautiful journey of the self. Every moment you breathe you have the opportunity to learn more about yourself. You have your whole life to do this, so don’t rush, be gentle and just go with it.