Noticing What You Notice

Accessing your intuition isn’t something you have to try hard to do. You’re constantly getting hunches and feelings about things, but you may be conditioned to ignore them. Or you may be so distracted by what’s going on around you that you’re not aware of what you’re thinking or feeling in the first place.

One way to become more in tune with your own thoughts and feelings is to limit your outside distractions. In other words, maybe you turn the tv or radio off and cut out the background noise so you can hear yourself think. Another suggestion is to simplify. When you’re multi-tasking, you’re probably thinking about a lot of different things so it’s harder to pay attention to any particular thought.

According to Laura Day, author of Practical Intuition, one of the keys to accessing your intuition is noticing what you notice. In other words, just pay attention to your thoughts and what catches your eye and you’ll begin to realize that your hunches were right or you’ll discover that you’d sized up a situation accurately even before you knew all of the details.

Intuitive Action Item: This article from ScrippsNews has some good tips for accessing your intuition. Among them: The next time your mind wanders, instead of pulling it back to the task at hand, see where your thoughts end up taking you. Another tip is to take a walk and notice what catches your eye, as well as what thoughts are conjured up in the process. You may find that inspiration is ready to strike once you’re ready to listen.