Fake it ‘Til you Make it

Someone wrote to me about the last blog post, asking the simple question, ‘if I hear a certain song on the radio, how do I know it’s a sign and not just a song?’ My initial answer is that it’s a sign if it ‘feels’ like a sign – much of intuition is about taking your hunches and instincts at face value.

However, if you don’t yet trust your instincts, the only way you’re going to find out is to act as if it’s a sign and see what happens.

Chances are you’ve heard the saying, ‘fake it ‘til you make it.’ With intuition, the only way to start trusting it is to pretend you believe it even if you don’t, and then follow it to see whether your instincts were right.

Intuitive Action Item: For the rest of the week, pretend that you already know that the signs you get and hunches you have are all correct. Since you know they’re correct, you can do no wrong, so take action based on what they’re telling you to do. Keep a written record of what happens as a result of those actions.

Waiting for the Signs…

I’ve always been an avid fan of mysteries because I like looking for clues to help me figure things out. Maybe that’s one reason intuition appeals to me since acting intuitively often means looking for signs that you should take a particular course of action. Signs can come from anywhere. Sometimes you’ll be wondering what to do next and someone will call and casually suggest something that appeals to you. Or maybe a billboard will catch your eye, seemingly answering a question that’s been on your mind. Maybe you’ll even turn on the radio and the song that happens to be on has a special meaning for you.

This month, I was looking for a new doctor and I asked for a few recommendations. It turned out that one of the doctors was the relative of someone I had recently been thinking about from college. When a casual conversation with this doctor revealed that connection, I took that as a sign that he was the one.

Signs and synchronicity – a word coined by psychotherapist Carl Jung to describe ‘coincidences’ that actually have a deeper meaning and provide extrasensory guidance – can be tools in your arsenal of decision-making. I’m not saying that you ignore the facts or totally disregard logic, but I look at such signs as clues that I should consider something or maybe think twice about doing something else. External signs are particularly helpful when your emotions are involved because emotions can often confuse you, as the residue from your past tends to cloud the present.

When I’m torn equally between two paths, I make it a habit of waiting for a sign or synchronicity to provide what I take to be God’s input into the matter.

Intuitive Action Item: Instead of rushing into a decision, commit to waiting for a clear, external sign to push you in one direction or another. Expect that it can come from anywhere at any time. Don’t worry about missing out on the opportunity. The time spent waiting will give your emotions a chance to subside, and with a clearer head you’ll be more likely to recognize the path that’s the best for you.

Forget the Early Bird...

Maybe it's the warm weather or the (finally) sunny days, or maybe it's because I'd been doing a lot of running lately, but I've been instinctively feeling the need to rest. But intuitively speaking, that's not a bad thing since many people have been known to be the most creative or experience flashes of insight and inspiration when they're rested.

The problem is, in our society, rest is often misconstrued as laziness. We're taught that 'the early bird gets the worm' and we need to be always striving to reach the finish line – two concepts that often fly in the face of intuition. Our instincts may instead be leading us to be still and let someone else reach the finish line so that we can be ready to experience something different and better for us.

Periods of rest played a part in the success of some of our greatest thinkers. In fact, Winston Churchill, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein are all known to have been proponents of adding naps into their day in order to feel refreshed and be more effective in their lives. While I'm not one that takes naps during the day, I've found that I feel a sudden burst of energy in the afternoons when I've taken a break and rested my mind from the constant thinking, interviewing and writing that make up my day.

Intuitive Action Item: For the rest of the week, take some time in the middle of your day to rest. It need not be a nap; it could be 15 minutes of doing nothing but sitting in the sun, taking a brief walk or reading a chapter from a book or a magazine (but it has to be leisure reading, not reading for work or for professional reasons). Take note of how the rest of your day goes, and whether you find, in fact, that the rested bird is really the one that gets the better treasure in the end.

The Body Knows Best

Every time you let a cold run its course, you're showing faith in the belief that your body instinctively knows how to heal itself. There's an amazing story published in the online medical journal Lancet that gives more credence to this belief.

In 1995, British doctors implanted a donor heart directly on top of a little girl's failing heart. The girl, named Hannah Clark, had developed heart failure and needed a transplant.

Ten years later, doctors were astounded to find that Hannah's heart had healed itself to the point where they could remove the donor heart. Douglas Zipes, a past president of the American College of Cardiology, told the Associated Press, "This shows that the heart can indeed repair itself if given the opportunity."

Hannah's now 16 and living a normal life, but her story proves that our bodies instinctively strive for wellness. It's our minds that sometimes get in the way.

Recognizing Your Body's Cues

While many people think of intuition as an emotional process, it can also be experienced as a physical sensation. Whenever I'm in a place I don’t want to be or around someone I dislike, I feel a tightness in my shoulders and chest, almost as if I can't catch my breath. On the flip side, when I'm in a comfortable setting around people I trust, I feel loose and totally relaxed.

Some people have nervous tics or gestures they make when they're in an uncomfortable situation. Others get goosebumps or feel the hair stand up on the back of their necks when in a dangerous or fearful situation. Still others experience a tingling or a feeling of warmth or cold dread depending upon whether they intuitively like or dislike a situation or experience.

All of these physical reactions are ways that your body is intuitively telling you something about the situation you're currently in. While everyone experiences intuition differently, your body language will be consistent with the way that it communicates with you. You just have to learn how to interpret it.

Intuitive Action Item: Have a conversation with one person you like and one person you dislike. Take note of the differences in your body language and the physical sensations you feel in each interaction to get a better understanding of how your body communicates with you.

Slowing Things Down…One Task at a Time

In my quest to live more intuitively, I'm making a conscious effort to slow things down. While I'm accustomed to doing multiple things at once like talking on the phone as I'm cleaning the kitchen and finishing up my bills, I've read that multitasking keeps us from being present in the moment where our intuition lies. There's also a lot of scientific research that shows that multitasking increases stress and makes us less efficient because it taxes our brains each time we switch from one thing to another. This article from the New York Times describes some of these studies, including the notion that our brains just aren't structured to concentrate on multiple things at once.

So for the past week, I've been doing one thing at a time. If I'm on the phone I stop everything and talk to the person on the other end. If I'm cooking, I'm 100 percent there. When I'm working, I focus on one project at a time and then switch to the next. The hardest thing has been ignoring email, checking it only once an hour rather than looking every time my computer dings to let me know a new message has arrived.

The first couple of days, I felt like I was moving in slow motion and was tempted to give it up. But by day three, I realized that I was actually getting more done and, surprisingly, I had more free time than I had when I was multitasking.

Intuitive Action Item: Spend the next couple of days performing one task at a time. It may feel counterintuitive at first, but give it some time and see whether you feel more refreshed and capable to handle the task at hand.

Summer Intuitive Reading....

One of my favorite summer leisure activities is sitting in the sun with a good mystery book, so in honor of the Fourth of July holiday weekend I thought I’d suggest a few of my fiction favorites in which intuition plays a key role in the storyline or plot.

--Victoria Laurie’s Psychic Eye Series: These books, in which the main character Abby Cooper uses her intuition to help her solve mysteries, are fun, easy reads. The storylines are enough to satisfy any mystery fan. Plus, Laurie provides a lot of insight into the way intuition works. If you’re interested in strengthening your own intuition, these books can serve double-duty.

--Kay Hooper’s Bishop/Special Crimes Unit series: Imagine if the FBI had a unit made up of intuitive special agents who used their intuition to catch serial killers and other criminals. That’s the world Hooper has created, giving suspense fans a realistic dose of the paranormal.

--James Redfield’s The Celestine Prophecy: This is more of an adventure story with an underlying mystery, and it’s one of my favorite books of all time. It marks the story of a man on an adventure in which he learns to live intuitively as he discovers nine insights into the meaning of life. However, the man finds that there are those who would do anything to keep the world from discovering those insights and that’s where the story gets interesting.

Intuitive Action Item: I’ll be periodically adding fiction and non-fiction books that deal with intuition on this site. If you have any favorites you think I should suggest, email me at theintuitivegirl@gmail.com. Happy reading!