Lessons About Fear From an Acrobat

A friend mentioned today that the blog post he most related to was the one about fear. That wasn’t surprising to me. Having worked for years in a newsroom where I listened all day to CNN, I noticed that one of the things many media organizations do well is package fear and transmit it through their newscasts. In fact, the news coverage of the recession earlier this year made me feel so anxious that it got me – a self-professed news junky – to turn off CNN during the day and I haven’t turned it on regularly since.

I’ve also noticed that when people are afraid of something, they tend to act – or react – quickly and rashly. You’re afraid you’ll be destitute so you take a job that you never wanted in the first place. You’re afraid of being alone so you get involved in a relationship that you know doesn’t quite fit. You’re afraid you’ll lose your job so you take on extra work and let a boss mistreat you instead of looking for a better work environment. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve taken on a project or client I knew I shouldn’t have because I was afraid another client wouldn’t come along soon enough. I always regretted it.

There’s no way around it; fear blocks intuition so if you’re worried about something, you’ve got to find a way to calm down and slow down so your inner wisdom has the chance to come through.

Who better to know about fear than two acrobats who risk broken bones or worse when they swing and fly 25 feet above the ground? This article by Dancer Universe poses the question about how they manage fear. Here’s their advice:

---Focus on a successful outcome. The acrobats didn’t think about falling. Period. Don’t think about what can go wrong. Instead, visualize all that can go right.

---Remember successful experiences. The acrobats trusted their bodies because they had performed these daredevil stunts before. Think back to all the successes you’ve had. What makes you think this won’t be another one?

---Reduce the risk. The acrobats planned their routines and had safety precautions in place in case they fell. There are steps you can take to lessen a potential blow. If you could handle the worst-case scenario, why worry about it? It probably won’t happen and if it does, you can handle it!

Intuitive Action Item: One of my favorite movie lines of all time is from Gone With the Wind when Scarlett O’Hara said, “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” Next time you feel the grip of fear, follow her advice.

Unleashing Intuition on the Job Hunt

Despite the constant news reports about how bad the job market and economy are, I know four people who’ve received job offers in the last week alone. A couple of them were actively job-searching and a couple were not. Conventional wisdom says now is the time to stay at your current job and be grateful to have it even if you’re doing something you hate.

I think differently.

While I don’t recommend that anyone just quit his or her job without a viable plan for making a living, I think you have nothing to lose by looking for a job that is a better fit regardless of the economy and whether you’ve recently been laid off or not.

In the spirit of job-hunting, I came across this article by Katharine Hansen, Ph.D., offering suggestions for using intuition to find that better job.

Among the advice:

---- Relax. If you’re worried about the economy, you’re operating out of fear and even if you do intuitively feel that a certain job or career path is right, you’ll ignore that because your rational mind will tell you it’s too risky or you can’t possibly make enough money.

----Assume the best. This tip will help you to relax. If you imagine the most dire economic situation befalling you, you’ll get anxious and, again, operate out of fear. But if you imagine that everything will work out in the end, you’ll be less tense and open to different opportunities.

----Don’t throw logic out the window. Yes this is a blog on intuition, but the reality is that during tough economic times, you want to use all of the tools at your disposal to get the best outcome so why not use your intuition and logic together?

Go ahead and brainstorm various options that feel right to you intuitively. At this point, give your intuition free reign. Contact any potential employer that interests you even if there’s no official job opening or the media is telling you the industry isn’t hiring or there’s any other logical reason that would keep you from even trying.

I recently felt very strongly about writing an article for a magazine that I’d never written for. However, through another writer, I learned that this magazine wasn’t using freelance writers anymore because of the recession. Now my logical mind told me not to waste my time but I sent off my idea anyway because I really felt like I should. I ended up getting the assignment.

Once you get a job offer, let your logical mind do the research to back up whether you’re making a sound decision in taking the job. Intuition isn’t based on economic trends or media reports so if you feel that urge to make a career shift, you may find an opportunity waiting for you recession and all.

When Intuition Throws You a Lifeline…

How many times have you heard someone say, “I knew I should have done this,” or “I had a bad feeling all along; I wish I had listened to it”?

Every so often you hear a story about how someone’s bad feeling got them out of a precarious situation or even saved a life.

Remember the crash in New York between a tourist helicopter and a private plane over the Hudson River this month? Apparently a woman named Paola Casali and her 13-year-old son had already purchased tickets to be on that helicopter. What stopped them? The 13-year-old had a bad feeling. Casali told the media that her son was jittery all morning and was scared to get in the helicopter. He even procrastinated in a Starbucks that day, causing them to be late and miss the fateful flight.

This story demonstrates to me intuition in action. Intuition isn’t dramatic where you see a burning bush or hear a voice shout down from the sky. It’s a bad feeling, a case of the jitters, a desire to procrastinate or put something off especially when you have no logical reason for doing so.

In less dramatic instances, I’ve had experiences when someone has wanted to hire me for a writing assignment or work on an editing project and even though the money might have been good, I’d get this sinking feeling or just not want to do the job. Once when I ignored this feeling, the client later declared bankruptcy and I never got paid. Another time, the job was a nightmare because the client kept changing her mind about what she wanted and the project dragged on for months.

Intuitive Action Item: Think back to a time when something didn’t go right and you knew beforehand that you should have taken a different action (we all have these experiences). By keeping your mistakes in mind, you’ll be more likely to make a different choice the next time your intuition sends out an SOS.

Coming Out of the Intuitive Closet

Since I’ve been writing this blog, I’ve been surprised by the number of people who have remarked to me about how they’ve been really interested in intuition and other metaphysical topics but never told anyone because they didn’t know how people would take it. I’ll admit that I, too, in the past have held my tongue about some of my interests and beliefs around certain people because I was afraid of what they'd think. Besides, there are a lot of misperceptions about intuition and similar topics.

But some of those who I thought wouldn’t be interested in intuition have surprised me, leading me to wonder just how many people are in the intuitive closet, so to speak.

Here are some signs that you’re in the intuitive closet:

---You’ve withheld from people in your life what you really think about religion, spirituality and matters of the soul.

---You have books that you wouldn’t leave lying around your house for everyone to see.

---You feel somewhat vindicated when certain metaphysical topics like The Secret go mainstream but you still keep the bulk of your beliefs to yourself.

---You’ve considered visiting a psychic or actually have visited one but you wouldn’t tell certain people about that.

---You’re avid fans of shows like Medium, the Ghost Whisperer and the X-Files, but you wouldn’t admit to someone that you think these shows are realistic and not so far-fetched.

Intuitive Action Item: I asked some people how they became more comfortable sharing their intuitive beliefs with others and came away with the following tips:

---Take a class on a metaphysical topic you’re interested in at a community college or holistic health center to find people who share similar views, reinforcing for you how normal your views actually are.

---Next time you’re in a bookstore, grab a cup of coffee and just watch how many people stop and look through the metaphysical section. You might even see someone you know.

---Start sharing little things, such as an experience you had following your instincts or an appealing concept from a book you read. When people don’t run away screaming, you’ll realize your views are acceptable and probably more common than you think.

Learning Your Own Intuitive Language

You can’t give someone a step-by-step guide to understanding how their intuition communicates with them because for everyone it’s different. A symbol could mean one thing to one person and another to someone else.

For example, one way my intuition talks to me is through car dreams. After having many of these dreams, I’ve learned that when I dream that I’m driving, I’m in control and handling a situation effectively. When I’m in the passenger seat, back seat or in some cases outside of the car entirely, I’m allowing others to exert too much influence in my life so I know I need to make some real-world changes. Likewise, if I dream that I’m driving and the brakes don’t work, I know that I’ve totally lost control of a situation.

I had coffee with a friend from college yesterday and she mentioned her fish dreams, which never fail to tell her when someone she knows is pregnant.

Because people’s symbols are different, I don’t think much of dream dictionaries and other attempts to attach a meaning to specific thoughts or dreams. The only way you can learn your own language is to pay attention to what happens after you’ve had a certain dream or noticed a certain gut feeling.

Intuitive Action Item: Get a notebook and start recording every dream, hunch, flash of insight or gut instinct that you experience. In doing so, you’ll start to notice what symbols keep showing up, as well as what happens in your life shortly thereafter. The more comfortable you are with your intuition’s method of communicating, the more success you’ll have in interpreting its messages.

Intuition or Fear?

One of the questions I’ve grappled with: How do you know if it’s your intuition and not just thoughts?

I came across this posting from The Art of Sensitive Living Blog that explains a few ways to tell the difference between intuition and fearful thoughts. A lot of it comes down to the way you feel when you’re experiencing the insight or the thought. Intuition tends to bring about positive feelings whereas fearful thoughts often make you feel bad.

--When you experience intuition, there’s often a feeling of simplicity, clarity and peace that comes along with the knowledge, even if it’s about an outcome you don’t desire. In other words, you’ll likely feel calm.

--When you’re experiencing fearful ego-based thoughts, you often feel confused, upset, and feel that you have to know more. If there’s an emotional charge with the thought, it’s probably not your intuition.

You can find more tips to accessing your intuition, here.

Intuitive Action Item: This week when you’re paying attention to your thoughts, also notice the way you’re feeling as you have them. Give more credence to those thoughts that are accompanied by feelings of calmness and peace.

A Novel Lesson

A comment to the post about imagination and intuition referenced the fact that fiction writers sometimes tap into future events. (Check out this blog post about how Edgar Allan Poe seems to have written about an event before it happened). As a fiction lover who is working steadily to finish my first novel, that thought really fascinated me.

I’ve often heard other writers talk about how they have no control over the plot; rather, they sit down to write and the characters come alive and take over the story. My logical mind thought that was a bunch of “caca.” I figured these writers were just trying to sound artsy. But I was wrong because my story does seem to be taking on a life of its own. In fact, a character that I intended to be a minor player came onto the canvas and I liked him so much that I made an entire plot adjustment to give him more action.

I don’t know whether I’m tapping into some future occurrence. (Wouldn’t it be great to create the characters we want to enter our lives and erase the ones we’d like to leave behind?) But the one thing this process is helping me to do is leave my logical mind at the door. When I started writing this book, I had this long outline that detailed what would happen in each scene. As I filled in the blanks, fleshing out my little blueprint, I started to become bored, and frankly, the book started to feel like a chore. And then one day I had an idea that differed from my outline and I went with it. Since then, I’ve veered so far off course from that outline that I have no idea where the book is heading – but the process has become a lot more interesting and alive.

Intuition works the same way. If we have to control everything, we don’t have the flexibility to adapt to a flash of inspiration. And if we’ve already planned out our every step, what’s the point of having intuition to guide us along in the first place?

Intuitive Action Item: Think of something you’ve created ‘a plan’ for. This might be a tough one, but scrap your plan. Just wing it instead and see what happens. It might turn out better than you thought.

Daydreaming: A Playground for Intuition

Even though I’m making an effort to consciously use and develop my intuition, I still struggle with doubts sometimes about whether the hunches I have are really my intuition or whether I’m just making them up. After all, I’m a writer who’s currently working on my first novel so it’s important for me to let my imagination run free.

But I’ve found that my imagination takes on different forms. Sometimes I’ll visualize or consciously imagine a desired scenario, a practice that has been long touted as a way to manifest a certain outcome. For example, athletes will often imagine themselves performing well and research has found that they do perform better after visualization.

Other times I’ll make up stories in my head about people and situations, a practice that is tied directly to my fiction writing. It helps me to stay creative and come up with plot twists and story ideas.

But in rarer cases, a scenario will pop into my mind unexpectedly. These are never long, drawn-out moments and there is generally not that much detail, yet there is clearly an element of imagination involved. During these moments I believe I’m witnessing intuition in action, or at least I’m close to it.

Daydreaming in any capacity is a merging of the conscious and subconscious minds, and since intuition is largely a subconscious practice, daydreaming can serve as a gateway inviting more collaboration between these two worlds.

Intuitive Action Item: I’ve decided to experiment with using my daydreams to spark my intuition. The next time I have a choice to consider, I’ll imagine how it will turn out and if the scenario I get is something I like, I’ll do it. If it goes poorly in my mind, I’ll say no. I’ll report my results in a later post but if you care to try it with me, I’d love to know how it goes for you. There's one caveat: Only try this if you're making a choice about something you've never done before. If you have a history with an experience, your memories will probably cloud your intuition. Either comment below or email me at theintuitivegirl@gmail.com.