Trust yourself, know yourself, you have heard it all right?
So what about intuition? That little old niggle, the vibe, the “gut feeling” is it all woo-woo or is it a biological superpower?
In my field of work, assisting people in letting go of negative thinking and enabling positive-thought processes is instrumental in helping people live their best life. A part of this is educating and retraining people so their natural instincts can kick back in again. So the answer is yes intuition has a functional place in our lives and is a biological superpower!
Three decades of cognitive science research have demonstrated that humans are an intuitive species.
In fact, according to a study by Coley and Tanner in 2012 we humans display a collection of biological entities, they call them regularities of cognitive construals. The report explains: ” A cognitive construal is an informal, intuitive way of thinking about the world. It might be a set of assumptions, a type of explanation, or a predisposition to a particular type of reasoning. Three such cognitive construals—teleological thinking, essentialist thinking, and anthropocentric thinking—are common themes spanning research on intuitive biological thought.”
They are not alone, Brene Brown, the author of five No.1 New York Times best-selling books and research professor into human behavior says “Intuition is not a single way of knowing – it’s our ability to hold space for uncertainty and our willingness to trust the many ways we’ve developed knowledge and insight, including instinct, experience, faith, and reason.”
Your intuition is the sum of all your experiences, your perceptions, and filters.
Trusting yourself to use this knowledge which directs itself into a more finite distinct sensation, often presenting as a “gut feeling.” Some of the most successful people in the world are renown for honing in on and using their intuition. Why? Because it is more accurate than another person’s perspective of your life. When we listen to other people’s opinions of our life or direction, we can become powerless and lose our ability to be intuitive. “I rely far more on gut instinct than researching huge amounts of statistics,” wrote Richard Branson in one of his memoirs. “I tend to make up my mind about people within thirty seconds of meeting them.”
So how do we do it?
It sounds simple, but practice does make perfect. Learning to trust yourself is essential to live an authentic life — the word authentic means: not a copy, genuine. So if you are to have a genuine life true to your ideals and journey, your inner compass is very important.
Your instincts and intuitive gears are about building your self- trust, a muscle if you will. The more you use them and test them, the more you begin to understand the feelings, their accuracy and gauge with a fine point the directions to take in life or the sense you get about a situation.
While it is good to talk to someone and bounce ideas off them, ensure it is someone non-bias who has no ulterior motive in their connection or can be impacted by your decision making, as ultimately their opinion may be influenced by their filters and perceptions of you and your life.
When we experience positive outcomes from actions we take, new neural pathways develop to support this action.
Do something positive enough times, and it becomes second nature. This goes for intuition. Feel it, know it, practice it and if you need help or want an unbiased person to talk to- Book an appointment
Want to change your thoughts in 5 days? Try our complimentary 5 Day Thought Challenge.
