What is this nudge we sometimes get? This feeling inside us that we often ignore? Another way to think of intuition is to regard it as a kind of intelligence, like a musical intelligence or visual intelligence. Unless blind, all of us can identify colors. We start in preschool and many of us add to our color vocabulary over the years, becoming good at recognizing colors. Artists learn to identify and name many shades of colors. In their minds, they can picture the small differences between hundreds of shades. Intuition is like that. It is an intelligence everyone has been given in some measure and we can develop it just as artists and musicians develop their talents.
One of the interesting things about intuition is its elusive quality. Looking too intently for it makes it more difficult to find. If you are working too hard to find your intuition, your attention is on yourself and your efforts. By shifting your attention to the question or the other person and opening the channel, you can more easily find the answer. The key is to take a soft focus, just below the surface. This is the paradox of intuition: an open hand will hold it; it will slip through a fist.
Sometimes things are not particularly clear to you. You just have a feeling about something and no one can dispute it. It is your feeling, your observation – your intuition. What happens next is your interpretation of the feeling. We need to put words around this very subjective nudge.
If you have a strong feeling about something or someone, you might say: “something does not sound quite right here”. You are also communicating an interpretation: something is being held back. If you jump too quickly on your interpretation it will often come out as a conclusion, an accusation, or a judgment.
If you are going to use your intuition effectively it can’t be attached to your interpretation. In fact, this desire to be right about another person’s interpretation is often the reason people hold back their intuition. They are afraid of being wrong or appearing foolish.
The correct thing to do is to talk about your intuition to someone else – your partner or co-worker. Depend on your own intuition. When you hold back you withhold a crucial source of information and sensing. The key lesson: go by your intuition, verbalize it, and don’t be attached to being right or wrong. Be open to it as most times it clarifies situations. Speak from your intuition.
Many people find their intuition in their body, in their chest, or stomach. Often people say “your gut response’ or a “gut feeling”. Take some time to find out when you sense your intuition. Stop, pay attention, and listen to your body or base it on your experience to determine what your intuition is telling you. If you think too long your moment of intuition might be lost. Intuition is like a flash of light, it is beginning to fade as soon as it appears. The most powerful moment is the first. Holding back out of fear and timidity, hesitating, will allow it to pass by. That would be a shame, because saying it out loud can often create a dramatic shortcut in whatever you are trying to achieve.
Listen to your intuition more and see what happens. It is like listening better to yourself. It is a powerful talent that can help you move forward faster in many aspects of your life.