Paul Brian
Intuition is small but powerful.
It’s that still, small voice inside yourself that helps guide you, warn you and enlighten you about what to do in life and love.
All too often, we lose touch with our intuition and it gets drowned out in the hustle and bustle of our busy modern lives.
Here’s how to start listening to it again…
1) Being too busy to stop and just… be
Perhaps the most important of the signs you’re ignoring your intuition is that you never stop to smell the roses.
You’re so busy basically 24/7 that you don’t really ever take a real break.
You may even find that you’re scanning work emails or watching TV while eating, unable to just focus on one thing at once.
I’ve been in that position and still find myself racing so much in the rat race that I forget where I even am or what continent I’m on!
So:
First of all, at some point in your day, take a break.
Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment.
Please don’t do this if you are driving, operating heavy machinery or in the middle of performing life-saving surgery.
But if you’re reading, put the book down for a moment…
If you’re watching TV, click the remote and disconnect for a moment…
If you’re going for a jog, pause on the sidewalk for a minute…
Feel the sensations of your body for a moment. Your breathing, your heart rate, your vision, your emotions.
What’s going on in your life right now and how does it make you feel?
Be honest about it. If you feel nothing much at all, let yourself just feel that.
In this way you begin to get in touch with your intuition.
2) Not breathing deeply
One of the biggest signs you’re ignoring your intuition is that you’re not breathing deeply.
That’s why I urge you to start breathing and really focus on it.
Continue from the last step, and as you pause for a moment, breathe deeply.
Your breath is powerful and is a bridge between your conscious and unconscious.
As you tap into the power of your breath, you begin to awake to a more primal and raw state of being.
This is the state of being where you begin to become more aware of your intuition.
Follow your breath as you inhale and exhale.
Let your thoughts and emotions come and go.
Just breathe and see what remains. More than likely, it’s going to be your intuition trying to get through to you.
3) Being overly positive and optimistic
Many gurus and self-help teachers will tell you about the power of positive visualization and even the so-called “Law of Attraction.”
I actually want to discourage against going down that route, at least not until you’ve tried something else.
Being too positive and too optimistic can actually be our monkey mind’s way of living in a fantasy world…
Plus it’s all too easy for a goopy guru or self-help sleazeball to take advantage of it and milk our wallet and incredulity for their own benefit.
You see, the idea of positive vibrations and visualizing a better future sounds great, but the reality is a little different…
Far too often you end up trying to “fake it ‘til you make it” and force yourself to be positive…
You try to envision a better future or job or partner and end up lost in daydreams instead of knowing what actions to take.
The solution is actually to find your purpose in a completely different way that I have used and found extremely helpful in my own life.
It’s no exaggeration to say that it turned things around for me.
This method is something taught by the shaman Rudá Iandê and it will likely surprise you.
He has a strange new way to find your mission in the world without using visualization.
Check out the free video here.
4) Not paying attention to how you feel
Feelings come and go.
Relying on them can be tricky, especially if they’re changing so much.
One day you may really want to date someone and the next day you may feel it’s the wrong move.
But here’s the thing about intuition:
It goes deeper than a temporary feeling or passing emotion.
It’s more like the underlying feeling under the surface.
For example, if you meet someone new who wants to enter into business with you and you have an intuitive feeling they are not trustworthy, pay attention to that.
You may like them or their business may excite you, but go back to the main emotion or reaction that underlies your relation to them.
What is that emotion and what’s it telling you? (Not to get into business with them, in this case).
As the Killers sing in their 2020 single “My Own Soul’s Warning:”
“I tried going against my own soul’s warning
“And in the end, something just didn’t feel right.”
Your soul’s warning is something you should always pay attention to.
And if you’re not sure what it is, start back at step one: take a break and just breathe. See what deeper feeling remains with you.
5) Feeling constantly stressed and anxious
Modern life moves at a very fast pace and it’s understandable you may be feeling stressed, anxious and overwhelmed.
But if you find that you wake up from the very first moment and feel like you’re facing an oncoming train, then it’s one of the top signs you’re ignoring your intuition.
There are times in life when you won’t feel great, and being overly positive and optimistic is not the right approach.
However if you find the opposite and that everything has become a massive downer, it’s often because you’re trying to drown out the voice inside.
For example, I have a friend who was engaged to someone last year and kept running into red flags.
He was very in love with her, however, and ignored them. He wanted this to work.
Sadly, they split up a few months ago and never ended up marrying.
He tells me now that he knew the whole time it wasn’t right and that he couldn’t even get a full night’s sleep much less feel OK about himself.
But he tried to drown that out because it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted his fairytale to happen so badly that he tried to ignore the voice inside him screaming that everything was wrong.
6) You intentionally ignore past lessons
Another of the disturbing signs you’re ignoring your intuition is that you ignore past lessons.
When painful or important memories come up that could hold a lesson for present decisions, you ignore them.
For example, if you remember what happened the last time you drank too much and went on a weekend bender and how it ended up in handcuffs…
But you’re feeling just a little too high and great right now to pay attention so you push it back down and go out with all the worst friends you have to get shitfaced.
This is because intuition is often a matter of honoring past memories and linking them to the present.
“The information that we gather starts in our short-term memory, and from there it can either be forgotten or processed, and then filed into your long-term memory.
“These memories then get stored as “patterns” of information.
“When we come across similar patterns in the future, it can trigger our intuition.”
7) Your friends tell you that you’re on the wrong track
You have to make your own decisions in life, there’s no doubt about that.
But those who love and care about you should get a say, too.
Sometimes those close to us can see us behaving in impulsive, selfish or unwise ways which we don’t always notice.
It’s like looking for your glasses when you’re already wearing them.
Sometimes we miss what’s right in front of us.
One of the biggest signs you’re ignoring your intuition is that your friends and loved ones tell you you’re on the wrong track and warn you.
They say that you need to think twice about what you’re doing or will do, but you overrule them or ignore the advice.
In this case, they could be the representative for your overcrowded and outvoted intuition.
8) You’re overly cautious about taking new chances
On the flip side of being too impulsive or reckless is when you refuse to try anything new.
Indeed, one of the top signs you’re ignoring your intuition is that you don’t want to meet new people or try new things.
Your intuition may be telling you it’s time for a new chapter in your life and time for you to take a chance.
But because you’re scared, you shut it down and ignore it.
Sometimes you need to take that risk and take that big step forward when your intuition tells you it’s right.
Just remember that a slight sense of being scared to do what you really want doesn’t mean you shouldn’t!
“Your intuition can tell you when it’s time to do something new such as asking someone out, exploring a new job, or beginning a project.
“However, trying something new can be scary due to the fear of failure or change.”
9) You’re completely unmotivated in your current life
We all wax and wane in our commitment to our daily life tasks, jobs, relationships and hobbies.
But one of the big signs you’re ignoring your intuition is that you just aren’t feeling motivated at all about your life.
Various parts of it feel like going through the motions and even though you may feel comfortable you have an ongoing sense that you could be doing so much more.
There’s a feeling that you’re not living your true purpose and that you’re only using a small part of your potential.
Perhaps you’re making bad decisions, or avoiding decisions altogether…
But you feel like you have no real expansion in your life, no real growth.
You’re in the same old routine, but too comfortable to get out of it or too scared of trying something different.
Your intuition is begging you to do something different, you just have to reach out and take its hand.
10) You feel like you’re living somebody else’s life
One of the biggest signs you’re ignoring your intuition is that you feel like you’re living somebody else’s life.
You wake up, shave or brush your hair and go about your day, but you don’t feel like it’s really you doing all this.
Technically, the psychological term for this is dissociation, but at a more spiritual and emotional level it’s a sign that you’re not in touch with your intuition and haven’t found your real life purpose.
Finding your purpose is a process, of course.
But all too often we try to take shortcuts, get other people to tell us what to do, or let society or culture fit us into an economic or social slot.
Then we end up feeling hollow and horrible, as if we’re not really us anymore, but just a flesh suit walking around and going through the motions.
Feeling like you’re living someone else’s life is bizarre and quite depressing.
If you’re going through that, then getting in touch with your own unique mission in life and connecting to your intuition is the crucial way to turn things around.
Your own soul’s warning
When you ignore your own soul’s warning there are all sorts of unfortunate consequences that occur:
- Staying in toxic and unhappy relationships
- Experiencing increased frustration in your job and career
- Facing debilitating long-term health issues that you never quite deal with
- Being cheated in love, life and career due to being overly trusting
- Being disappointed in love, life and career due to being overly paranoid…
And so on.
Your intuition is there for a reason.
Consider it your emotional and ethical GPS.
Use your intellect and your reasoning all you want but when you need a deeper guide to turn to, sit and listen to that still, small voice.
