How To Develop Your Intuition Archives

Is Your Intuition Wrong?

Have you ever taken action on intuitive guidance – and nothing happened? You may have felt intensely drawn to a real estate listing, only to look at the home and leave disappointed. You may have excitedly applied for a job that felt like it was meant just for you, only to not even get an interview. Or gone out on a date with someone you were excited about, only to have a very boring experience. Sometimes we feel so guided in our actions, but the results don’t seem particularly positive. We are left questioning ourselves and our intuition. Are we just imagining our intuitive impulses?

Actually, our intuition may be working just fine! Here are a few reasons why it sometimes feels as if our intuition has let us down:

The intuitive impulse was accurate, but our mind assumed a specific outcome.

We may be looking for a new home. A real estate listing resonates with us and we receive the intuitive impulse to go and check it out. So far, so good. But now our mind attaches meaning and outcome to the intuitive guidance – that this is the house we will live in. In actuality, maybe our Spirit Guides just wanted us to check out that particular neighborhood. Because we’ve already created an expected outcome, the actual benefits of this intuitive guidance may go unnoticed.

The guidance serves to refine our intent.

Sometimes our intent is too general. For example, we may think we want a job in a particular field that pays a specific income. But when we go and interview with a large corporation, we realize that we also really want to work within a small company. Until we were guided towards this particular interview, we had no way of knowing this about ourselves. Our intuitive guidance assisted us in gaining clarity, so that we can manifest a job that truly serves us. If our expectation, however, was to find a job based on this particular interview, then we may be disappointed.

The guidance serves to expand our frame of reference.

Our Higher Self and Spirit Guides have to work within what we know. For example, I understand nothing about the stock market. If I tried to apply my intuition to buying stocks, I would be miserably inaccurate and lose a lot of money! The workings of the stock market are outside of my frame of reference. Every once in a while, we are sent into a direction that expands what we know of the world. In the examples I used previously, we may be sent to see a home for sale in order to create an accurate frame of references for current housing prices. Or maybe we are sent on a job interview so that we can have an accurate frame of reference for the types of benefits some companies offer.

The guidance serves to take us to the next step.

Maybe our Guides and Higher Self send us to check out a home for sale so that we would meet a particular realtor. Meeting a realtor that would truly serve our highest good in our search for a new home is the next step on our journey. Your Spirit Guides might nudge you to go out with someone so that you can end up with a referral to their massage therapist. You might be led to attend a workshop in order to meet a future business partner. If we are only focused on a specific end result, we may miss out on many of the resources that intuitive guidance provides for us along the way.

The next time you feel as if your intuition led you astray, ask yourself what you truly received from the experience of acting on guidance. Let go of your expectations, so that you can witness how beautifully supported you are – even though that support may come in unanticipated ways.

Blessings,
Andrea

Intuition: Setting Short-Term Intentions

For many of us, setting the big, long-term intentions for our life is not all that difficult. We may want a romantic life partner, or perhaps start our own business. Maybe we want to reach a certain income level by the end of the year. Because they are long-term, we are fairly comfortable letting go of “how” these intentions may manifest themselves. We may, in fact, be so comfortable letting go of the “how” that we don’t do much about these intentions at all.

Based on some email responses I received on my last blog post, it seems to be more difficult for us to come up with intentions for today, or for the next three days, or even for this week. We may already have plans, or perhaps we’re just really, really busy. Our immediate future seems pretty much set!

And yet, the immediate future is what creates the long-term future. What we do today determines our tomorrow. And today is shaped by this present moment, and then the next one, and the next one. How can we create each moment consciously without a guiding intent? If our intent is all about the future, what happens to the now?

I have nothing against long-term intentions. They are a necessary part of our journey. So let’s keep creating our vision boards for the year, or whatever it is that helps us solidify our intentions. But think of long-term intentions as the big road map that tells us what major highways to take between, say, New York and Los Angeles. That big road map contains those major highways – but it’s not detailed at the local level. It doesn’t tell us where to stop for breakfast, lunch and dinner, where to get to an inexpensive hotel for the night, or where we can pick up a supply of snacks for the road. We don’t discover those things from the big road map. We learn those just by taking an exit and being present to where we are while knowing what we’re looking for.

In my last article, I asked my readers to set an intention for getting something accomplished within a three day period. That’s certainly one sort of short-term intention. But when determining our short-term intentions, another powerful question we can ask ourselves is “When the end of the day comes around, who do I want to be?” At the end of my day, I like to be tired in a satisfied way, with a sense of having done my work in the world and hopefully having learned a lot and strengthened my connection to Spirit. I like to be relaxed, knowing my work for the day is truly done. And I like to go to bed looking forward to the next day. These are intentions that have nothing to do with my “to do” list. But setting these types of intentions every day shapes each present moment as it arises, and changes the quality of my day, week, and thereby my entire future.

We can do the same thing for our work week. When Friday evening rolls around, who do we want to be? What state of being do we intend to embrace? Keeping that intention in mind can influence our choices and actions in profound ways as we go about our business.

When you get up tomorrow, set an intention of who you want to be at the end of your day. Ask your Higher Self and Guides for assistance. See what unfolds.

Blessings,
Andrea

Developing Intuition: The Mind Trap

Our intuition communicates with us all day long. Many of us receive this communication quite clearly – even many of us who don’t consider ourselves particularly intuitive. Ideas spring into our minds out of nowhere. We are inspired with bursts of creativity. We feel the nudge to pick up the phone, the sense that words are placed into our mouths that must be said. All this is intuition – communication from our Spirit.

But then we commit one fatal mistake. Before we act on those ideas, bring forth the inspiration, make that phone call or speak out loud, we think about it. We try to justify the impulse, to explain it to ourselves. We struggle to come up with a good reason for taking inspired action as guided, or we try our best to talk ourselves out of that action. We try to figure out where it will all go. We attach outcomes. We think so much that perhaps we don’t end up doing anything at all. Or maybe we take action that is a rationalized, altered version of the original intuitive impulse. All too often, we think ourselves out of acting on guidance.

Here’s a fun way to create the habit of simply taking action when Divine inspiration strikes.

Set an intention – something that you can feasibly create or accomplish within the next three or four days. Make it something real, something tangible. Then ask your Higher Self and your Guides: “What actions can I take in the next three days that will contribute to manifesting my desired outcome of (state your intention)?”

Now comes the real fun. Whatever impulse you receive – do it. Even if it makes no sense right now, even if it has no obvious connection to your intention – just do it. For three days, act first. You can think later.

A few ground rules:

Taking action does not mean doing research, writing it down on a to-do list, or putting it in your calendar. Taking action does not mean reading about something, or even journaling. Journaling is thinking on paper. It has its place, but this isn’t it. For the sake of this exercise, your action must be expressed into the world. That means that other people can perceive your actions.

The next two ground rules should be self-evident, but I just want to be sure no-one gets carried away! Don’t spend any money you don’t have. And remember that Spirit would never guide us to do anything that could conceivably be hurtful to another person … just in case you feel moved to insult your boss!

Give yourself three days without thinking yourself out of Divine guidance. By the end of three days, you may have begun creating remarkable results in your life. Try it, and share your experience in the comments!

Blessings,
Andrea

Intuitive Guidance “On Hold”

Occasionally, we invite our Higher Self to guide us to our next steps and get … nothing. The connection is wide open, and we are more than ready to receive and act on guidance. But all we get is the energetic equivalent of elevator music – the sort we hear when we’re on hold with customer service. No direction, no sense of urgency, just … “wait.” It can be infuriating, maddening. We’ve become so accustomed to striving forward that just sitting back and enjoying ourselves feels highly dissatisfying. But sometimes, doing nothing is exactly what we need.

It’s easy to associate “creating” with “doing.” We have to remember that it is impossible for us to stop creating. We are always creating our experiences – not only through our actions, but through the energetic qualities we are embodying at any given time. Even if we are sitting on the couch watching television, we are still creating something. We are at all times broadcasting an energetic frequency, which determines what further experiences we will attract. If we are simply having fun and enjoying ourselves, it may look like we are doing “nothing.” We’re not accomplishing anything, we’re not getting work done. Energetically speaking, however, we are being highly productive! We are broadcasting fulfillment, abundance, and joy. Behind the scenes, the Universe is busily creating experiences for us that match this energetic resonance.

When we feel as if we are “on hold” – uninspired to take any kind of obviously productive action – it is a reminder from our Higher Self to engage in conscious creation by embracing a positive state of being. We usually resist this seemingly passive way of creating for a few days. Our minds miss the activity, the drama and the stress of striving forward. We’re caught up in the illusion that only action produces results. We may struggle against our lack of inspiration, and try to force our progress. When we relax into this lull and accept that we are due for some “down time,” however, we often discover that, in spite of our seeming inactivity, a remarkable number of opportunities arise overnight. What we have been striving for without success may simply manifest itself into our lives with no additional effort on our part.

The time we spend “on hold” may be as short as a few days, or last several weeks. The more we flow within this state, the more obvious it will be when it is over. We will suddenly be called into inspired action. That action may look very different from what we’d been planning just a few weeks ago, before our Higher Self put all productivity “on hold.” And that is what these times of suspending action are really about. They allow us to hit the “reset” button on the spinning wheels of our mind and return to the inner wisdom that arises out of simply being.

What do you do when you feel as if you are “on hold?” Do you embrace this state, or struggle through it? Leave a comment and share!

Blessings,
Andrea

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Interview on Developing Intuition

I wanted to share a recent interview I did with Rose-Anne Kumpunen, host of Real Life Radio. Rose-Anne was kind enough to let me talk about my absolutely favorite topic – developing intuition! Thank you, Rose-Anne!

Give this a listen here or click on the player below for a few tips on developing intuition!

Blessings,
Andrea

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