Everyone is Intuitive
Our intuition is innate and learned. We all have the ability of sensing it, but most of us didn’t grow up being shown how to listen to our intuition or that it was ok to follow it. To some degree, we’ve all been conditioned to dismiss and ignore it.
We learn to question and doubt our intuition early in life and it gets more complex depending upon the degree we’ve been conditioned to be codependent or people-pleasers. We’re often shamed when we use our intuitive senses and can’t logically prove why we know what we know. We then default to dismiss and suppress our intuition when it goes against others’ expectations or we can’t justify it to their satisfaction.
When we lose trust in ourselves and intuition, we seek external approval and validation of our choices. It then becomes easy to talk ourselves out of what our intuition is trying to communicate to us. This is especially true when we’re afraid of making a “wrong” decision, so we run our choices through a process that first considers what everyone else needs or thinks we should do.
When we continually override our intuition, we waste a lot of time, resources, and our inner-peace trying to figure things out but never actually addressing the inner-guidance.
We can’t go back to a factory reset, but we can relearn how our intuition works for us and with practice, we can turn up our ability to hear it above the noise of our conditioning.
When we connect with and follow our intuition, we improve our ability to be guided by our Higher Self and can make self-supportive choices more quickly.
Let Yourself Know What You Know
I’ve gone through long cycles of “I don’t know what I want, but I know it’s not this.”
Deep down, I knew the truth about past relationships and my medical science career, but for years I talked myself out of acting to leave each of them because I couldn’t justify it – to myself. I was conditioned to believe that I needed to a have a good (rational) reason for wanting something different. It was easier to say that I don’t know what I want than to admit what I knew, because then I’d have to make the choice to leave and that would come with difficult consequences.
We’re afraid to know this kind of truth because once we know, we can’t un-know it. It requires a lot of energy to suppress, ignore, and deny that inner-truth and guidance. We can busy ourselves, make excuses, numb out, or try to change ourselves, but the knowing never goes away. When we suppress and deny our truth, it drains us and can become fatigue, depression, shame, or many other symptoms (yes, I had all of these).
We’re trained to doubt ourselves and suppress our intuition, so it’s hard to hear and trust what our inner-guidance is trying to say. The thing is, we’re never going to get what we really need or want if we continue to follow our conditioned patterns and reactions.
Hopefully, we can at least say “I know I don’t want this…”. And if that’s where you are, that’s a really good sign that your intuition is trying to get your attention and you’re connecting with that message.
Get to Know Your Intuition
There are lots of reasons why we don’t or can’t listen to our intuition. We’ve been programmed to believe that to stay “safe” we need to prioritize others and their needs over our own.
When we have strong emotional responses like fear, it can keep us stuck because we don’t want to disturb our perceived comfort and security. Our minds will also join in and react with a bunch of questions or reasons to cause us to dismiss our intuition or guidance.
We need to develop a daily practice to listen to and follow our intuition to help move us out of this conditioned behavior. But first, we need to know how our intuition feels to us so we can understand how it works for us.
Start with low-stake basics. Don’t look for big “downloads” of information. Get to know your way of sensing a yes/no/maybe/I don’t know for choices that don’t have big consequences. (Bagel or donut?)
For example, a “No” or “not for me” may feel repellent or a like contraction in your body. A “Yes” may feel warm, open, or exciting to you. Our intuition can also be a discovery process with a simple pull of curiosity and invitation to explore choices.
We rely on language to understand most communications, but at its core, intuition is a sensory language that we need to learn and practice so we can understand how it works within us.
This is how to begin to recalibrate to your intuition and become more guidable by your Higher Self.
Intuition is an Invitation
It’s a lifelong practice to get to know ourself and develop our abilities to listen to and follow our intuition. We need to create space to ask and answer our own questions about what it means to trust ourselves.
When we stop second-guessing and doubting our inner-guidance and what we know, we learn to distinguish our intuition from our conditioning or fear.
Intuition can save us from wasted time and cyclical patterns of doubt and confusion, but more than that, it can enrich our lives and help us create one that is more enjoyable and authentic to who we are and always becoming.
Intuition is the inner-knowing that invites us to a next step.
Name It to Claim It – Simple Steps to Recalibrate and Connect to Your Intuition
Remember, collecting the information is not the same as doing the actual work. You can understand the how-to’s, but I gotta tell you, you actually have to DO THEM (or any intuitive practice) regularly in order to embody it.
These are the simplest of practices to help you recalibrate your intuitive connection.
Daily Practice
ASK: Everyday, ask your Higher Self and Spirit Team (HS/ST) to help you. A daily practice is needed to help clear a life time of conditioning that suppresses your intuition.
For many years now, I’ve used some sort of daily morning invocation to ask for connection and support. I make specific requests throughout the day too. I also have an invocation that I do before I have a Spirit Team meeting to ask for specific guidance like I’ve described in this blog post. https://angelarider.com/channel-written-guidance/
Call on your Higher Self and Spirit Team throughout the day to provide guidance, help you make choices, and bring opportunities and resources to support you. Start asking for specific support from them. Nothing is too big, too small, or off limits to ask for support or even to just ask to be delightfully surprised. This will create a stronger connection to your Higher Self guidance and intuition.
If you’re called to, you can say the following attunement daily or whenever you set aside sometime to check-in with your intuition. Feel free to adapt the language to what feels right for you.
Intuition Attunement: “I call on my Higher Self Consciousness and Spirit Team to clear some space within me so I can feel more peaceful and calmer. Help me connect to my own-knowing and improve my ability to hear and trust my higher self- guidance and intuition. I’m open, ready, and willing to receive the loving, energetic support I need right now. Thank you.”
Practices to Help Activate and Recalibrate Your Intuition
I recommend writing down your findings because it helps engage that Name It to Claim It connection.
Acknowledge TRUTH: This is an intuition activation.
- Admit one truth to yourself that you Know that you want to create or change.
- Then, with curiosity and receptiveness, take one small step in that direction.
- I often recommend googling and collecting resources or support as a first step for whatever it is. Then, let that information inform your next step.
- Ask your HS/ST to help you.
The practice of admitting a truth, with follow up actions, signals that you’re open, willing, and ready to hear and follow your intuition.
Calibrate Your YES:
- What are 3 examples of times when you felt your intuition said “Yes” and you followed it and it turned out well?
- What did each “Yes” feel like in your body?
- What are 3 examples of times when you felt your intuition said “Yes” but you ignored it or talked yourself out of it and you wish you didn’t?
- What did that “Yes” feel like in your body?
- What did it feel like to suppress your “Yes”?
Focus on the way that you feel or receive a “Yes” so it helps you recalibrate and strengthen that intuitive signal. You may have different ways to receive a Yes, like a gut feeling, an expansion and lightness, hearing a word, feeling warmth, etc.
Calibrate Your NO:
- What are 3 examples of times when you felt your intuition said “No” and you followed it and it turned out well?
- What did each “No” feel like in your body?
- What are 3 examples of times when you felt your intuition said “No” but you ignored it or talked yourself out of it and you wish you didn’t?
- What did that “No” feel like in your body?
- What did it feel like to suppress your “No”?
Focus on the way that you feel or receive a “No” so it helps you recalibrate and strengthen that intuitive signal. You may have different ways to receive a No, like a gut feeling, a contraction and heaviness, hearing a word, feeling cold, etc.
Calibrate Your MAYBE or I DON’T KNOW:
This one is more challenging because sometimes our intuition feels neutral because it’s a situation that doesn’t have a significant consequence and it’s your freewill choice or preference on your journey. It may also be that it’s not time to know yet and more information is to come.
Other times, we’re afraid to admit a yes or no that’s from that inner-knowing because we can’t justify it or others may not like it. And sometimes, we feel the need to take time, research, and discover our inner-guidance. It’s OK to have a conditional response until you know more. Sometimes the guidance is to wait, or “not yet”.
This practice can give you insight into ways that your conditioning overrides your intuition and where you may need to ask for more information as well as use reason and logic to help gain clarity. Notice when you’re overthinking and searching for an answer or assurance from others, or when tarot, oracles, etc. is a pattern of trying to make a choice by consensus.
- What are 3 examples of times when you couldn’t feel or sense an inner Yes or No?
- What did that feel like in your body?
- What did you do to resolve the question?
- Did you research and get more information?
- Did you use logic and reason, or your intuition, or a combination of both to decide?
- What did it feel like when you made your decision?
- Are you able to sit and be patient with an “I don’t know, yet”?
You’re Guided. Period.
You’re guided through life whether you feel it or not. But you can intentionally connect with your intuition, inner-knowing, and Higher-Self guidance to help you make choices and take action. It doesn’t have to be a big fanfare, but it does take practice to be clearly guided.
As always, if you have struggles or goals that you need to address, instead of trying to figure it out and worrying that you have to be exactly right, just take the next best step for you.
- Check-in with your inner-guidance and Spirit Team to help you.
- Assess what’s “true” for you right now. Identify the easiest next best step that you can take.
- Find the support to get clarity or to help you take that step.
- Let the experience of that step inform you.
That one step, no matter how small, provides a change in your perspective so you can then see what your next step will be.
Here are some helpful options for Clarity Sessions to receive supportive guidance from your Spirit Team.
Much love,
Angela
