More Than A Feeling – Pt 2

​Now that you understand more about your intuition and how it can help you, let’s look at ways in which you can strengthen and engage it.

Hearing your intuition

The intuitive voice is subtle, so it needs a calm, peaceful environment to be heard. All the mental chatter circling in your head makes hearing your intuition almost impossible…kind of like having a conversation at a concert. Meditation helps to differentiate the noise and unleash your inner voice.
Click here for a quick guide to meditation

Strengthen your intuition
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Like a muscle your intuition can be trained and strengthened. The more you use it the stronger it becomes. Try the suggestions below to kick-start your intuition:
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1. Ask yourself: before seeking answers elsewhere i.e. other people, the internet. The more you seek your internal answer first the louder this voice becomes.
2. Listen: find a quiet place without distractions and listen to your intuition. Reject the need to use reason and simply listen without judgement. The answers you find may seem strange, but remember anything that’s not logical will be.
3. Feel: thoughts use reason, intuition uses feelings. Try feeling the bodies’ reactions as opposed to using your thoughts reasoning to find your answers. And remember intuition can’t be reasoned with.
4. Use mindfulness: engage with all of your senses frequently. The more you use your five senses, the clearer your 6th sense (intuition) becomes.
5. Get creative: intuition responds to creativity.

Don’t be afraid if you at first it’s difficult to hear your intuition. You’ve more than likely spent so long ignoring it that it’s difficult to hear. But with time and practice it will become clearer.

Test your intuition
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Learning how your intuition communicates with you takes patience and persistence. You’ll have to learn how to distinguish between these signals and learn their meaning — it’ll be different for every person, so there’s no cheating!These signals won’t always be as obvious as a churning feeling in your stomach. Sometimes they’ll be subtle. Especially when you’re still new to using your intuition.I’ve found keeping a journal is one of the best methods to test and strengthen my inner voice. It helped me make sense of the signals my intuition was sending me and how to interpret them.
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To get started:

1. Take note of any sensation you feel when making a decision (if any).
2. Next, write these sensations in a journal and what you think they mean. Don’t act on them yet. Just let them be.
3. Finally, review the situations you write down to check how often you were right.
4. Review your journal every fortnight to review and make sense of all your intuitive clues.

If you’re an Apple user you can download an iPhone app called Intuition journal. At this point there isn’t one for Android but you can still visit the site for tips, tools and resources.

​Key takeaways
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1. Meditation helps to distinguish your intuition from the mental chatter in your head.
2. Like a muscle your intuition can be strengthened with use. To strengthen it, exercise it.
3. A journal is a great way to test your intuition.