Do you ever have that “gut” feeling about something and it turned out that you were right ? That you should have listened to it and you were sorry that you didn’t ? Here’s a very interesting article I found by Annette Colby, Ph.D. about how you can work on sharpening what is called the intuition, and learning how to trust it.  – Laurita

What Is Intuition?
Intuition is the ability to get a sense, understanding, or feeling about something. Your intuition is an aspect of you, it is an extension of you. It is how you speak to yourself about getting yourself together and making new choices that move you forward into advantageous possibilities. Your intuition can help you see when you are staying in your balance, or if you are getting pulled out of your balance by other people or events.

It has been said that intuition is your own voice of higher consciousness, or your own divine spirit talking to you. Intuition is not from the logical mind, but from a higher perspective. Albert Einstein once said, “The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why. The truly valuable thing is intuition.”

Even if you have not been accustomed to listening to your intuition, or trusting your intuition, you have this amazing power! Read below for the eight best strategies to help you hone your intuitive abilities to assist you in making better decisions for your life.

1. Self-Love
Intuition is not something outside of yourself. It is not someone else telling you what to do. Intuition is your own higher perspective. It is your own desire to express yourself creatively in all that you do. Your intuition is your infinite capacity to search for, and find, creative solutions for your challenges and your life. Most everyone already knows that when you ignore intuition, the situation does not generally turn out so well. Allowing yourself to invite more of your intuition into your life is a powerful act of self-love. By embracing your intuition, you show compassion for yourself and make the choice to bring more positive outcomes into your life.

2. Listen To Your Body
Intuition is accurate information from your spirit. Your intuitive messages can come in a number of forms. You may hear actual words, see a clear image, or have a deep inner knowingness. Your intuition may communicate with you in the form of hunches, insights, Aha! moments, a feeling, a sixth sense, or various types of body sensations. You may also experience intuition by noticing synchronicities. Set your intention to notice the many individual ways your intuition communicates with you.

3. Embrace Quietness
Intuition is initially often a quiet, gentle nudge. It generally does not shout loud enough to be heard over your stress, upset, frustration, anger, or judgement. Spending some quiet contemplative time each day is good way to strengthen your intuitive voice. Simply sit in a quiet place every day for about 1 to 20 minutes. Take a deep breath, and ask, “What is it I need to know?” or, “What will move me one step closer to a more fulfilling and meaningful life. Then be open. Release your need to think, analyze, and know everything. The best information comes from the quiet guidance of your own intuition.

4. Sit With Your Problem
Try this experiment. When something is deeply troubling you, just sit with it. Don’t do anything to logically fix or solve the problem. Instead, just sit, place your intention on allowing the best possible outcome, and breathe. See if you can step away from the negative thoughts circling with frenzy within your head. Your intuition sees many creative ways to bring about a goal or bring about a positive outcome to your situation. Your job is to stop fretting and stressing with the problem, and instead place your focus on being open to amazing new potentials. Make the decision to allow your intuition to get involved in your life.

5. Play Games With Your Intuition
Play fun little games with yourself that allow intuition to expand. For example, when standing in front of a bank of elevators, ask your intuition to “tell” you which elevator will reach your floor first. If you guess correctly, make a big deal of it. Let your intuition know it did a great job and how happy you are to hear from it. Notice how good you feel and breathe into that feeling. Let yourself know that you want more of this type of intuition that feels good. It doesn’t matter if your correct guess was just a fluke or actually intuition. Your purpose is not to second guess, but to build up more of what you want. If you guessed incorrectly, just shrug it off. Let your intuition know that you may have ignored it in the past, but you are now ready to begin listening and taking action on its wisdom. Have some patience with yourself. Once you decide that you want more intuitive information in your life, it will begin showing up. Allow yourself to turn those initial little successes into avenues of greater intuition.

6. Ask Intuition Based Questions
Questioning is one of the best ways to develop stronger intuition and gain clarity and insight. When getting in touch with your intuitive self, ask questions that would lead you forward into positive solutions. Ask clearly formed questions that allow clear answers. For example, you might ask, “What is the next step I could take that would bring new energy and new passion?” Intuition can bring you down paths you hadn’t considered. Intuition can show you new paths to try and new possibilities. Your intuition is infinitely inventive. When listening for your intuitive answers, remember that you may get your answers from a variety of sources including hunches, coincidences, feelings, words, or even physical sensations.

7. Follow Your Intuitive Hunches
Once you get an intuitive idea, decide to take action. It doesn’t have to be a huge life changing action, but you can take one small, comfortable step in the direction of your intuitive guidance. On a day-to-day basis, allow your intuition to play a bigger role in your life. If you have a sense to take a left turn instead of a right turn, follow through and go left. If you are grocery shopping and the broccoli somehow calls to you instead of the carrots you had intended to purchase, buy the broccoli. You don’t need to logically question “why” you turned left or bought broccoli. Your goal is to create a bond of trust between your logical self and your intuitive self. When you fail to follow your hunches and gut feelings, talk to your intuition. Tell it that it did a fine job of providing useful information. Let it know that yes, it would have been wise to follow through with the intuitive course of action, but this time you choose not to. However, let your intuition know that you still want the input even though you might not always listen.

8. Journal
Writing is a gateway to the soul which means it is also a gateway to your intuition. Exploring with pen and paper allows a process to unfold of reconnecting with hidden aspects of your self. It helps you speak out, allowing ideas to become tangible words. It allows vague concepts to take shape in the safety of a journal. Writing is a power tool that allows what is often locked away inside to have access into the world. It allows you to feel into your physical body and connect with intuition, creativity, and imagination. Writing allows the time to find precisely the right words or the most powerful images to express your self. It takes fuzzy or confusing images and brings them into sharp focus. Writing is an easy way to gain insight from your intuition.

Intuition is your higher perspective and guidance. Since it is an aspect of you, it holds your best interests for creating a fulfilling and meaningful life. Intuition is your urge to creatively manifest your most fulfilling and meaningful life, your goals, your dreams, and all that is good and beautiful. Utilize these eight suggestions to sharpen your intuition and you will be surprised at how often it will give you a short cut to the life and outcomes you want.

delete reply papahere wrote on Jan 7, ’08 Laurita…I also did a blog on intuition last year…I think it is our basic and natural intelligence which tends to be ignored and thought inferior to analysis…our educational institutions offer little understanding of its importance along with the training skills you outline above. ~ Papa

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Jan 7, ’08 We tend to listen to our intuition as children, but as we grow up, we tend to ignore it, and we regret it in the decisions we make later.

delete reply laura1may wrote on Jan 8, ’08 How very interesting. There are those who would have it that rational thought leads to better decisions.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Jan 8, ’08 But then there are those like me who believe that the intuition IS rational thought that leads to better decisions.

delete reply laura1may wrote on Jan 8, ’08 I think some people are better at using their intuition than others, in terms of what they do with the information.

edit delete reply lauritasita wrote on Jan 8, ’08 Yes, but hopefully, since that information comes from the soul, you would think that what they do with the information would be useful in some way to help others for the good of mankind.