Have you ever performed something with an uneasy gut feeling, only to realize after an obnoxious outcome that you knew you shouldn’t have really done it?
Most individuals, especially modern-day leaders, think this is their intuition speaking, but it’s not always the case. How can you correctly tell if you made a “wrong” choice because you didn’t believe in your inner voice or if you spoiled the outcome with your own conflicting feelings about the circumstances?
If we shape our reality through our beliefs and self-perception, how do we differentiate our fear-based resistance from our intuitive insight? After all, there is a thin line between them, and there is no way to really tell which one is which if they stay unconscious. This is why it’s essential to know yourself and your emotional charges inside and out.
We live in an overly vigorous world, where rational thinking, logic, and a “scientific approach” are effective. Not because it is ruled by awareness, but because we believe the ego-mind more than our understanding of self and have become more disconnected from the spiritual, including our senses. This creates a sad polarized imbalance, and we may drift toward one or the other-the mental or the emotional-instead of combining these and other aspects of ourselves.
If you take your decisions solely on instincts or gut feelings, the ego-mind will either make you disbelieve any reasonable approach or tone those feelings with doubt and fear to keep you “safe” and “stuck” in your comfort zone. If you make only rational decisions, you may be unaware of the hidden or subtle sides of an issue, or reject your emotional compass if it tries to take you toward something better.
Develop Your Natural Wisdom
In the end, either way could work against you because it stops you from acquiring greater freedom and emotional flexibility. A dynamic, fluid interaction of the emotional, the mental, and the spiritual would yield more empowering and fulfilling outcomes, choices, and relationships in your life. For this, you’d need to generate intuitive wisdom, which integrates intuition and knowledge- the spiritual and logical aspects of the mind. Here are a few tips for developing it:
- Visit the past with empathy. Learn from experiences and connect the dots between effects and causes, results and choices, and so on. Remember that there is a lesson to be strictly hidden behind all experiences and preferences and not judge yourself for the “wrong” ones. Be realistic but sympathetic: you didn’t know then what you know now.
- Take complete responsibility. Shift your attitude to one of full responsibility for your reality, and don’t concentrate on other people’s choices, only yours. Drop the negative victim-blame game and get clear about what you need from now on.
- Be completely honest with yourself. What may have been your payoffs or hidden motivations in the decisions you’ve made in the past? Find the reasons behind everything you do now.
- Meditate every day and before a critical decision. Meditation creates a quiet, empty space between yourself and the ‘nature’ that will ultimately prevent the ego-mind from influencing your choices. It also assists you in tapping into your subconscious spiritual insights.
- Seek guidance. Be gentle and remember that you cannot see what you are unable to see. We all have different blind spots that the ego uses to hold us confined in the past, redoing the same-old-same. The ego is the know-it-all within you that stops you from growing and learning.
- Remain alert and open. Trust that this is a soul directed exploration and establish more transparent communication with your soul by dropping what blocks it: your doubts, fear, and passive belief patterns. Be attentive to what’s going on inside you at all times and remain separated from any consequence or other people’s decisions.
