If you could choose a superpower, predicting the future would be a tempting option. Imagine how handy the intel could be when making important decisions. But what if this superpower already exists inside of you? While a crystal ball with clear answers may not be a reality, your intuition can tell you more than you might realize.
“Intuition is a relatability,” says Laura Day, a practicing intuitive and author of Practical Intuition: How to Harness the Power of Your Instinct and Make It Work for You. “It’s an ability everyone has but not everyone recognizes it. People who are successful, especially those who are frontrunners, are already engaging their intuition, they just don’t identify it as such. It’s the pieces of their logical thinking that they can’t really identify; they can’t pinpoint to where they got that data. But they engage it in nonetheless, and they do it effectively.”
A hurdle for most people to clear is simply acknowledging that intuition is a natural part of being a human, says Eboni Banks, an intuitive coach and healer. “We’ve all had those experiences of knowing something without logic before it happens,” she says. “Then, in hindsight, you say, ‘I knew that was going to happen.’ Another example is getting butterflies in your stomach before something happens. Those are beginner-level intuition.”
“You’re getting intuitive information all the time, but you have a natural, subconscious filtering system,” adds Day. “To use your intuition, you need to expand that system.”
What is Intuition?
To best understand intuition, knowing what it is not is essential. For example, most of us would probably believe that intuition is having a feeling, but that’s incorrect, says Day.
“Feelings are the least accurate intuitive tool,” she says. “Instead, intuition is leaning into your five senses, allowing them to move around and integrate information that’s appropriate to the goal but may not be in your immediate environment.”
Visualization is different than intuition, says Day. “When people positively visualize a future outcome, it’s helpful, but it’s not really an intuitive process because you can only visualize from what you’ve been exposed to. Intuition is new data, and the magnet for it is your question, your goal, or your problem.”
Banks says that intuition can present itself as a thought you haven’t had before or something coming into your physical environment. It often speaks to you repetitively, especially when it’s strongly trying to get your attention.
“It’s another form of intelligence,” she says. “Looking for repetition is a powerful way to acknowledge when something is attempting to be communicated to you because your intuition is genius.”
While intuition sounds like a woo-woo concept, a variety of studies back it up with science. Research done by Gerard Hodgkinson while he was a professor of behavioral science at the Centre for Organizational Strategy at Leeds University, for example, suggests that intuition is information stored in our brain combined with external clues. It provides a feeling that something is wrong or right, which allows for quick decisions.
“People usually experience true intuition when they are under severe time pressure or in a situation of information overload or acute danger, where conscious analysis of the situation may be difficult or impossible,” he said in an interview with Science Daily.
In addition, researchers from the University of New South Wales found that information that’s been unconsciously gathered can aid in decision-making situations. In an experiment, participants were shown a series of emotion-driven images at a speed that only their unconscious mind could detect. While the participants were unaware of what their brain had seen, they were able to draw context from the images to make more accurate predictions about an event.
“These data suggest that we can use unconscious information in our body or brain to help guide us through life, to enable better decisions, faster decisions, and be more confident in the decisions we make,” Joel Pearson, a professor of psychology who was part of the research team, said in an interview with the Association for Psychological Science.
How to Use Yours
Using your intuition involves managing your relationship with yourself, says Banks. The body gives you cues all day, such as when you’re hungry or tired. Intuition is learning new cues you’re less familiar with and understanding that they’re also alerting you to information.
“It’s having an awareness of the cues our body is giving us about what is happening in our environment,” she says. “Intuition is essentially information, and the more information any of us have, the more we can achieve.”
To notice messages, you must be open and willing to follow your curiosities instead of ignoring or pushing them aside. “If you are curious about anything, that’s a sign,” says Banks. “Once you start to see things showing up, it’s a sign that you are primed and queued to receive more information.”
Using your intuition also requires knowing your goals, which is something people rarely take the time to understand, says Day. “When you have a very clear goal or destination, your intuition is organically engaged,” she says. “It’s scouting the future, scouting the environment, scouting for threats, scouting for opportunities.”
Awareness is key, adds Day. “It’s like shooting an arrow,” she says. “The more defined the target and the less wind coming from any direction, the clearer the data you integrate intuitively well.”
Documentation of your goals and the incoming information is also important because Day says our memory is incredibly inaccurate. “If you document those out-of-the-blue perceptions that you get once you have a clear target, you can prove or disprove data that you would have had no way of knowing any other way,” she says. “Unfortunately, we are always working with the subconscious. [Documentation] allows the subconscious to mark that ability as useful and to make intuition available.”
Be mindful of your biases, judgments, and prejudices, cautions Banks. “Those are things that can act as barriers and will get in the way,” she says. “Intuition has no barrier. It’s limitless and has no judgment. Your intuition will only always be loving. It’s the most profound ‘aha moment’ that anyone could ever have.”
The great thing about intuition is that everybody can do it, says Day. “The prerequisite for being intuitive is that you know nothing about the topic,” she says.
Intuition simply requires self-trust. “Start with the beginner level where you can see in hindsight it’s accurate,” says Banks. “Passing everything through your intuition is helpful because your intuition is never wrong.”
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