I am a huge fan of going with your gut, listening to your intuition/instincts.  And while I always have been a fan, it didn’t always work out well for me because the one thing missing was an ability to distinguish between what is intuition and what is emotionally driven.  I know I’m not the only one that has had this experience because I get asked a lot on how to tell the difference when more than one dialogue is running in your head.

Typically when we are thinking about going with our intuition it is a decision of relative importance.  Otherwise we would have already made a choice and moved on.  Often there is a direct correlation of increased importance to increased debate within our heads.  Add to this increased emotion, and boom! the perfect storm of confusion.

Eliminating this confusion and identifying the intuitive voice within the multiple dialogues is actually quite easy.  All you need to do is identify what the emotion attached to each line of possible outcome is. When you are debating choices, zero in, pick one and focus on it, focus on your body as well.  Is there tightening in your stomach or heart or are you feeling a certain feeling?  If so, that is not intuition, it is emotion.  You can identify your intuition by its calm and unemotional appearance.  Think of your intuition as a friend who offers you a piece of advice with no investment on the outcome.  Your intuition shows up calm and unattached.

I enjoy the following two quotes and feel they sum up the idea of intuition (instinct) quite nicely.

“Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.”  ~Michael Burke

“Trust your hunches.  They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.”         ~Joyce Brothers