Four Blocks to Building your Intuition Accuracy
The Doubt Diva Rides Again
Building intuition is a lifelong learning experience. The good news? Things that help you grow intuition usually grow happiness and good mental health. Proactively handling any blocks or challenges to standing in your inner wisdom will transform your life. It’s what a lot of people came here to do, to heal the past and empower the future, both personally and globally.
Here are four areas that can stand in the way of building reliable intuitive skills.
1) Ineffective methods of stress management and healing. Life involves setbacks, challenges, and all kinds of unexpected adversities. When you take a stance of empowerment versus victimhood, you usually have incorporated practices and tools that keep you moving toward what matters. You cope actively, versus passively, facing problems with panache. You don’t use sensitivity as an excuse to hide. I'll be sharing more about the Stress to Strength model of stress management soon – stay tuned for this suite of tools that addresses most of life's stress.
2) Self Doubt. Hello Doubt Diva, as I call our inner doubt side. Part of growing intuition is learning to distinguish between a worry voice and a valid concern. Tools will help you name a fear, and honor what is true behind the stress or drama that often colors that voice. It does take time, training, and support to develop confidence with your inner knowing. In my intuitive training, this is called certainty, or "standing in your certainty". This doesn’t mean you’re Nostradamus – just that you have learned you can trust the information you receive, knowing that the picture can change over time.
3) Past Trauma or Negative Core Beliefs. Today there is much more knowledge about working with trauma, both “big T” (serious) and “little T” trauma (usual indignities encountered in development). Big T areas would include war trauma, experiences of abuse (sexual, physical, emotional, psychological), lack of safety or security, or being neglected during childhood years, etc. Most people experience little T traumas as they develop, those less intense challenges that still pack a punch and can set up negative beliefs. Negative beliefs often form as a defense against encountering similar future threats. A physically abused child who has a “chip on the block” approach to relationships is an example of a defensively formed belief that no longer serves. It powerfully influences the present but is not based on current information. Generational trauma and negative beliefs live here. Luckily at this time in human history, a whole lotta healin’ is more possible.
4) Taking life and yourself too seriously. One of the qualities cultivated in my intuitive training is amusement. This notes that growth edges, those places you need to stretch into the next level, are constant. Yes, we’re all a “work-in-progress” and will have cycles of achievement and setbacks. Do you remember being in kindergarten? That playful attitude is one that will help you grow your inner wisdom. You’ll need it since intuition will not always make sense to the logical mind. The emotional brain zone it comes from speaks in pictures, not words, in hunches and clues. These take time and experience to clarify. Having the long view of your growth and mastery journey means growing your purpose, your meaningful work and service, and your intuition over time.
Quick tip: One of the key meditation practices that helped me grow my intuition was based on the Sufi practice of Remembrance that I learned from Mark Silver of Heart of Business. In this practice, after grounding and centering, you put the question or situation in front of you and see how it shows up from this more intuitive view. Be “willing to be surprised” – a critical instruction there, because again, the intuitive clues do not always make sense at first. More on this practice soon. Until then, use meditation to strength-train your intuitive muscles.
What else do you see as the biggest blocks or challenges to increasing confidence in your intuition? I’d love to hear your ideas on this topic.