{"id":1524,"date":"2018-11-14T16:24:57","date_gmt":"2018-11-14T16:24:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/?p=1524"},"modified":"2021-09-19T16:59:34","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T16:59:34","slug":"developing-intuition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bloomsoup.com\/developing-intuition\/","title":{"rendered":"Developing Intuition in 3 Surprisingly Simple Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"

Don\u2019t you wish you instinctively knew what to do with your life?<\/p>\n

For most of us, deciding what to do with ourselves is like trying to find a black cat in a dark room.<\/p>\n

We fumble around and generally get frustrated.<\/p>\n

In contrast, some people just seem to glide through life making one good decision after another. The cheek.<\/p>\n

So, how do we be less like us and more like them? We\u2019ll get onto that in a second, but first, let’s look at how the majority of us approach life.<\/p>\n

Listening to Your Instincts<\/strong><\/h2>\n

We all spend so long with our heads down, ploughing through every day that sometimes we look up and see we\u2019re heading in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

This could be continuing in a job we don\u2019t especially like or persisting with a relationship turned sour.<\/p>\n

Do this for long enough, and years may pass before we finally realise we’re in a place that we don\u2019t want to be.<\/p>\n

Doh!<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s so easy to do. With work to do, bills to repay and Netflix to binge, it\u2019s easy to simply go through the motions, until eventually we\u2019re left wondering why, on the alter of 1000 monkeys, we\u2019re doing it in the first place.<\/p>\n

Ah, the busyness of life.<\/p>\n

You see, it\u2019s easy to bury the signals that things aren\u2019t right. We pass them off as feeling tired or a bad day when really they\u2019re the faint siren call to make a change.<\/p>\n

But we can only ignore these feelings for so long, until unhappiness creeps up on us like a stealthy foe, emerging from the shadows.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the tough part of it.<\/p>\n

Because of its insidious onset, our discontent can be hard to diagnose or attribute to a single event, especially if we haven\u2019t developed our intuitive abilities.<\/p>\n

As negative thoughts and feelings build, they gather momentum, until invariably something breaks.<\/p>\n

By embracing the power of intuition, we can (hopefully) pre-empt such breakages, skilfully navigating this extremely difficult assault course we call life.<\/p>\n

So What Is Intuition?<\/strong><\/h2>\n

According to our chums at Wikipedia<\/a>,<\/p>\n

Intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without proof, evidence, or conscious reasoning, or without understanding how the knowledge was acquired.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his splendid book, Blink<\/a>, Malcolm Gladwell covers the topic of intuition in great detail, with many examples of its uses daily life.<\/p>\n

Perhaps you\u2019ve had that feeling that someone was a bit of a\u00a0wrongun\u2019 and should be avoided.<\/p>\n

Or maybe you\u2019ve had a bad gut feeling that something’s amiss.<\/p>\n

From an evolutionary perspective, such mechanisms proved extremely useful and are an important reason we\u2019re around today at all.<\/p>\n

When we were but simple cavemen, it was important to know there might be an evil predator waiting to eat us.<\/p>\n

Our spidey-sense intuition helped us avoid such unpleasantness.<\/p>\n

So can we all agree that intuition is good? Good.<\/p>\n

Now how do we improve it?<\/p>\n

Exercises for Developing Intuition<\/strong><\/h2>\n

So, here\u2019s my advice in all it\u2019s sparkling glory.<\/p>\n

Firstly, you have to get a colonoscopy. I\u2019m only semi-joking when I say this.<\/p>\n

Rather than baring all at the local spa, you need to do perform to mental hygiene.<\/p>\n

How?<\/p>\n

Meditation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Now I know I bang on a lot about meditation<\/a> in various articles, but that\u2019s just because it\u2019s so damn sexy.<\/p>\n

If everyone did a little daily mindfulness<\/a>, I\u2019m convinced the world would be more jelly beans and kittens and\u00a0less\u00a0scandals and violence.<\/p>\n

But for the purposes of this article, it really helps to tap into our intuition.<\/p>\n

Part of the issue with the modern world is that we\u2019re bombarded with so much information, we struggle to hear ourselves through the noise.<\/p>\n

When opinions are being thrown around Internet land like sausage rolls in a food fight, it\u2019s unsurprising that we absorb thoughts and feelings that aren’t necessarily our own.<\/p>\n

Add to that the dastardly algorithms employed by some of our most beloved media corporations, and we have an issue.<\/p>\n

We become brainwashed digital zombies. unquestioning in our consumerism.<\/p>\n

That’s where meditation comes in, helping us find our way back to ourselves like a drunkard in the night.<\/p>\n

Just sitting in a room by yourself, avoiding shiny pictures and colours on our phone is surprisingly relaxing. Who would\u2019ve thought?!<\/p>\n

All of those racing thoughts and mental tomfoolery finally settle down, until you can hear, like a whisper in the night, the faint call of inner guidance.<\/p>\n

Great, so that\u2019s number one out of the way. Juicy, meditation intuition.<\/p>\n

Number two will help us tap even further into our psychic ability until we can (perhaps) talk to animals. Or at least make better decisions<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Morning Pages\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Just like meditation, I\u2019ve probably talked about morning pages elsewhere. That\u2019s because they\u2019re also pretty sexy.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the thing. Most of us carry around a lot of mental baggage.<\/p>\n

If it was in the physical realm, it would be like heaving dumbbells around all day, just to find that after a while, our little arms start to hurt.<\/p>\n

Well, it\u2019s the same principle with our poor brains.<\/p>\n

We all have a long mental to-do list…<\/p>\n