How to Trust Your Intuition

Developing your intuition starts by realizing that you already have it.  If you’ve ever had a hunch about something... INTUITION. An instant realization... INTUITION. The nudge to follow a different route to work... INTUITION.  Knowing something without knowing how you know... INTUITION.

Intuition is just your mind using more than what you are consciously aware of and tapping into the wisdom of your body.

But can you trust your intuition?

And how do you improve it?

Develop Your Intuition In Three Steps:

1. Recognize and encourage it.
2. Study it to make it more trustworthy.
3. Give it good information to work with.

To find areas in your own life where you naturally operate intuitively, try asking yourself these questions: What's something you're naturally good at without studying?
What's an area where you trust your gut, and it's almost always right?

That's your intuition speaking. Continue to listen to it and nurture it, and it will continue to get louder + stronger.

Of course, your intuition can also send warning signals. When you get the sense that “something isn’t right here” that's also your intuition, and you should probably pay attention.

Have you ever considered buying a car, and then you start seeing them everywhere? Looking for and recognizing a thing trains your mind to find more of it (thanks to our Reticular Activating System). The same process happens if you watch for your intuition – you’ll start to see more of it.

Unfortunately, a strong hunch can be for irrelevant reasons, too. If you were hit by a yellow taxi as a child, you might have “intuitive” hunches not to get into yellow taxis for the rest of your life. So even learning to recognize your intuition and encourage it may leave you wondering when to actually trust it...

Study Your Intuition 

Start questioning your hunches. Study your strong feelings about that taxi, and you might say, “Oh, it’s just my fear of yellow taxis.”

Get in the habit of paying attention to and studying your intuitive feelings.

Where does your intuition work best? If you’re always right about your intuitive stock picks, give a little credence to them. On the other hand, if your hunches about people are usually wrong, don’t follow them. Just pay attention more, and you’ll be developing intuition about your intuition.

Give Your Intuition Good Information

Your skill, knowledge, and experience determine the potential effectiveness of your intuition. Learn enough about a subject, before expecting good hunches about it, or before trusting the hunches. Work in the area you want more intuition in. When enough information is in your mind, it will go to work for you with or without your conscious participation, so feed it well!

Recognize your intuition, and you’ll have hunches and ideas more often.

Study it, and you’ll learn when to trust it.

Give it good information, and you’ll be repaid with good hunches and ideas.

This is the simple formula for developing intuition.