Call it Gut. Knowing. Insight. Soul. Innate Wisdom.
That’s the voice we’re looking for.
The dictionary defines intuition as, “the ability to
understand something immediately, without the
need for conscious reasoning.”
It’s a hunch. A feeling. An inkling. A sense.
Read more
In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink: The Power of
Thinking Without Thinking” , he explores the inner
processes of intuition and instinct, examining
how we make snap decisions and judgments. He
has numerous examples of people having a
hunch, feeling or intuition and how, while there
was no hard evidence to back them up at first,
science and data eventually backed up what they
knew to be true.
Did you know that 95% of our brain activity
happens at an unconscious level? Studies from
numerous cognitive neuroscientists show that
only 5% of our cognitive activity (decisions,
emotions, actions, behavior) comes from our
conscious mind.
We are taking in information through all our
senses all the time – and processing it at an
incredible speed. So that intuition, hunch, inkling,
sense, voice, is coming from masses of
information we can’t even cognitively or
consciously process.
Then there’s cognition. “The mental action or
process of acquiring knowledge and
understanding through thought, experience, and
the senses.”
This is more about understanding. Problem
solving. Discernment. Organizing.
This is the logical, thinking part of your mind.
Weighing pros and cons; coming to rational
conclusions based on data or other factors.
These are the voices of reason which often try to
override your instincts.
But I don’t hear ANY voice.
Your inner guidance and wisdom aren’t always a
voice in your head. Often, it’s a feeling, a
sensation, image, energy or emotion. You might
notice it your body. There’s no one best or way
to experience your inner voice. The important
thing is to identify when and where you feel it.
Is it a feeling in your gut? This is true for many of
my clients and for me, personally. You may have
heard the gut being called our “second brain.”
This is because of the enteric nervous system
(ENS). It can operate independently of the brain
and spinal cord, and the central nervous system.
We really can think with our gut!
Celebrity therapist and pioneering hypnotherapy
trainer Marisa Peer has this to say: “The
stomach is the seat of all emotions and your
feelings are the most real thing you have; so the
trick is to listen to your feelings. If something
feels wrong, your inner voice is saying it is not
right for you. If you get the horrible lurch in your
stomach, your inner voice is telling you ‘this is
wrong’.”
Perhaps it’s in your heart. When I asked a
Jessie Gardner of HeySoul.com, a friend and
colleague known for her acute sense of self-
awareness where her inner voice resides, she
said, “My heart for sure. Always my heart.”
That’s no surprise, our hearts are very intelligent
organs.
Maybe the voice is in your head? When I talked
to my Dad about his inner voice, he balked at the
idea of feeling it in his gut or heart. Instead, he
shared about the voice that comes from the back
of his head that talks to him not with him.
Try this: Look, Listen, Feel.
We experience inner wisdom in different ways.
Maybe you relate to one of my examples? Maybe
you “see” a picture, vision or image that comes
up in your head. Perhaps you feel sensations in
your body – energy, emotions or feelings. As we
go through examples of how to listen, pay
attention to how and where yours shows up.
If this inner voice is so powerful
and effective, why don’t we
listen?
Logic or reason takes over.
We often have a feeling or a sense of something,
just like my husband did, but very quickly, our
logical mind kicks in to try to understand and
comprehend what we feel. This especially
happens when we don’t have data or information
to back up our hunch or inner voice. We, and of
course, others believe it’s not valid if we can’t
justify or explain ourselves. So we push our
instincts aside.
A recent client told me about how he ignored his
inner voice not long ago. He dropped off his 16-
year-old daughter at the mall. As she got out of
the car, he thought, “I should tell her to make
good choices.” But, because her friends were in
the car and he didn’t want to embarrass her, he
decided not to. His logic, reason and social
graces took over. A few hours later he got a call
from the mall police. His daughter had stolen a
ring. “I knew I should have told her to make good
choices.”
We often override our instincts with logic,
reason, desire, and, in this case, societal
pressure or social graces. But we don’t have to.
We don’t like the answer.
Sometimes we know what we need to do, but
don’t like the answer. This happens with clients
all the time when I ask what they sense they
should do. They answer, but then reply, “But I
don’t want to do that!”
Once, a client told me the story of her wedding,
and a knowing that she simply ignored. As she
walked down the aisle, she knew that she should
not marry the man standing in front of her.
Truthfully, she knew long before that day. But
she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, call off the
wedding, let friends and family down. So, she
went through with it. Inevitably, that marriage
ended in divorce – and this story is all too
common.
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