02/08/2024
Intuition
The ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.
A thing that one knows or things likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.
Similar: instinct, sixth sense, divination, clairvoyance, hunch, gut feeling
While I am not trying to instill in you that each one of us is clairvoyant, I am willing to bet that if we more often followed our instinct and listened to our intuition, over all the excess noise around us, life would be a little simpler.
A consistent theme that keeps showing up in my world lately seems to be “Space”. Whether it’s making space in my schedule for tasks, loved ones, between trigger and impulsive action, for food in the fridge, for toys in the playroom, tupperware lids in the drawer, in my purse for all of my in-case-of-emergency items, between myself and a person who’s energy doesn’t mesh well with mine, or between myself and all the noise around me - it always comes back to if I create more space, I find more gratitude. Which in my opinion is the key to living a joyful ,content, and wholehearted life.
Which leads me back to intuition. You know, that voice inside you (sometimes so, so quiet) that knows exactly what you should do, even if it’s not the easy choice. That moment when you make a choice and something inside you says something is off. That eerie goosebumpy feeling you get when you “just have a hunch”. The more space I create, the less I fill my life up with things that ultimately don’t serve me. In turn, the more I can tune into my intuition and let me tell you - it’s right every GD time.
Kids are intuitive by nature and this is mostly because their ability to tune out the noise around them allows them to tune into their instinct. Of course, I am not referring to the toddler about to toddle down the staircase, but eating is a great example. Children do not overeat instinctively. They eat when they are hungry and stop when they are full (excluding any medical conditions that may prevent them from doing so). And if they are presented with healthy food choices, they will indeed gravitate to at least some of them (remember their tastes will change as they grow, it’s about modeling, and exposure). It’s not until the noise kicks in that their natural intuitive eating habits start to fade away. Comments from adults about which foods are “good” or “bad”, exposure to highly palatable, highly processed foods that begin to change their natural born palate (also fun fact - did you know that babies naturally start to change their tastes around the ages of 1-2 years old because that is when they would be able to walk outside of the cave independently and fall knee deep into a toxic berry bush, so their tastes become highly sensitized at this age which is why you see more picky eating), being “forced” to stay at the dinner table and finish your plate, trauma around food, etc. etc. And listen, I am not criticizing! I have made many mistakes when it comes to my own kids and food, and continue to do so quite regularly. But all this to demonstrate how the noise starts to build around food and eating, and by the time we are adults and exposed to a constant stream of information regarding “what is health?”, we lose our deep connection with our intuitive voice and instead start to tune into anxiety and fear based voices instead.
A dear friend shared with me her experience navigating through her intuition and the noise and how the space between the two is so small, almost non-existent at times, that it feels almost impossible to listen to your instinct and know it wasn’t fear you were listening to. I don’t know about you, but I relate deeply to this experience.
I think that intuition shows up before thought. The thoughts are the noise, or as the definition above puts it, “conscious reasoning”. Intuition shows up as an unnamed feeling inside of us and it shows its face only for what feels like a brief second before the thought pops in and crowds our brains. But, as I am learning (thanks to my good friend and coach, Clare) we can create more space from the noise and put names to those feelings that show up in our body before we create all the stories surrounding them. The volume of the noise slowly decreases as your inner voice increases and you find more clarity in peace inside knowing you are following what works best for you. And while eating and health are a great example of where we may all struggle with finding our intuition, there are countless areas of my life where I would be better served to find more space and listen in.
Just a little food for thought for you this Thursday….now just listen to that intuitive voice that’s telling you to order. Curious if that voice sounds like mine? ;-)