My intuition actually provides greater clarity to me than I could have imagined if I will just slow myself enough to trust and listen to it. 

In hindsight, I never knew how much I navigated by intuition. I just never called it that. Some looked at my academic success and wondered why I didn’t tutor more. The honest answer is that on quizzes and tests I was guided more by my intuition than I would perhaps like to admit. Sure I studied the material but I couldn’t explain how I knew something. Answers would just pop in my head and I had a gut feeling that they were right. 

What intuition does is provide us with subconscious nudges. Our brains are exquisitely good at pattern recognition, whether we realize it or not, and our brains are saying this fits in with something I’ve seen before, a memory or experience I have. This fits in my intuitive web somehow.

Now I also know that chronic stress makes it hard to retrieve newly learned information so although I was storing that information somewhere in my web of knowledge, I was getting super tangled up trying to figure out where it came from. “I just knew.” 

My intuition has always guided my relationships with others, which is perhaps why I feel so blessed to have some of the most amazing friendships. I feel like a human bullshit detector and only attract those to me are genuine (and perhaps weird like me in many ways?) and let go of those I can very quickly tell have bad intentions. I don’t deal with drama or putting others down and my true friends know that I have very few, if any, enemies in the world because of this. 

While traveling my intuition has been huge. “Maybe I shouldn’t walk down that street alone. This area or situation just doesn’t feel right.” I am learning to use it in more areas, including business and learning, but for now it’s about trust. Trusting and giving weight to that feeling I get and not discounting it. 

Do you navigate by your intuition? Have you figured out for yourself how to listen to it?

(For those who don’t know… I am doing “30 days to 30” and sharing life lessons and stories in order to celebrate my birthday—hoping to break stigmas and stereotypes about what 30 means and looks like)