Monday Notes: 4 Ways to Follow Your Intuition

Following your intuition can be a scary thing because many of us have been taught to listen to family and friends, walk with the crowd, or attain external validation instead of listening to ourselves. We’ve literally been taught to not trust our gut instinct, which can sometimes be detrimental because we end up living by someone else’s rules, as opposed to our own.

If this is you, here are four ways to ease into following your intuition:

1: Be impulsive. A blogger once asked me to differentiate between intuition and impulse. I don’t remember what I told her, but today I have an answer. Being impulsive has a negative connotation. No one wants to be impulsive. Impulsive purchases can create debt. Impulsivity can lead to destructive lifestyles. Romeo and Juliet were impulsive and look what happened to them! See how we’re shaped to believe a thing each and every moment?

But what is intuition, except knowing you should do something right then?

If you’re not used to following your intuition, then I suggest making a small, impulsive, low stakes move. For example, have you ever felt you should call a person? Go ahead and call. Have you ever talked yourself out of buying a piece of clothing in a new color? Go ahead and buy it. Making low stakes moves will build your confidence and pretty soon, following your intuition will become second nature.

2: Don’t overthink it. After you’ve decided to do something, you may feel inclined to overthink it. Don’t.

I have done quite a few things in my life without thinking them all the way through. *The latest idea was the Mental Health Matters interviews. My initial thought was I’m not equipped to answer readers’ questions about mental health issues; I can only write about myself and how I’ve handled these concepts. Wouldn’t it be cool if I invited mental health experts to discuss one issue with me in a brief amount of time? That was it. That was the idea. The next thing I know I’d compiled a list and was interviewing experts and having videos edited. The editor then asked me if I wanted an audio for podcasting, too. My answer? Sure. Next I found myself figuring out where to upload audio versions of the interviews.

When I shared the idea with Dwight, he gave me the slow blink and said, “So you’re going to have a podcast now?”

“Maaaybee,” I laughed. That leads me to the next way to follow your intuition.

3: Don’t listen to others’ opinions. There are two reasons why I would suggest not listening to other people’s opinions. The first is if you don’t have supportive people in your life. Instead, you have naysayers. You’ll know who these people are by their past responses. For example, if you’ve told a friend about your idea and their response is why would you do that or how would you do that (but not in a helpful way), then this is the beginning of a subtle naysayer response. The second reason you may not want to listen to the folks around you is because of the opposite. They will have a million different ways for you to enact your idea. Don’t use WordPress. Use Medium. What about Tumblr? Other people’s opinions may send you down a rabbit hole of self-doubt and non-productivity, which could lead to never manifesting your idea.

If you need advice about how to make your idea a reality, then use Google, read a book, or take a class. The only exception to this may be if your friend or family member is someone who has done what you want to do. I say may be because that person will still only speak from their experience, which could be totally different than yours.

4: Adopt a playful view of life. Most of the time I view life as a playful experience. When I conceptualized and edited Daddy, I thought of it as playing with other people, you know, like when you were a kid? I envisioned being in a room with the other women and pretending to be authors who were writing a book. And now, I thought, we’re going to go around the country and tell people about the book. Doesn’t that sound like fun? With a little planning and agreement, it happened. We actually did the aforementioned things and impacted lives at the same time. Trust me, pretending is not just for children. Kind of like being impulsive, we’ve been told it’s not something we should do as adults. But not imagining, pretending, and playing are for adults, too.

I hope being impulsive, not overthinking, listening to yourself, and adopting a playful view of life helps to guide you toward a happier and more intuitive life!

*Update: My latest impulsive act was co-creating a petition to stop Florida public schools from reopening in August. If you’re concerned about this issue, then you can view and sign the petition here: Safe Return for P-12 Florida Teachers.