Here’s a helpful reminder to trust your feelings and intuition – by Becky Walsh, a guest writer for today.
Ever found yourself about to begin something, plagued with a thought ‘I don’t know what to do’? It’s a little bit like walking into a room to get something and when you get there, you forgot what you went into the room for.
My mother calls this a senior moment. But psychologists call this a state of ambivalence.
Ambivalence often happens when we have conflicting feelings about making choices. We live in an ever growing complex world of choice, and with ever growing loud voices telling you what’s right and wrong, what’s good or bad.
You can get to a point when you can’t hear yourself think.
We all learn differently. Some people have to learn by experience.
Even though the sign says ‘wet paint’ they wonder ‘how long has the sign been there? Is the paint still wet?’ and they just have to touch it to find out.
Others have to see it to believe it. Some have to have an emotional connection for information to mean anything. In a world where we are bombarded by information, there is simply too much for the logical mind to think about.
But before you give yourself something else to worry about, it’s OK, because there is a compass for reliable decision-making that bypasses the thinking mind.
Up to now, popular thought is that there is only one form of intuition – that of the gut! But there are in fact two forms of intuition. Knowing how to use them both can lead to life changing results.
So let’s start with the gut.There’s a brain in your gut. Yep, a real one, like the one in your head. Embedded in the lining of the intestines is the enteric nervous system, with hundreds of millions of neurons – one thousandth of the number that are in your brain.
This network is termed the second brain and controls the gut function. Gut neurons communicate with the brain through the vagus nerve, which runs from the base of the brain to the chest and abdomen. It’s the clearest connection between the gut and the mind and is how we experience anxiety and stress.
The gut brain works with your energy system. Your solar plexus chakra picks up on the environment for predators and sends this information into the gut brain to prepare for a flight or fight response. Whereupon the gut will send blood to the arms and legs to make ready. Not having so many predators, this can be felt just before a difficult phone call with the boss.
You may remember the days before caller ID. You knew who was on the phone before you picked up. So you might even have answered the phone saying, ‘I was just thinking about you’.
Making decisions through this form of inner knowing means that we make choices out of fear and defense, which can result in limiting our life and sticking to what we already know.
However, there’s a second form of intuitive knowing that has no words, therefore it is often discounted.
It is emotionally based.
Often we experience an excited, expansive feeling and we simply know something in advance – or know something to be true.
We may not understand why we know, we just, know. And we know, but without logical words as to why. Plus we know we can discount the intuition as nothing more than a feeling.
We hear stories of heart transplant patients who have changed the things they love after surgery. Once I heard of a beer swilling, truck driving guy, who loved steak so rare it could moo on the plate, after surgery becoming vegan.
Upon research they found that the heart was once in the body of a female vegan. Like the gut, there are at least forty thousand neurons (nerve cells) in the heart. This is as many as are found in various subcortical centres of the brain.
We can access this form of heart-led intuition by becoming curious about the decision we are trying to make. When we think logically about decision-making, way up the pros and cons, we can become overwhelmed or ambivalent.
What can look good on paper might not work for us on an emotional level. Curiosity works without words, to be curious is a feeling, and we have an intuitive feeling come back to us as a response.
When these 3 aspects work together your intuition feels like an emotional positive surge forward. Following this heart-led intuition opens your life up wide, as your decisions become about the expansion of who you are, rather than limiting yourself to avoiding pain or fearful situations.
On a personal level, using heart-based intuition means you can make quicker decisions about what is right for you, spend less time researching or asking for others’ opinions, which also means less stress. You can’t be sold to, lied to, convinced of anything that isn’t true to you.
Intuition is a vital key in the road to becoming your authentic empowered self.
It also means that you can open your heart more widely in love, as you know who you can trust and who you can connect with deeply.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Becky Walsh is the founder of BeckyWalsh.com and love to turn the world of self-development on its head with her down-to-earth and uniquely funny style. Becky’s TV show ‘Anything goes with Becky Walsh’ aired across the ‘Made Television network’ weekly. Past broadcaster on LBC, now freelancer for BBC. Author of five books including a book calledcalled You Do Know – Learning to act on intuition instantly! published by Hay House. Her ‘Idea Sex’ Podcast is on iTunes. Becky blends psychology, spirituality, intuition and neuroscience in her one to one consultations and has her own interactive live one woman show blending personal transformation, demonstrations of intuition with stand-up comedy.
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