Listen to this articleYour intuition, your “gut-feeling”, a mysterious combination of instinct and innate knowledge that can be the key to successful decision-making. While intuition is often explained as a gift only a lucky few possess, science has become more attuned to its existence.
Actuarial science and parenting experts encourage us to trust our intuition to make the best decisions. However, being intuitive doesn’t come easily for everyone. Sometimes, we counteract our intuition by overthinking or actively dismissing our gut feelings because we’re been “illogical”. More often than not, this results in missed opportunities and feelings of regret. We ask ourselves: What if I had listened to my instincts? Where would I be now?
Ideally, decision-making should be based on a combination of logical thought processes and gut feelings. If you would like to learn how to identify your intuitive voice, here are several situations in which you should trust your gut first.
When your body is telling you it’s ill
If you sense that you are ill, listen to your body and have yourself checked out by a doctor. Often, we dismiss our feelings about our bodies; its subtle cues. To avoid serious problems and health complications, always be alert and act promptly.
When you feel tired around someone
Our bodies are in tune with our surroundings. In fact, our right brain’s constant subconscious analysis of our surroundings remains active even when our left brain is focused on something else. If you find yourself sleepy or tired around a particular person or at your job, it could be that they are taking more energy from you than you can give. Your gut feeling may help you stay away from toxic people or job environments that can negatively impact your mental health.
When you feel you are in danger
We are all tempted to ignore the feeling in the pit of our stomachs when someone seems to be following us too closely or a dark alleyway makes us nervous. We tell ourselves we are simply imagining things. But, our intuition can help us avoid danger as long as we also consider underlying biases. Our social background conditions our reactions and feelings about people, sometimes resulting in false first impressions that contradict our intuitive feelings. We need to balance our rational thinking and our intuition to avoid making mistakes about people.
When you want to show sympathy or help
Because of our social nature, we have evolved the capacity to sympathize with others using facial and emotional cues. We place ourselves in others’ shoes. Being generous lights up regions of our brain associated with pleasure. We also get the helper’s high, which can increase immunity, improve mood, and boost health. Investing in your need to sympathize with other people is a good investment in your intuition and health.
When you overthink things you know how to do
If you’ve been building up a skill such as writing or painting, it’s likely you have experienced the infamous writers’ or artists’ block – your creativity has suddenly evaporated. You begin questioning your own skill and gifts. Engaging the rational mind in something that you have already learned overrides the muscle memory and neural pathways that you have already trained, resulting in failure. When you know you can do something (because you’ve done it dozens of times before) it helps to distract your left brain with an activity that has nothing to do with the task at hand. This way, your instincts can take over.
Related: 5 Ways to Unlock your Inner Creativity
If you think someone is lying to you
Researchers believe that humans have been lying to each other ever since they could first communicate. A 2014 study found that people who make quick judgments about a person’s honesty are more likely to be correct about whether or not that person was dishonest. We may be on the lookout for the usual physical signs such as shifty eyes or quick talk. Yet, dishonest people can easily deceive us. Often, our intuition can tell us exactly what we need to know.
If you think your relationship is not working
Relationships are complicated, even more so when your gut feelings get in the way of what seems to be the ideal romance. If we have negative emotions about our relationships, we often push them aside and call ourselves insecure and irrational. Yet, sometimes our intuition is trying to tell us that the relationship is not good for us. If you feel unhappy with your partner, but don’t exactly know why it’s time to start re-evaluating your relationship from a logical perspective.
Developing a Stronger Intuition
For many of us living in the modern world, accessing our intuition has become more difficult. Cellphones, entertainment, families, social lives, and work distract us constantly. What if there were an easier way to access your intuition? What if you could, simultaneously, improve your sleep and ability to relax?
Synctuition’s specific audio programs have been designed to tap into your brain’s intuitive pathways and retrain it to recognize and use them in a more conscious way. All you need is to listen to the audio tracks, ideally before you fall asleep. This way, your brain enters the relaxed state required to repeat and recode it into your neural networks.
We can access the intuitive mind, even though this practice has been lying dormant or undervalued. The binaural programs available through Synctuition are not teaching your brain something new. They access deeply rooted abilities that all of us already possess, but have unlearned through the way we are taught by school, life, and work to emphasize the rational over the intuitive.
