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Learn to listen to your intuition and trust your instincts in all of your daily routines

Faith WoodI once spoke at a conference where a lot of pre-seminar chatter was about the need to trust one’s intuition, especially when it comes to safety. This is a great discussion point, but a lot of people simply don’t allow intuition a chance to alert them, or they ignore the obvious signs when intuition is tapping all their senses.

Intuition is one of our oldest and best survival skills.

Consider when a farmer seems to know what the weather will do when judging whether to pull the crops off the field. Or how a rancher seems to know when the herd or flock is in trouble.

In distant times, crops thriving or failing made the difference between a full belly and starvation, and a sheep might cost the equivalent of a family car today. Using your intuition was often the only thing that stood between success and failure, and failure often meant death. As a result, intuition became a finely tuned skill.

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You might argue that the modern lifestyle doesn’t leave much need for intuition. When every type of food is available all year round from supermarkets, and we hoard vast mountains of produce in warehouses the size of a small country, it no longer seems relevant to know what the weather might or might not do.

But perhaps this is a little bit too narrow of a viewpoint. First responders talk about the need for a “Spidey sense,” which is really your intuitive mind at work.

I use my intuitive ability to make sound decisions in my personal and business life. I teach people to wake up their dormant intuition and use it to become more successful, both personally and in their working lives.

The critical mistake most people make about their intuition is that they won’t recognize it when it’s working.

Intuition comes from within: ‘in’ as inside and ‘tuition’ as in teaching and learning. Intuition is your ability to know yourself at the deepest level of self by interpreting the language you speak to yourself. The language from within will hardly be incomprehensible to you, is it?

You can practise your intuitive skills in every area of your life. Here are my top three rules to help you get started:

Your intuition will always communicate with you

You’ll work out how your intuition is talking to you by understanding how you best communicate externally.

For some folks, there will be a sense of goosebumps; for others, a change in environmental sounds (or even talking to yourself differently); and still others will see images or glimpses of pictures in their mind.

Don’t ignore all those little signs; they might just be your intuition trying to speak to you.

Don’t rule out the blindingly obvious

Sometimes a spade really is a spade. As with the first rule, trying too hard to be intellectual usually means you miss by a mile. Remember, intuition has survived the test of time because it’s key in life-or-death situations.

If you’re about to be knocked down by a falling rock, your senses are going to get you to run as fast as you can out of the way of impending death.

Practise with things that don’t matter first

Testing whether your intuition is back on top form in a life-and-death situation is not good.

If you haven’t paid attention for a while, test your intuition on things where you can measure tangible results that aren’t going to have life-threatening consequences if you fail to acknowledge it.

Try trusting your gut a bit more with your daily routines. Listen to that inner voice, picture or feeling and go with it.

You never know; you might surprise yourself with how finely tuned your senses are.

Faith Wood is a professional speaker, author, and certified professional behaviour analyst. Before her speaking and writing career, she served in law enforcement, which gives her a unique perspective on human behaviour and motivations. Faith is also known for her work as a novelist, with a focus on thrillers and suspense. Her background in law enforcement and understanding of human behaviour often play a significant role in her writing.

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