How to Use Your Intuition to Guide and Manifest Your Dream Life
An introduction to intuitive tools and practices
Scroll down for the “too long, didn’t read” version.
Intuition is an intrinsic inner-knowing that each and every one of us possesses and are born with. Dictionary.com defines intuition as “the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.”
While excitement as a result of an intuitive feeling can be confused with feelings of anxiety, generally speaking, intuition comes with a sense of calmness and neutrality that differentiates it from conscious reasoning, which can involve playing scenarios out in the mind, weighing the pros and cons, deliberating, weighing heavily the opinions of others, and allowing feelings such as worry, fear, and doubt to affect the inner response and outcome.
Children are naturally quite in sync with their intuition until parents begin to step in and override their child’s decision-making abilities, out of fear that what they’re doing may be wrong, unhealthy, or unsafe. The most common first example of this is around a child’s hunger and fullness cues. It’s every parent’s fear that their child isn’t eating enough, so at times, despite a child communicating “no” to food, whether it be through verbal or non-verbal means, a parent may try to force more food.
There certainly may be scenarios in which a child has a medical condition of sorts that affects their ability to know how much food they need, however, for most children this ability is intact and highly functioning. That is, until they are increasingly trained to doubt their body’s internal cues and instead focus on external ones, such as having a clean plate.
This shifting away from internal to external cues around food can be a critical point of development for the potential of disordered eating later in life, which is an entire topic all on its own. The blame is not to be put on the parents here—every parent is doing their best with the information and experience they have.
Disclaimer: It’s worth noting that I am not a medical practitioner, nor a parent (yet). I am, amongst many things, a Holistic Nutritionist with a belief in intuitive eating, who has spent time around children and who, throughout the years, has followed insightful and well-researched content by other nutritionists and dieticians regarding the benefits of allowing children to intuitively guide their own eating patterns and behaviours.
The authority that we face throughout our younger years, beyond what and how much food we consume, continues to affect our relationship with our intuition into our independent young adult years, making it difficult to make choices that are aligned with our highest and best.
For many, it continues further into adulthood as well. Perhaps this lost connection with your intuition is what made you curious to read this article. Rest assured, it’s never too late to rebuild this connection, to open the pathways of communication, and to practice trusting your intuition.
The foundational key to getting started is learning to distinguish your body’s unique internal “yes” and “no” responses. Guided meditation focusing on this exercise is an excellent and accessible way to work on this. On my podcast that I co-host with fellow friend and entrepreneur Kelly Mayville, called Let’s Get Intu•it, we recently welcomed our first guest, Chelsey Stone, to walk us through her own meditative method for learning what these responses feel like in the body.
It was an enlightening experience, and really interesting to discuss afterwards how our experiences differed. You can listen to the episode here — there’s lots of juicy information throughout, but if you’d like, you can skip ahead to 00:17:05 for the guided meditation portion.
As mentioned earlier, intuition uses an inner compass to guide decisions rather than conscious reasoning. A major example of when I followed my intuition despite it not making logical sense was moving from Ontario to British Columbia, Canada, in May of 2021. There were many, many logical reasons not to make this choice, such as:
Deep feelings of sadness, grief and guilt around leaving my family.
Major fear and uncertainty.
The amount of money it was going to cost just to move ourselves and our belongings 4,400 kilometers away.
Neither my husband or I having secure employment lined up.
Having to uproot our cat, who we had adopted only a year before.
Being May of 2021, when the pandemic was very much still happening.
Giving ourselves, our landlord, and families only a two-month window to prepare.
Pushback and questions from some people in our lives regarding the decision.
The first point was especially difficult because I have always identified as a very family-oriented person. My family and close friends are super important to me, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about the distance. I never would have expected moving across the country to be something I would do, and I think my family and friends were shocked by it too.
So while it didn’t make sense on so many levels, I felt this strong feeling in my gut — an intuitive pull, you could say — to make the move regardless. I couldn’t explain why. I knew that B.C. has beautiful mountains, lakes and oceanfront, but I felt there was a deeper purpose that I couldn’t identify.
That deeper purpose has been slowly revealing itself to me as I’ve made life-changing connections, major career and personal development upgrades, experienced breakthroughs in my health, and more, since moving here 3+ years ago.
All I can say is that while being away from family and friends is still challenging every day, I’m so grateful that I took a leap of faith and followed my intuition.
Tools to Deepen Your Intuition
Practicing leaning into your intuition to help guide your decisions doesn’t have to start with a major relocation. In fact, I don’t recommend it. If you’re new to tapping into your intuition I recommend using any methods mentioned in this article with low-risk decisions, such as what to have for dinner, which outfit you will feel your best in on a given day, where to take a weekend trip, and so on.
Discovering a certain response through any of these methods doesn’t mean that you have to then make that choice, it just helps point to your intuitive response for greater understanding and to help you balance intuition with logic and reasoning, which can often be clouded by emotions such as fear.
The more you develop your relationship with intuition and follow it, the more trust and confidence you will have in it as you start to see your life unfolding in beautiful and often unexpected ways.
Below are some ideas for methods to start exploring.
PENDULUM
A method I personally love to use that helps get my logical thinking process out of the way is to use my body as a pendulum to naturally gravitate towards the best response. A pendulum is a pointed weight of some kind, often a crystal, attached to a chain or string. When held in the hand with a secure, supported arm, the pendulum can be used as a form of divination, swinging in different directions and patterns to indicate “yes,” “no,” or “unsure.”
The concept of using your own body as a pendulum was introduced to me by a very wise friend. How I personally like to do it is to think of the potential paths I could take regarding a specific situation, and to write those options on small pieces of paper. I then fold up the pieces of paper, shuffle them, and place them in a circle around me. Try to have them separated as much as possible. For example, if there are four paths you could take or possible responses, put one in front of you, one behind you, one on your right, and one on your left.
I like to do this exercise sitting with my legs folded beneath me (sitting on my shins), however you can also do it standing. Once your pieces of paper are placed around you — ensuring that you don’t know which is which because as I mentioned, we want to get the logical brain out of the way to truly access your intuition — close your eyes, take a deep breath (or a few), focus on your question, and then see which way your body starts to feel pulled. This may be a very subtle leaning or a full-on sway. Go with the first natural response and avoid questioning it.
When you’re ready, open up the piece of paper located in that direction and see what the response is. How do you feel? Is there a sense of relief in discovering that response? Is there a sense of disappointment? Does the result make sense to you? Do you feel safe following that path? Why or why not? Take some time to reflect.
MEDITATION
As mentioned earlier, meditation can be a great tool to help clear the mind and tap into your intuition. As a bonus, it can be super relaxing! I recently launched my InsightTimer teacher profile, and many of my meditations have an intuition element to them. I would love it if you checked them out and gave a rating and review. There are also many other wonderful teachers on the app and elsewhere, online or in person.
ORACLE OR TAROT CARDS
If you’re a visual person like myself, you may enjoy oracle or tarot cards as a form of divination and tapping into the wisdom of your higher self, spirit guides, the Universe, or whatever resonates with your personal beliefs. I prefer oracle cards over tarot myself, and I’ve developed quite a little collection over the last few years.
I’ve even created my own deck recently, called Blooming Spirit Oracle (launching soon). For anyone new to this type of intuitive method, this deck is a great fit because the responses are short and sweet and the deck is lighthearted and pocket-size.
AUTOMATIC WRITING
I’m mentioning this method last because of all the methods mentioned, it may be the most challenging for getting your logical mind out of the way. To practice automatic writing, set aside a chunk of undisturbed time — I recommend at least fifteen minutes, but ideally more — to sit in a quiet, calm, relaxing and comfortable space. You can use a laptop to type out what comes to you, but if you’re new to this process I recommend good old fashioned pen and paper.
Get as comfortable as you can, close your eyes, take a few deep breaths and allow any thoughts from the day to pass by without attaching to them. Put your pen to paper and start writing whatever comes up, without pausing, and release any expectation or judgement. It can take a few sentences to get into a flow.
When you tap into a true automatic writing flow, it will start to feel as though the information is bypassing your thought process and just coming right out onto the paper. It might feel like it’s coming so quickly you can barely keep up!
It’s important to have patience with this method. It’s equally important to be as comfortable and relaxed as possible and to go into it without any expectations. If you don’t feel your session was successful, I recommend taking a break and to keep trying another day. And then another day. Be open to the possibility of it working and open to what messages might come through.
Best of luck on your intuitive journey!
TL;DR
We all have access to our own intuition, but many of us are out of tune with it, often from years of being trained to override it with logical thinking, fear, and external cues. It’s never too late to rebuild this connection!
Learn to distinguish your body’s unique internal “yes” and “no’’ responses by checking out the meditative practice at 00:17:05 in our Let’s Get Intu•It podcast episode featuring guest speaker Chelsey Stone.
Intuitive decisions can sometimes not make logical sense and may invoke a sense of fear due to it being outside of your comfort zone. But if your gut is telling you something, be open to the possibilities and consider (safely) taking a leap of faith.
If you’re new to this, I recommend using the following methods with low-risk decisions, such as what to have for dinner, which outfit you will feel your best in, and so on.
My favourite methods to develop intuition include meditation, pendulums/using my own body as a pendulum, oracle cards, and automatic writing. See the descriptions above for guidance.
Discovering a certain response doesn’t mean that you have to follow through. It helps develop greater understanding and balance intuition with logic and reasoning.