What a change, and I am still learning…

This summer my friends told me to follow my intuition. Having struggled with OCD, which felt like an intuition, I had assumed for years that I didn’t have intuitions that I should follow. Trying to find answers with my head led to days, weeks and months of doubt.

The head doesn’t present any clear solutions to life’s decisions. First, we may not know for sure what objectives to aim for in life and second, even if we would know, the many uncertainties and moving variables in life make that we may never know whether choosing A or B would get us closest to our objective. Trying to navigate life with our mind, can lead to a lot of doubt. At least, that is what it did for me.

When I started to discover what my intuition was and that I could simply listen to that, things started to change. Instead of multiple possible unstable good or bad options, there was just one that felt good, without my mind being able to explain why.

I realized that following my intuition did another great thing. It brought me back to this very moment. My intuition tells me what feels good now and that is the only reason I go for it. My mind, instead, reasons that maybe this might be good, because it might bring me that, or maybe the other option is better if ‘this’ will happen. This reasoning is about the future, an option might be good, conditional on something happening or it having a certain payoff. Intuition is unconditional. It gives one answer that for some weird reason just feels better. Intuition thus gives an instant good feeling and makes us feel good now — the only time that matters.

It also brings adventure.

It is exhilarating to just follow intuition. It feels like discovering this path, that is apparently mine. It is like taking one step at a time, without knowing where it leads and without precautions, except for trusting the universe. It feels a lot like being alive! One ‘landmark’ intuitive decision for me was when I followed my intuition on picking a studio apartment which I hadn’t visited. My mind wasn’t convinced, but somehow I wanted this studio. When I arrived, I thought the place was way too small and my first question was: “When can I move out?”. Waking up the next day in the tiny studio, I felt this calmness coming over me and I thought “I played and I lost. But at least I played”. This thought then filled me with excitement and made me feel full of life. After that, I actually continue living in the studio with great satisfaction.

With the mind frame that everything happens in our favor, not as much can go wrong. I learned from Jen Sincero, to just say, “This is good, because …” even if something doesn’t feel good at all. Something ‘bad’, in the worst case, can for example still teach me equanimity or provide an opportunity to practice ‘allowing my feelings to be exactly the way they are’. I also use the mindset that I can either “Win some or learn some” and that my intuition brings me exactly what I apparently need in that moment on my journey. I might needed a lesson instead of winning something.

Following my intuition moreover taught me that I so often followed fear. Fear is about the future and thus part of the mind. Nothing to do with intuition and thus usually to be discarded.

What a clarity this brings!

Making decisions on how to spend my free time, turned out to be often informed by fear. My friend taught me to only say ‘yes’ to the things I really feel like doing and otherwise to just say ‘no’. Quite simple and wonderful. I realize that I get scared in social settings and want to say ‘yes’ to activities, because I want to be part of a certain group of friends or I am scared they won’t invite me next time (for something I didn’t even like in the first place ;)). So I say ‘yes’, because I am thinking about the future. Which is thus not motivated by my intuition and about the now.

I realized that even though I have already lived for more than 30 years and I can do whatever I want, a large part of my life I have done things in a reactive fashion. I did things because they came my way or people asked me and I didn’t want to disappoint them. I have a list of things that I consider so much ‘me’, that I still haven’t done. Instead of reacting out of fear and spending my time that way, I want to live out of inspiration and do the things I just want to do, the things I feel that define ‘me’! In that way I feel I honor the person I am.

Following intuition for me is, being guided by the spark of wanting to do something, for some unknown reason, and just going for it.

Enjoy the adventure that is truly yours!