I am a firm believer in the power of intuition. I believe that if you learn to tap into it, you can get some amazing and powerful results that will guide you like nothing you’ve ever experienced before.

I honed in on my intuition years ago when I was still a teenager. My mom encouraged me by sharing with me her intuitive feelings when I told her what was going on in my life. She’d give me advice based on her intuition, and over time, her intuitive sense astounded me. She was always right. She told me how she implicitly trusted her intuition and that I should listen to mine.

And I must say after witnessing her successful track record first-hand, I decided to give it a try. When I got a message out-of-the-blue in my head that something wasn’t right, I listened to it. When I had fear but I got this gut feeling that I really shouldn’t be afraid, I worked hard to persevere, and it was life-changing for me.

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At first, I kept a mental score-card, because I didn’t always have the strength to listen to it, but after seeing it’s track record, I became confident to trust it.

In didn’t take long for me to realize that I had someone to turn to in those difficult moments that I learned I could depend on: me. And more amazingly, I became a much more confident person because I knew I could trust myself. It was a powerful win-win situation.

What I learned through listening to my intuition is that emotions—most specifically, desire and fear—are two big roadblocks to good intuitive results. I realized that if I desired something or feared something, what I often thought was intuitive was hope or fear, and had nothing to do with my intuition.

That’s not to say I was rendered helpless in these situations. Instead, I’d ask myself: Is this your fear (or desire) speaking? Or is this something more?

When the answer would come back was that yes, I was afraid, or I truly wanted this outcome, then I knew that was all it was. It was only my desire or fear speaking. But there were times that I would get an answer back that told me this is not fear, this is not desire—this is something more. It was a deep feeling within me. It was strong and powerful, where my emotions were often meek and afraid and full of doubt.

Sometimes when my emotions were in the mix, I realized I couldn’t come to a determination, so I had to walk away until my emotions subsided. But I would persevere and continue until I knew I was dealing with my intuition.

Just this last spring, I learned that fear or desire can also stop me (or you) from acting on intuition, which is equally important. I had never realized this before! This could save your life. I had a flight response at a dentist’s office, but the fear of having to put myself in that same position again caused me to dangerously override my intuition. If you want to hear the story, ask me and I’ll share it in another post. It was heart-throbbing!

Understanding Rapid Cognition

Have you read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink? If not, you might want to. It’s a great book to get you to start thinking about what you don’t consciously think about. In it, Gladwell talks about rapid cognition. He gives the example of a near-miss car crash. You’ve probably experienced it before: Out of the blue, something happens, and you have a split-second to react, and if you don’t, you’ll die. Well, you don’t sit there and rationally think through everything. If you did, you’d die.

Instead, your mind and body responds, and then after you have survived, your conscious brain tunes into it all, and you suddenly realize the magnitude of it all. It isn’t until it is all over that you begin to shake and realize you could have just died. How does this happen?

Intuition Disconnect

For those of you who feel a disconnect with your intuitive sense, there are many websites out there that offer suggestions to help you connect to your intuition. Here are just a few:

Relationships: Learning to trust intuition

Trust your hunches: 5 steps to develop your intuition—Intuitive Advice

Test Your Intuition

And this last article was the most amazing!! When I finished the article, I realized that my intuition was spot-on, once again. Read this article; and simply by doing so, you will likely test your intuition. Go ahead—give it a try.

How did you do? Are you surprised?

Truly, there is mystery behind the science of our brains. How can that be?! I don’t know the answer, but I am certainly a believer in the power of what we don’t yet understand.