First off—I’m excited that you want to learn how trust your intuition!

Thank you so much for reading this post, for taking the time to learn how to transform your life by tuning in to your inherent inner knowing. When you know how to trust your intuition, you make the best possible decisions. Ones that lead you towards your most peaceful, healthy, whole self. Your inner voice will guide you to live your best life, to speak and act on your truth, and authentically love yourself.

Learning to trust your intuition definitely is a practice, and takes commitment and dedication just like building any new habit. But the process is easier than you might think, and it’s powerfully rewarding.

So what exactly is intuition?

Our intuition is a loving inner voice that always guides us toward positive actions and peaceful outcomes.

You’ve experienced it before, even if you didn’t notice. It’s that gut feeling that steers you in the right direction, even when we’re not always aware of it. Intuition can sometimes sound like a whisper in your ear, or like a thought that lands just a little bit different than other thoughts. It’s a bit tricky to explain, to be honest. It’s more of a feeling, or a state of being, that is in the Light and wants only what’s good for you.

Many religions have a name for it; Christianity calls it the Holy Ghost. Other names could include Spirit, angels, guides, the Virgin Mary. I believe we’re all talking about the same thing.

And even if you’re not religious, you could look at intuition as part of our very evolutionary makeup—it’s part of our survival instincts, part of being a human. We all have an inner navigation that helps us make the right choices, or that tells us information about what is to come so we can be better prepared.

It’s often hard to tell which of these messages are coming from yourself or your intuition—which is why you’re in the right spot! In order to learn how to trust your intuition, you need to know these five secrets.

Secret 1: Everyone has a sense of intuition.

Your intuition is essentially a magical companion you have your entire life. Its mission is to protect you, and it never steers you wrong. Some people seem to hear their intuition loud and clear, and for others, it’s more quiet. But don’t worry—you do have one! Hearing your intuition is a skill you can develop with practice, by following the secrets here.

Everyone has a voice of intuition (except, perhaps, some with personality disorders like Narcissism, but we can’t know for sure). Like I said above, you’ve experienced it, even if you weren’t aware. Try to think back to any time in the past where you just …knew… about what the right step for you was. That was your intuition speaking! And maybe you acted on it, and it worked out in your favor. Or maybe you didn’t, and over time you realized you took the wrong road.

To be honest, I haven’t listened to my intuition for most of my life. The decisions I made, both small and large, while ignoring that voice always felt like varying degrees of self-betrayal. For years I could hear my intuition telling me I was struggling in my marriage, but I chose to drown it out, trying to force my will and make my life fit into the image I’d dreamed of instead. Since I finally listened and acted upon my intuition, it’s gotten easier to hear. My self-knowing has become sharper. But it’s still something I work on every day.

It’s hard for most of us to hear our intuition naturally. There is no reason to judge yourself for not being able to hear or trust your intuition in the past! You were doing the best you could at that time. That’s all we’re ever doing.

Which leads me to the next thing you need to know—

Secret 2: To hear your intuition, you must begin by practicing self-love.

Trusting your intuition is the ultimate act of trusting yourself. It requires some serious self-love.

What do I mean by “self-love”? It’s what it sounds like: fully LOVING your amazing self! Just like you would your child, or your dog, or your partner, or anyone you love unconditionally: without judgement, without limits, with full acceptance.

Self-love is pretty foreign to most of us. We live in a world completely starved of it. There are so many more examples around us of people hating themselves than loving themselves, so it’s only natural that this is how we become, too. We’re born with self-love, but we grow up to learn the voices of judgement, anger, criticism and plant them in our own minds.

All of these voices are boiled down to one root source: Fear.

You know it. I know it. That poison that spins your brain and eats at your gut. It’s high time Fear took a freaking backseat and stopped running our lives, right?! Fear, and pain, are the main obstacles that block us from hearing our intuition. But they can be overcome.

Your intuition is part of you—you and it are one. So to listen to and trust your intuition is to trust yourself. And I believe that this —TRUST— is the key to what helps us build self-love. It’s treating your relationship with yourself the same way you ideally would your best friend: doing what you say, being honest, and making time to nurture the relationship. You follow through on promises you make to yourself, you build confidence, and you practice forgiving yourself and letting the negative thoughts go.

Self-love is formed by showing up as your authentic self in all aspects of your life. You stay true to you. And that helps quiet the noise of Fear. With self-love, you know that no matter what happens, you’ve got your back.

Secret 3: You also will need to stop caring what other people think about you.

Easier said than done, I know! But it’s essential. If you want to hear your intuition, you can’t be thinking about what everything else thinks. It’s just more noise.

Making decisions based on what will “look” the best to other people, or on what society else believes is best will only lead you to heartache. It’s time to put the voices of the world to rest and decide based on what feels right for YOU, and you alone. Everyone under the sun will have an opinion, but the only one that matters is yours.

When I was trying to figure out how to end my chronic pain, both of my parents strongly discouraged me from proceeding with surgery to fix it. It was a huge, expensive, terrifying decision, and I had to really trust my intuition and do it anyway. And, guess what? I’m SO glad I did. It was the right choice for me.

It takes real commitment to set aside what your parents think (or your boyfriend, or your sister)—but you won’t be able to hear yourself clearly until you silence those outside voices. No one can really know your life and what’s right except for you. (and your intuition, of course!)

“The reason you have a hard time trusting your intuition is because you are still convinced that some outside authority knows better than you.” — Maryam Hasnaa

Similarly, you must stop comparing yourself to others. Comparison comes from fear and lack—from thinking other people have something you don’t and that this will prevent you from . But the world is wide enough for all of us. If you want to learn more, I wrote about how to stop playing the comparison game here.

Secret 4: Intuition can only happen when you’re in the present moment.

The number one secret weapon to learn how to be present enough to hear your intuition is developing a Meditation practice. I’m actually a meditation and yoga teacher, so I wrote all about how to meditate here, and I have free guided Meditations on YouTube for you to use! You can also read about my favorite meditation apps here.

Our intuition is often very quiet and subtle, which is why it’s easy to miss. And when you’re operating in Fear mode? There’s no way to hear that little voice through all the static noise in your mind. If you’re not in the present moment, you’ll miss it.

Meditation will teach you how to silence the crowd of negative Fear voices in your mind. With practice, you’ll be able to bring meditation into every moment of your day, which called practicing mindfulness. Once you silence Fear’s BS, you create space in your mind for intuition to broadcast its messages clearly. You step aside and allow a higher knowing to enter. And all you have to do is stay in the here and Now.

To be present, you can’t be obsessing about the past, worrying about some imagined future, or adding fear commentary to whatever’s happening right now. You have to just… be. Turn off your thoughts, focus on your breath, and ground yourself.

I like to use this mantra: I am here, now.

Secret 5: Intuition has no emotion attached to it.

This is the final secret you need to know to trust your intuition again. When you become present and have a strong foundation of self-love, the final way to know whether a thought is coming from you or is intuition is to notice whether or not you feel any emotions as you have the thought. Intuition is totally neutral, which is why it can often sound or feel… odd. Like a thought that makes you pause and go —huh.

Intuition is the exact opposite of Fear. So if you’re feeling knots in your stomach, that’s Fear talking. Not intuition.

However—the Fear may be reacting to whatever your intuition said! So it’s a clue to explore. For example, if your intuition says, “I need to leave my husband”, we can expect something like this to be your reaction: “But how?! What about our life, our kids? There’s no way….” or how about, “No way, how could I not be happy? I’ve got it all! How could I even think such a thing?” or something else along those lines. And you know what? That’s all Fear. But that initial voice, that first inclination, had no emotion attached to it. Just a message from the loving Universe—do with it what you will.

It takes practice to start to notice your intution when it first enters your mind, before Fear has the chance to react and get all emotional about it. That’s why intuition will come to you only when you’re meditating, or particularly present in a given moment. You won’t have that hurricane of thoughts in your head to confuse you. You’ll feel at peace, and in that silence you’ll notice which thoughts rip you out of that peace (Fear), and which speak to you like an all-knowing friend that you trust (your intuition).

Your intuition will only continue to get stronger if you follow this guide!

In fact—you can thank your intuition for bringing you here. It says it’s time to start listening, to begin following your heart. It’s time to live your life to the fullest.

If you feel stuck in your life, like your intuition wants you to do something so scary that you don’t feel capable—first of all, know that it’s okay, and you’re not alone. It’s often difficult and painful to act on your intuition. My advice is to keep returning back to self-love. I promise you, there is no situation you can’t overcome. You are strong enough to do anything your intuition calls you to do.

Soon, you may even deepen your intuition skills so much you start to get downloads about things that are going to happen in the future. Your intuition can reveal many different kinds of truths. It’s pretty amazing—like having magical powers. Which it is, basically!

This is a super specific reference, but I grew up playing video games with my younger brother, and the popular character Link of The Legend of Zelda has a tiny little fairy (that appears as a floating orb of light with wings) called Navi. Navi shouts “listen!” whenever she has something useful to share to help guide you through the game. This is what I picture every single time I think about intuition—it’s our own personal Navi, and it’s up to us whether or not we accept her help.

Developing a relationship with your inner voice of intuition strengthens your relationship with yourself. It’s the most rewarding result of this practice, and I’m excited for you to continue.

» Song Vibes «

Do you feel like you know when to trust your intuition? Share your experience with me in the Comments below!

xo,

Amy

Photos by Matthew Hanley