Mental Health

8 Tips to Strengthen Your Intuition and Benefit From It

Sure, you can think about how to solve a problem, but what about knowing the most appropriate way to solve it? Intuition is also a skill that you can learn for life. Studies show that overthinking can be very detrimental to our decision-making process. So, instead of overthinking, we should rely on our intuition to some extent.

In this article, you will find some great ideas on how to use your intuition to make better decisions in work and life.

What is intuition?

Intuition is your inner feeling and intuitive knowledge without the influence of external factors. When we say that a person has intuition, we mean that they stay focused despite the sources of distraction; therefore, they know exactly what they want from life.

Intuition can also be an essential skill in business, as the late entrepreneur, Steve Jobs said in his memories: “Intuition is a very powerful thing. It is more powerful than thinking.” Intuition had a great influence on his work. Intuition is a learnable skill, contrary to what some people think. It can be developed through training and using some basic principles.

How to trust your intuition and benefit from it?

1. Listen to yourself:

Everyone has an internal compass. When we are faced with a situation that requires us to choose from several possibilities, our intuition may urge us in a certain direction. Yet, we often ignore our internal compass to please others, or perhaps because we are not used to listening to our intuition. For example, so-and-so is an office worker and goes to work every day, but they don't get along with their boss and co-workers. Also, they are happy with their salary and great benefits, but they wonder if they should find a new job.

The question arises is does this person in our example listen to their inner voice?

If we drop this example in similar cases, we can say that in order to know the real reasons behind such thoughts, it is necessary to be aware of yourself by giving yourself enough time, and you must give yourself the opportunity to listen to your intuition. If you are so busy, you will not be able to listen to that inner voice.

This can be achieved with these tips:

  1. Practice breathing exercises for some time during each hour of the day.
  2. Listen to one song without doing anything else.
  3. Try to calm yourself down when you brush your teeth or count to two minutes.
  1. Eat a meal in complete silence without paying attention to any source of distraction.
  2. Sit and watch the stars or the clouds.

2. Pay attention to your own body language cues:

Your body has a natural predisposition to reflect your inner feelings. Your body may relax or spasm depending on how your mind perceives something in your surroundings, and this is what we see constantly. A person's body language may indicate that they are rejecting another person by rotating their torso in the opposite direction to that person or cross arms before that person even says a word. 

To take advantage of your intuition, watch how your body language changes, giving you many signs, such as:

  1. Explicit body language: It includes gestures, such as pointing your torso at something, smiling, and leaning forward. All of them are signals that you agree, and that your gut is saying yes.
  1. Closed body language: It is the opposite of the first. For example, crossing arms, pursed lips, or leaning back indicates that your gut says no.

3. Contemplate the past:

Try to remember when you listened to your intuition, and how you know you did. On the other hand, you can ask yourself when you did not listen to your intuition. Asking yourself these important questions by contemplating your past can help you discover the crucial moments when your intuition emerged.

4. Name the ambiguous emotions:

Emotions can be complex, and strong emotions can cloud our intuition, especially when we act impulsively. However, you can make things easier if you give a name to the feeling, and if you can embody it, it is even better. For example, you can imagine anger in the form of a soldier who is very excited to get things done, while anxiety can imagine it as a crazy girl who babbles a lot. 

This may sound silly, but we actually do it all the time. This mental activity is called embodiment. Studies show that this activity can help reduce loneliness and enhance social connection.

5. Get to know your personality traits by taking a personality analysis test:

Sometimes we need some time to get to know ourselves better. In this case, a personality test may help, but you must know which test to choose. We advise you to test the five biggest personalities. This test measures five scientifically proven criteria:

  1. Openness: This means how open you are to new experiences.
  2. Conscience: This component measures how much control you have over your impulses.
  3. Social: This means that you gain energy through social relationships.
  4. Accordance or how you accept other people's ideas.
  5. Neuroticism: It is a measure of how comfortable you are with yourself.

Getting to know your personality helps guide decision-making.

6. Build more mental bridges:

The ability to connect seemingly incoherent ideas is an ability of people who follow their intuition. The more you can link ideas together, the stronger your intuition will be for new events. Mental bridges work by gaining more knowledge, and learning different things helps you build more of these bridges in the long run. It also helps strengthen your intuition.

Therefore, be open to new educational experiences, such as taking up a new hobby, learning something new, or reading a type of book that you did not read before. In short, the more you learn new things, the more bridges you build.

7. Flip a coin in the air:

Here is this advice that you can try if you are facing a difficult decision. Take out a coin and flip it in the air, as one side of it represents a decision, and the other side represents another decision. While tossing the coin in the air, notice how you feel. You may feel that you wish you had a face without the other, and this is usually the choice that comes from your gut.

8. Use visualisation to identify the option that matches your intuition: 

Let's say you're faced a difficult decision of having a difficult conversation with your roommate about something they've done that's bothering you, and you've reduced the odds to the following:

  1. You confront them with the fact that you know what they did, and make it clear that you are upset.
  2. You hint to them about that by means of a message you stick in a place they see.
  3. You completely ignore the topic, trying to avoid confronting them at all. 

Imagine what would result from each of these options, and is there one that works out better than the rest? Although this process does not require a great intellectual effort, it can help you very much to know which decision for you is your intuitive decision by knowing the most appropriate outcome.

The science behind intuition:

According to PricewaterhouseCoopers' (PwC's "Big Decisions") survey of more than 1,300 senior executives, 30% of senior executives relied heavily on experience or intuition, compared to 29% of managers who relied on heavy reliance on data when it comes to decision-making.

Most CEOs know that making the right decision is the key to running a successful company, and this is what one of the CEOs, Jeff Bezos, says: “What is required of you as a CEO is to make a few effective decisions.” Learning to take advantage of it can help. Your intuition can greatly improve your decisions on the business front.

In one study, researchers tried to see if intuition could be measured, and they set up this experiment:

  1. Twenty college students were shown black-and-white pictures of dots moving in one direction on a computer screen, and they were asked to guess whether the dots were moving to the right or to the left.
  2. On the other side of the screen, the students saw bright, flashing colored squares.
  3. From time to time, the image was flashing very briefly on the colored side of the screen containing an image that evokes either a negative or positive emotion, such as a picture of a puppy for positive emotion and a gun for negative emotion. These images were intended as part of the participants' subconscious and intuitional perceived information.

Trust your instincts:

1. Could your intuition be wrong?

Of course, because of cognitive bias. For example, if you are deeply convinced your partner is going to leave you, you may start to see something in their behaviour that supports what you believe, like spending more time with their friends or texting from unknown numbers. These behaviours may mean something, but at the same time, they may just be a way for your brain to collect as much information as possible that supports your previously held belief.

For example, contestants on game shows often feel that their choice is right, yet they are wrong in many cases. However, it is possible to know whether your intuition is right or wrong through training and deep knowledge of yourself.

2. What happens when you completely ignore your intuition? 

Here are some of the problems that can arise from ignoring your intuition:

  1. People-pleasing at the expense of your convenience.
  2. Having trouble defining your boundaries.
  3. Loss of enthusiasm for life.
  4. Having difficulty interacting with others. 

3. What is the difference between intuition and instinct?

Instinct is a natural tendency, such as the instinct to eat or avoid harmful insects, while intuition is knowledge acquired and accumulated during a person's life.

Read also: Are We Driven by Emotions or Instincts?

4. What does an intuitive person mean?

An intuitive person can be described as an empath and a mind reader. Intuitive people can often tell what other people are feeling and have a sense of what to do in a given situation. 

Intuitive people can also be proficient not only in people skills but in other skills. For example, an intuitive guitarist may have a good understanding of chord work and be able to hear the sound of notes even before they are played.

5. What is the source of intuition?

Intuition comes from experience gained throughout life, and the more a person is able to learn from their experiences and gain insight from them, the stronger their intuition will be. 

In conclusion:

A summary of the tips to help you strengthen and benefit from your intuition: 

  1. Listen to your inner voice. Try to spend some time alone to meditate, or go for a walk away from the noise.
  1. Pay attention to your body language. Explicit body language generally means agreement, while closed body language indicates otherwise.
  2. Think about the past; That is, the times you listened to your intuition, the times you didn't, and how you made your decisions.
  1. Define your feelings by naming them. Labelling your feelings can help organise your thoughts and reveal your intuition.
  1. Take a personality test, such as the Big 5 Personality Test to better understand your personality.
  1. Learn about different topics to train your brain to see connections between several topics.
  1. Flip a coin in the air to make a difficult decision, and try to know your wish before the coin falls on one side.
  1. Visualise the different outcomes of the different choices, and try to identify the correct one based on the outcomes you visualise .