Steps to Develop the Power of Your Intuition

Why bother chasing after your intuition at all? Getting familiar with that sixth sense, and actually paying attention to it, can pay off in ways both large and small. Everyone carries some capacity for it, and that capacity grows sharper when you choose to direct your focus and your intent toward it. Think back on the little flashes you have already had. The phone rings and you somehow already know who it is. You get the urge to call a friend or relative, and it turns out they were having a rough day and could have used exactly that. Their worry seemed to land in your head before any phone call or letter ever reached you.

Parents tend to know this feeling well. They often sense a child needs something, or is upset, long before a word gets said. That quiet signal is intuition doing its job.

Where better to practice than inside a relationship, during either its hardest stretches or its happiest ones? Rather than walking into a conversation raw and ending up with frayed nerves, you can spend a little time turning the situation over in your mind first, trying to feel out what the real trouble is before you say anything. And the more you notice the hunches that turned out to be right, and give yourself a bit of credit for acting on them, the more often your future hunches will land.

Whenever you feel uneasy about committing to some plan, personal or professional, it helps enormously to read the likely outcome ahead of time, or to sense a better route altogether. That alone can spare you a lot of wrong turns and dead ends.

The uses really have no limit. Picture this: you have been searching for a new doctor and finally narrowed the field to two. Both come well recommended, both look qualified on paper. Now what? Get quiet and ask yourself which one would take better care of you. Your intuition can often read the underlying qualities of a person that your conscious mind has no access to, and the decision gets easier once you have those extra facts. The same thing applies on the drive home. If something tells you to take a different route than usual, you may dodge an accident or a jam you never saw coming. Life tends to run smoother once you start trusting that part of yourself.

Take real estate as an example. Years back, selling homes meant paying close attention to how a client made me feel. You read what they said they wanted in a house, and underneath that you could sense what they were really after. Sometimes a buyer's unspoken wish was clear enough that you knew to show them a different style of home, or a different neighborhood, than the one they had described, and that was what actually helped them. You could also usually tell the serious, motivated buyers from the ones who would look forever and never sign anything. Knowing the difference saved hours of driving all over the place.

So where does intuition actually live? It belongs to the subconscious, and it often gets amplified by teachers and personal guides along the way. When a choice is in front of you, going still and contemplative is how you draw on it most clearly and accurately. A daily stretch of meditation can help. Some people simply step away into a quiet spot and let their thoughts settle. Whatever lets you hear that small voice inside is what brings the answers.

The nice part is that you can tune in anywhere, at any hour, as long as you decide to listen to your inner voice for a moment or two. Even the noisiest surroundings do not have to stop you. Try it next time you are standing at a bus stop or sitting through a ball game. See what you pick up that you might put to use today or tomorrow, once you figure out what you have been trying to tell yourself. Intuition is strong and delicate at the same time, and once you have learned to understand that inner voice, it becomes something you can lean on heavily. - Erin