I am very conscious of my unconscious mind and I have spent a lot of time trying to understand the science behind the woo woo (as it can often be seen by those outside the world of personal development), but one day it just seemed to click. It's difficult to explain what exactly clicked, but anyone who has experienced a personal breakthrough with me will know what I am talking about...things just made sense, and I didn't have to over-think any more, because things just 'were'. Perhaps we can simply call it trust and acceptance, but it's an amazing head space to be in, especially if you find you are a worrier, experience overwhelm or anxiety, or find the same negative thoughts keep going round and round your head or the same problems keep arising. I am wondering if you are reading this knowing that you would like to experience a deeper sense of calm, clarity and confidence?
Einstein once said that 'the Intuitive Mind is a sacred gift and the Rational Mind is a faithful servant'. Isn't it funny how we seem to have created a society that worships the servant and dismisses the gift, starting with how we teach our children in school (an area I started in and am still hugely involved with and passionate about). Creativity often takes a back seat as English, Maths and Science become the most important subjects in the latter years of schooling, and academia becomes "the best way" to learn.
It's important that we can learn to trust each niggle and investigate any aches, to be able to live the most healthy and Holsam amazing lives that we deserve. There's so much going on in our worlds, there's so much noise, we need to sit down and listen, and work the intuition muscle in the same way as you would prepare for a marathon. We stretch, we warm up and we work the muscles that we need to help us on our journey. Your intuition is one of them.
Two minutes before my car broke down I had a thought about my car breaking down, the thought was attached to an important decision I was making at the time. There had been no sign that my car might break down, but as a pondered on the coincidence, or the possibility that this was a 'thoughts become things' moment, I realised that this was actually a moment where I had needed to trust my intuition.
With the 40 billion bits of information that come to us per second, somewhere in there I picked up on the cars problem with a thought that I had quickly (and rationally) filed under 'random'. But there is no such thing...our unconscious thoughts are always there to give us information.
How often have you had a thought before something happened? A thought of a friend before the phone rings and he or she is there? A thought of a potential accident before actually having it? A niggle that a new beau is wrong for us, before finding out years later that we were right? Can you really keep putting this down to coincidence?
Learning to listen to ourselves and trust ourselves is an amazing, empowering feeling... even when the car does break down! My car was easily fixed but the situation helped me to make the decision I had been mulling over before it had happened and strengthened my relationship with my unconscious mind, because I listened and acknowledged it.
So if you have a decision to make, if you are feeling unsure, ask yourself the question and listen to the first thought that pops into your mind. Are you in the right job? With the right person? Surrounding yourself with the right people? Are you living the life you truly deserve, the one you want? Could you do more to achieve it? Are you being honest and true to you, or are you doing what you feel you should?
I read an article over the weekend about the biggest mistakes people make when choosing a life partner which discusses how society would prefer us to choose unhappy marriages over being single later in life . It reads,"In our world, the major rule is to get married before you’re too old—and “too old” varies from 25 – 35, depending on where you live. The rule should be “whatever you do, don’t marry the wrong person,” but society frowns much more upon a 37-year-old single person than it does an unhappily married 37-year-old with two children. It makes no sense—the former is one step away from a happy marriage, while the latter must either settle for permanent unhappiness or endure a messy divorce just to catch up to where the single person is". How often have you stayed with someone you shouldn't have, and ignored that voice of your intuition in relationships?
Further, this article about career happiness discusses the need to play to our strengths in our jobs, yet I have worked with many fifteen year olds who, even with my expert advice and guidance, are not ready to listen and trust their intuition, instead preferring to take the well worn path of the adults before them, making mistakes, disliking their jobs (or , indeed, their partners) and wishing they had chosen a different path.
The voice of our intuition, a voice we can trust as a gift that will serve and protect us if we let it, is simply being drowned out by fear, our own and others, and a whole heap of other bits of information telling us what we should and shouldn't do...more importantly, who we should and shouldn't be.
So let my yellow car be a lesson to us all, listen to that small voice, pay attention to your thoughts and be curious to ask - what do I really need to understand that, if I were to get it, would allow the current problem I have to totally disappear?
Just trust your first thought.