I once felt compelled to approach a stranger in a foreign country and ask if she’d just lost someone she loved. I was in a Scottish pub, not a war zone, and she wasn’t teary. She didn’t wear black. It wasn’t a wake. She merely sat, sipping a drink. Something inside me just knew—and was right. The knowledge forced me to risk being rude. I was rewarded with an unexpected but heartfelt connection.
That still, small voice inside, which I wanted to resist and could not, is commonly called intuition. It can be defined as a way of knowing the truth without being able to say how we know. Intuition may warn us of bad situations or push us to take a chance that pays off.
Some names for intuition are more suggestive than others: Sixth sense. Hunch. Gut instinct. Angel’s whisper. Foreboding—whose root words meant “message” and “messenger” to imply a truth that comes from beyond. People also refer to such knowledge by saying, “I just had a feeling,” which emphasizes the irrationality of the insight, assigning it to emotion or a sense of the body.
That doesn’t mean intuition is necessarily unscientific. Research has shown that our brains collect a lot of information that never reaches conscious awareness. A driver’s spidey-sense that another car is about to make a sudden lane change, for instance, may come from subconscious clues—a subtle shift of tires, perhaps, or a tilt to the other driver’s shadowy head. Psychologists call this tacit or implicit knowledge. In effect, the car’s abrupt move is unexpected only to the conscious mind.
Whether you consider intuition the voice of your heart, a flash of insight or a message from spiritual or religious powers, there’s little dispute that it’s frequently valid. In my case, that afternoon in the pub wasn’t even the most dramatic instance of a spooky prescience that changed my life. And I’ve found that, like a dog, intuition likes attention and will perform to get more.
This may be true of the subconscious in general. Studies suggest that the more we attend and record our dreams, for instance, the easier it becomes to recall them and what they might be trying to tell us. I’ve taught writers how to bring subconscious insights to their work, and many of those techniques also amplify intuition, making it more accessible to the conscious mind.
7 tips for turning up your intuition’s volume
Turn down everything else
Reduce external stimuli of all kinds and be still. Drive without music or podcasts. Enjoy a beverage without a screen. Create more blank space on your desk, on your walls and in your life to make room for insights to enter.
Find a rhythm
Rhythmic activity soothes the nervous system and encourages a mildly hypnogogic state that’s ideal for intuition to work. Walking and running are well-known for this, but everything from a stint in a rocking chair to chopping wood might coax out a hunch.
Lull yourself into a dreamier state
Warm baths, doodling or colouring, gentle gardening and dozing in bed are a few ways to relax brain activity so subconscious knowledge can rise.
Meditate or pray
Similarly, you can also intentionally daydream to give your intuition a stage.
Pay close attention
Pay attention to impolite impulses and peanut-gallery observations in the back of your mind. You don’t have to act on them. Interrogate them. What prompted them? What might they imply? As with dreams, the more you notice, the more clear and frequent such reactions become.
Talk to others
Ask others about their experiences of intuition and listen with an open mind. It’ll send a memo to your inner voice that you’re willing.
Keep an intuition journal
Journaling is known to help dig out our deepest truths, including a few we may hide from ourselves. Some may be insights to follow.
A supplement, not a substitute
One caveat: Proceed with caution if you suffer from anxiety or depression. That voice inside can be wrong, just as our conscious minds can. History is littered with failed prophets, doomsayers and gamblers. I trust my intuition a lot, but I once spent a very strange afternoon experiencing foreboding that my life was about to end. The only way this suspicion changed my behaviour, however, was to boost my gratitude for the day, and eventually the foreboding passed.
Maybe I missed a semi with my number on it. More likely, my imagination had taken flight. That’s OK. My eyes and ears are sometimes wrong, too. Like them, my imperfect sixth sense still deserves notice.
Intuition should be a supplement to rational decision-making, of course, not a substitute. Accurate hunches of the jackpot and the lifesaving sort are surely rare, and a gut instinct isn’t permission to spend money you can’t afford on a lottery ticket. But intuition should not be ignored, either. Hear it more clearly by trying my tips for tuning in. They might help you know yourself better and find greater fulfillment.
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image 1 Sierra Schulz from Pixabay 2 image by Thomas Wolter from Pixabay
