What do we really know about intuition? It's those feelings we get sometimes that tell us to make a decision without really thinking about it. Well, according to Psychology Today those feelings have already been thought through quite deeply in a few seconds. Our unconscious mind apparently assesses situations using our knowledge and experience at a rapid pace and these feelings of intuition are the resultant thoughts.
This seemingly knee jerk reaction we get when faced with the unknown can be confusing on the psychological level. Intuition seems by nature to be a thing that has no substance and therefore no logical truths. This is not the case, there are some truths when it comes to Intuition that make it both a positive and negative thing.
1. It Is a Thought Process
Intuition is not some mystical process where we magically know that something is dangerous or the next great step in our lives. There is no guiding light helping you make decisions. It is your own mind working faster than any computer to help you make informed decisions.
Your unconscious mind rapidly uses what you know and what you have experienced in the past to assess the situation in front of you. It then pushes forward this initial intuitive thought.
2. Intuition Can Affect You Physically
Have you ever had that butterflies-in-your-stomach feeling when nervous? This is because our minds and gut are very closely connected. Harvard Medical School suggests that not only does the way our stomach feels affect our brains but the way our brain feels affects our stomachs. Feelings of anger, elation, anxiety, and sadness can have a physical effect on our gut health.
The second we think about eating our stomach starts to prepare for the arrival of food by releasing digestive juices. This is an obvious response but fear and anxiety also cause responses in the stomach. So, when our intuition kicks in we may start to feel physical effects in our stomachs as a result of thoughts we haven’t really processed in our conscious mind yet.
3. Some People Are More Intuitive Than Others
We all have the potential to be intuitive because as previously mentioned it is a process performed by our unconscious mind. This is something we all have so when we encounter something our unconscious mind starts working on our instinctive response.
The response, however, is based on our knowledge and experience. So, people with greater accumulated knowledge and experiences have more data for their unconscious to draw upon.
This makes their intuition stronger. A person's openness to their intuition can also be a factor in the strength of this mental ability.
4. Intuition Can Be Improved
Intuition is not just something that happens to us, it’s part of our thought process and just like any other it can be trained and fine tuned. Gaining world experience and learning new things adds to the knowledge we can use to feed our intuition.
Embracing these gut feelings allows us to understand them and potentially choose to follow them or not. Once we understand what intuition is, we can easily use it to make our lives better.
5. We Can Be Too Reliant on Intuition
Intuition can sometimes be a problematic thing especially if we assume it to be a mystical sign. These thoughts ultimately come from us meaning that they are as fallible as any of our thought processes.
They may be a good warning of danger or an indication of our own deep-seated bias regarding certain things. This is why analyzing our intuition should be an important part of the thought process before we make a decision.
Until next time, many blessings and much peace! :)
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