Knowing When You Know
One of the most difficult things about using your intuition, either to gain insights or to make choices, is determining how you know your intuition is correct. How do you know when you are working with something as subjective as intuition? In many professions today, people use a variety of systems to make planning, setting strategies, and decision making as objective as possible. But working with intuitive and gut level sources of information and knowing those systems doesn’t work.
Nevertheless, you can still get a strong sense of whether your information or choice is right by measuring your impression of the intensity of your belief and your sense of the probabilities being correct. For example, ask yourself on a scale ranging from zero to one hundred, How strongly do I believe what I believe? and see what employing the underlying GWYW principles number flashes into your mind. Or ask yourself on a scale of zero to one hundred, How probable is it that the choice I am making is the right one? and see what number comes to mind. If your response is seventy or better, you probably feel strongly that what you believe is true or that you are making the right decision. If it’s ninety or above that’s an even stronger indication that you feel certain about what you are doing. If you get a medium or weak response, you should reevaluate your belief or decision. You aren’t really sure.
Although you are still measuring something subjective—your impression of the intensity of your belief or your sense of the probabilities—you are adding a second level of review that puts some distance between you and your initial response. It’s a way of double-checking, or reconfirming, your experience.
Another way to increase your confidence in your intuition is by testing the strength of your belief or the certainty of your decision in other situations. How likely are you to be correct when you have a strong belief or sense of making the right decision? Another way to test your intuition is when you were right about something. Reflect back on how you felt when you believed something strongly or felt certain you were right.
Monitoring your feelings will help you evaluate all your intuitions because you will experience similar sensations whenever you are correct. While the system is not absolutely foolproof—it is, after all, based on subjective feelings, impressions, and beliefs—you can increase your chances for being correct or making the right choice by recognizing the signals.
Learning to Trust Your Intuitive Power
You often get feelings and premonitions that something will happen and they turn out to be correct, but other times you are wrong. The outcome isn’t as you believe or suspect it will be. Someone doesn’t respond as you anticipated, predicted dangers don’t materialize, or an expected event doesn’t happen. So how can you know when you know? How can you measure the intensity of your belief and increase your chances of correctly interpreting your intuition? For example, what would you have done in the following situation?
When Julie’s landlord raised her rent she felt this was a signal to move. She had already been feeling her apartment was too small. But where would she go? Should she stay in Santa Barbara or move to another city? She felt restless and was drawn to Los Angeles because it offered more opportunities. But should she pull up her roots?
About a week later she went on a retreat and in an exercise she saw herself living in a house on a hill by the ocean, but it wasn’t clear where it was. She returned from the retreat more determined to move but was still debating where to go. To help her decide, Julie drove to a residential area near the ocean where she would want to live if she stayed in Santa Barbara. As she drove around looking for places with for rent signs, she imagined what it would be like to live there. She saw a house two blocks from the ocean that looked perfect. Though she couldn’t see inside she felt drawn to the house, but when she called and spoke to the real estate agent, he told her he already had an offer on the house and wasn’t taking any others. Julie felt crushed, but determined not to give up, offered to pay a higher rent. Though the agent said he couldn’t accept it, they continued to have a long conversation.
When they were done, the real estate agent commented, “It sounds like the perfect house for you.” He took her number and said maybe he could find her something else in the area.
While Julie looked for other houses in the area, each time she drove past this house she was drawn to it and imagined herself there. Not having any luck, she made plans to move to LA, though she still had a deep inner feeling that she really belonged in the first house. Rationally, her feeling made no sense. It had been more than a month since the real estate agent had told her the house was rented. A few days before Julie planned to spend a weekend in LA to look for a house, the agent called. Amazingly, the house was available again because a contractor took much longer to refurbish the house than expected and the original renters backed out. The agent remembered their earlier conversation and now wanted to give Julie the first chance at the house. When the agent drove her out to look at it she immediately said yes and decided this meant she should stay in Santa Barbara. Then after she moved in, she made other changes in her life that helped her overcome the restlessness that led her to consider leaving Santa Barbara and enabled her to benefit from the many established connections she already had in the area. For Julie, the experience was a lesson in listening to and trusting that deep inner sense of knowing, her feeling of being drawn to the house even after she was told it wasn’t available, the correctness of the information that she gained when looking within for insights, and the image she saw when she visualized where to live.
Sometimes it’s hard to recognize this knowing. Sometimes obstacles may prevent you from realizing what you know, and sometimes a positive outcome may seem impossible. Julie’s experience reaffirms the importance of paying attention to your intuition and acting on it, especially when it feels so strong.
How to Know When Your Intuitions Are Correct
The key to recognizing when your intuitions are correct, and when they aren’t, is to distinguish the difference in the quality and intensity of the feelings you get when your intuitions are correct and when they are not. How? By paying close attention to how you feel in both instances and noticing the differences. You can determine how your current feelings, premonitions, and beliefs compare to past patterns, and you can decide whether your intuition is correct or incorrect.
Since intuition is subjective, there are no guarantees, but this awareness of past results will increase your chances of correctly evaluating an intuitive impulse. The following exercise will help you look back and notice the differences. Review the general guidelines, or read it aloud and record it on a recording device, then play it back as you listen to the instructions.
Assessing Your Feelings and Insights
To start looking at the differences in how you feel when your intuitive impressions are correct or not you must first relax. Once you are relaxed, do the following steps.
Concentrate on your breathing for about a minute. Notice it going in and out, in and out, in and out. Now think back to a time when you had a strong feeling, premonition, or belief about something you didn’t consciously know, but that later turned out to be correct. Maybe you had a feeling about what someone was really like. Maybe you had a premonition of some danger ahead. Maybe you believed something that turned out to be true. Whatever it was, focus on this incident and see it happening now. See it on the screen or area before you and watch.
Now recall the feeling you had about this event before it happened. What did it feel like? Feel that feeling now. Pay attention to how it feels.
How intense is the feeling? If you were rating it on a scale of zero to one hundred, how intense would it be? What number flashes into your mind? Where is this feeling located? In your head? Your heart or chest? Your stomach or solar plexus? All over?
Are any images or words associated with the feeling? Any pictures? Any voices? Any memories? If so, what are they like? Continue to focus on feeling that feeling. Imagine for a moment that you are that feeling. Now, if that feeling wanted to speak to you or give you a message, what would it say? Listen to, see, or feel that. Now let go of that feeling and that incident.
Recall another time when you had a feeling, premonition, or belief about something that turned out to be correct and follow the same steps as described in the last example.
Now think back to a time when you had a feeling, premonition, or belief about something you didn’t consciously know about that later turned out to be incorrect. Maybe you thought you knew what someone was really like. Maybe you had a premonition of some danger ahead. Maybe you believed something that later turned out to be false. Whatever it was, focus on this incident and see it happening right now. See it on the screen or area before you and watch.
Now, recall the feeling you had about this event before you discovered you were wrong. What did it feel like? Feel that feeling now. Pay attention to how it feels.
How intense is the feeling? If you were rating it on a scale of zero to one hundred, how intense would it be? What number flashes into your mind?
Where is this feeling located? In your head? Your heart or chest? Your stomach or solar plexus? All over?
Are any images or words associated with the feeling? Any pictures? Any voices? Any memories? If so, what are they like?
Is there anything about the feeling that is a signal that your intuition is not correct? Is there something about its intensity, its location, or the images or words associated with it that might be a cue to ignore this feeling? Now let go of that feeling and that incident.
Recall another time when you had a feeling, premonition, or belief about something that turned out to be wrong and again follow the steps from the previous example.
Finally, reflect on the differences you just experienced in the intensity and quality of the feelings you had when you were correct and when you were incorrect. How were they different in their intensity? Where was the feeling located? In the images or words associated with them? Those differences are cues you can use in the future to tell you whether or not to pay attention to a feeling, premonition, or belief.
Tracking Your Intuition
Another way to improve your intuitive success rate is to practice using your intuition in everyday situations, noticing the difference in the way you feel when you are correct and when you are not. Also, keep a mental or written record of how well you do. Over time you will find that your ability to know when your intuition is correct will increase.
For example, you can get immediate feedback on whether your intuitions are right or wrong by trying to determine the number of calls on your answering machine or in your voicemail when you return to your office, the number of e-mails you will receive, whether a certain person will call, whether someone will cancel an appointment, whether someone will be at a certain event, or whether someone will be a candidate or win in an election. The possibilities are endless. You can test yourself with just about anything, though in the beginning it is best to start with less important situations where you don’t feel as much pressure to be right. As you test yourself, notice how certain you felt that you were correct and how accurate your impressions really were. Over time both your certainty and accuracy should go up. As you feel more certain about your ability, you can apply it to making decisions or setting expectations in situations that really matter.