CHAPTER [3]

TRUSTING YOUR INTUITION

During times of emotional crisis, we often shut down or lose touch with our intuition, which can have devastating consequences.

There are two types of intuition. The first—your “fight or flight” intuition—helps protect you from real danger. The other—your insight intuition—functions as your emotional navigation system and is the intuition of which I speak in this book.

Many commonplace phrases acknowledge the power of this type of intuition: “My spider senses told me to stay away.” “My gut told me not to sign the deal.” “I had a nagging suspicion something was up.”

One of the greatest gifts I took away from my long and convoluted divorce was learning the power of my own intuition. When I retrace the steps of my turbulent journey, I can clearly see that every single time I denied my intuition, I made the wrong decision.

If you take nothing else from this book, please take this promise: If you learn to trust your intuition during a divorce (or any other challenging time in your life) and if you act on it, you will benefit in so many ways.

During my divorce, my inner voice nagged at me night and day, but all for naught. Smothered by chaos and drowning in denial, I lost touch with my intuition, and on the rare occasions that my intuition and I managed to connect, I chose not to trust it. My insecurities and feelings of low self-worth gained an absolute stranglehold over reason, forming an impenetrable barrier between me and common sense.

When reason did filter through, it was warped into a jumble of mixed messages, like a cell phone picking up several conversations at once. Even when I tried hard to listen to my intuition, nothing made sense.

I understand what it feels like to not be grounded in decision making: It feels like hell. Making ego-based decisions from a place of fear erodes self-esteem and amplifies the chaos in which you are floundering. Tuning in to your intuition and getting crystal-clear reception takes time, but if you sharpen that skill one day at a time, you will be rewarded. You will have renewed confidence in your decisions. More importantly, you’ll be able to make them, but only if you remain true to yourself at a soul level, not at the level of personal wounds and emotional distress.

Work to keep your intuition finely tuned, and let it be your guide at all times. It will never fail you.