Demystifying Intuition
in Business and Life
Intuition is really a sudden immersion of the soul
into the universal current of life, where the histories
of all people are connected, and we are able to know
everything, because it’s all written there.
—paulo coelho, the alchemist
There are so many unknowns in life and specifically in business. If it were super easy to succeed, everyone would. If the secrets were accessible, we’d all have the answers. What comes to mind when I tell you that you do indeed have the answers? Do you feel a bit of uneasy agitation because you doubt me? If you do, that’s okay! You will learn how to protect yourself. When you are unfamiliar with your intuition, it can sometimes feel like some type of enchanted fairy tale, like it’s something make-believe, and it can definitely feel unrealistic.
Let’s take the mystical out of intuition if it makes you feel better. Let’s, just for a second, pretend that it is a perfectly normal sense, as natural as your eyesight or your hearing or even your taste. I mean, how frequently do you feel comfortable talking to your coworkers about how you totally believe in intuition? It’s probably not often you find yourself in the locker room discussing how you trusted your gut. You generally don’t hear about how the presentation in the boardroom should be credited to intuitive inspiration. If you think of it as natural, instead of supernatural, it can change your world and become your superpower.
The fact is, in business and in most of life, we relate to things we can see or touch. We react to people, places, and things. In other words, we dig the tangibles—the concrete, perceptible stuff that is distinguishable from all the other stuff. It makes us feel comfortable. If we are able to define what that stuff is, it is much easier to tell ourselves it’s real. It is quantifiable and we have evidence to prove it’s clearly there, so we allow our brains to acknowledge it without question. The tangible things in life are easy to understand.
What’s not quite as easy to believe in are the intangibles, things that we can’t actually hold on to or touch. This is the stuff you must believe in almost solely on faith. Until, of course, you’re able to wrap your mind around the fact that you don’t always need to be able to touch something to believe that it’s part of your reality.
Superpower
Intuition is invisible. It is one of those tricky intangibles that you don’t always understand. We can’t reach out and touch it, and we don’t always believe we have it. But our intuition is real. How do we know it’s there if it’s invisible? We can feel things, hear things, see things, smell things, and generally sense what is happening through our intuitive gifts. Intuition is that sixth sense, that extra metaphysical perceptive tool, that intangible gift, that amps up our five physical senses that we use to interpret information. Its preternatural almost, like things you only hear about with relation to the supernatural. Intuition really is our very own superpower, and we all have access to it every day.
Knowing you can have this as your superpower, what would you say about honing it? If you could have any superpower, what would it be? Would you have super sight? What about extraordinary hearing? How about being able to just know things? Or a supersensory feeling that tells you all about someone? These are all functions of our extrasensory capabilities. Let’s explore them.
The Clairs
Clair is the French word for “clear” and is used as a prefix to describe your different intuitive senses. We are all born with the ability to tap into them and utilize them every day. You might find, as you practice using them throughout the book, that you have a natural affinity toward one or two of these specific gifts. You will begin to appreciate which ones you are more connected with and which you feel strongest in. Through practice and repetition, you can cultivate and expand your innate gifts, though you might discover you won’t quite connect to one or two of them, and that’s normal. For example, similar to how not everyone will be a Mozart, not everyone will feel a kinship with their ability to hear psychic messages. Learning how to access each one of the clairs will uncover which you are more and less proficient with. So, let’s dig in.
Let’s break down the clairs and what they mean. Clairvoyance is clear psychic sight, being able to see things in your mind that aren’t there in your physical reality. Clairaudience is psychic hearing, or the gift of hearing sounds or words or voices that aren’t audible to the naked ear. Clairsentience is being able to feel things about others psychically, your gut instinct. And, a psychic knowing, or claircognizance, is when you know things that you have no reasonable basis for knowing. These psychic superpowers are available to you now, to help you in both business and everyday life. You will have multiple opportunities to begin tuning in to them all.
These are some of the most common psychic abilities. Do you immediately find yourself resonating with one or two of them? Does the mere mention of them bring back a memory of something for you? Whatever or however they make sense to you doesn’t matter. That’s right—it doesn’t matter. What’s more significant is that you become accustomed to the idea that these intuitive sensations are the real deal and that you are already benefitting from them. Whether it’s a conscious or subconscious undertaking, it’s happening regardless, so it’s time you embrace it. Using your superpowers to gain impressions can be a driving force to get you to the next level of whatever you’re trying to do.
Luckily, you aren’t limited to having just one superpower. I mean, there are no superpower police to hold you back from that sweet flow of intuition, and there’s no need to hide or ignore your gifts. It’s time for you to lay it all on the table and show your hand. What do you see? What is there for you to leverage? You might find when you begin analyzing your intuitive gifts that you have more than you realize. Why not amp that up? Let’s figure out which superpower you naturally have so you can, yes, use it to your advantage. If not, if you ignore it, you might fight your intuition will show up in a different way.
Panic Attack
My friend Rebecca and her husband decided to put their house on the market. Unfortunately, shortly after that, her husband passed away from a quick bout with cancer. Rebecca wasn’t sure what to do at that point, but she felt she had to continue looking for a new house. And then she found it. It seemed perfect. She loved it. It was a wonderful house that checked all the boxes for what she and her husband, Paul, had talked about before he died. She decided to put in an offer and planned on writing it up the next day.
During the process, she had a nagging feeling. She wasn’t sure what it meant, so she pretty much ignored it. Was it just guilt that she was moving on? Was it because the house was over her budget? She didn’t know and continued to dismiss the feeling until right before she was leaving to go put in an offer. She began experiencing heart palpitations, her body felt extremely stressed, and she broke out in a sweat. She was having a hard time breathing and felt very lightheaded. Immediately, she thought, “Oh my God. I’m having a heart attack.”
Was she going to be joining Paul in the afterlife? Was it her time? What was going on? She took a breath, grabbed her phone, and, instead of calling her kids, decided quickly to look up the symptoms she was experiencing on her phone. She realized she was having a panic attack. Well, that was much better than a heart attack. This she could work with!
She realized in that moment that her intuition, along with her deceased husband, had been trying to tell her not to put an offer in for that house. She knew that was what the nagging feeling had been. She understood that it would be too far away from her kids, that she would be overextending herself, and that Paul was trying to say, “What the hell are you doing?”
Her intuition, her superpower, had been trying to let her know she needed to rethink her plan. She hadn’t listened. In order to get her to stop and reevaluate, it caused her to have a full-blown panic attack, something she’d never had before. She knew without a doubt that the house was not supposed to be hers, and thank goodness she finally listened. Shortly after that, she ended up finding the perfect house, within her price range, with all the amenities she wanted. This house was within a mile of her son and within a mile of where her other son was working. It was the ideal spot for her to continue living. Paul was just going to have to wait for Rebecca to join him. Instead, she would live in her new home, happily trusting her intuition—and Paul—to continue leading her in the right direction.
As Rebecca discovered, your superpowers are there for a reason. They want to help you figure out what to do in life and business. As with Rebecca’s story, if you ignore your intuition or don’t pay attention to what your vibes are telling you, there can be consequences. If she hadn’t had the panic attack, she would have been locked into a home she couldn’t afford, away from her family, whom she much needed to be near, especially after Paul had passed, and she wouldn’t have found her perfect place. A panic attack is a pretty extreme way of getting your attention—being aware of your intuitive gifts and heeding them is much better way to live! Rebecca discovered her superpower, which had kicked in via her intuitive feeling, or clairsentience. The question becomes, what is your superpower?
Use That Vision: Clairvoyance
Are you the kind of person who sees only what they want to see? That won’t work here. You need to be innovative as well as open to what your visions show you so you can be a success. Let go of your ego. Although at times it can provide you with protection or validation, it can also hold you back from trusting in the vision you need to succeed. Your ego can get in the way of being receptive to visual impressions because you might be blocking anything that doesn’t come through to you via “normal” channels. The ego can keep you from truly seeing what you need to so that you can understand the messages you’re getting. Dean Koontz, best-selling novelist, writes that “intuition is seeing with the soul.” 4 We all have preconceived notions about what is real and what isn’t, and if you don’t grow up understanding that images you see in your mind can be something other than your imagination, it can make it difficult to believe they are real. Let’s change that.
Using your intuition to see is actually very common, so common in fact that it has a name—clairvoyance—and no, it’s not scary! Usually, we receive flashes or picturelike images in our mind, which can be hard to discern if you’re not ready for them. Seeing these types of visions is not even something we readily acknowledge if we aren’t used to it. However, as I already said, it is very common. Learning to interpret what we see plays a key role in understanding exactly what we are actually intuiting.
Believing what we see is equally important. Knowing there is a possibility that we are viewing images in our mind that are not just our imagination trying to play tricks can be a tough pill to swallow, but it’s time! Don’t ignore what can be potentially one of your greatest advantages in your business world. It’s not always about not believing, though you have to learn to trust the difference between what is your imagination and what is your intuition. This comes with time and practice. Clairvoyance usually comes with a feeling. This helps you differentiate between your intuitive sight and your imagination.
Try This!
How, you might ask, can clairvoyance help me in business? Let’s pretend we have a product we need to market—the thingamabob. What do you want it to be? It can be anything your heart desires, or it can be something you are actively thinking of creating. Don’t worry for now about whether it’s real or ready for production. Just imagine it has already gone through everything it needs to and now you only have one more choice to make: you need to decide what color would boost its marketability while appealing to the customers and possibly your client. Maybe you have already narrowed it down to three different colors; let’s say blue, yellow, and red.
Now, visualize the thingamabob. Where would it be? Would it be on a shelf somewhere? Would it be online? Would it be in your customer’s hands? At a boutique? Or a salon? Or a big-box store?
This is the cool part. See the product in its packaging—really look at it in your mind’s eye. Trust the first image that comes to you. What do you see as the predominant color? When you see it now in your mind’s eye, what color is it? Is it one of the three colors you were already thinking? Or something different? The thingamabob is now the perfect color, because you saw it clairvoyantly with your intuitive vision! This intuitive vision, clairvoyant sight, is there for you to take advantage of. Use it as you will. Discard any doubt you may have about whether or not this ability is available to you. Believe that you can envision things and you will start doing exactly that.
Using this example, you can also tune your vision in to what colors would absolutely not work, what packages would remain stuck on the shelf in retail hell, never making you or your customers any money. Because we are in it to win it, we want to use that sight any way we can to help make us successful. After all, it’s part of your birthright, so why not discover how your vision can easily be enhanced to increase your success?
Visualize Your Goals
Your third eye, your psychic sight, can be used to help you get ahead in business. It is a powerful, innate tool you can utilize. It’s actually a prevalent sense for people who are more visual, like artists or photographers. Utilizing this gift can help you solve problems, get answers, and possibly even get advanced comprehension of what’s to come.
So often people discount the visions they see in their mind’s eye because they feel like it’s merely wishful thinking that they are seeing something positive, or they feel like what they are perceiving is not a true intuitive vision but that they are seeing something born of fear. When we are afraid something is not right, our imagination can come up with the craziest notions, which often show up masquerading as intuitive images. This may lead to confusion and at times create doubt. Practicing using your intuition undoubtedly will relieve some of the bewilderment.
Think of your third eye as an extension of you. It is one of your natural senses, though grossly undervalued. Having access to this can give you clarity when you need direction. Suppose you are a waiter and you have a decent job. Imagine someone comes into your place of employment and tells you they know of a great opportunity where you could make double the tips with less work. They tell you they just opened a new restaurant and they think you’d be perfect there. They give you their business card and ask you to let them know. You finish your shift, all the while weighing your pros and cons of leaving where you currently are versus this great new restaurant. So far, it’s a fifty-fifty split. How can you decide? This is where your intuitive vision comes in.
You’ve exhausted all logical debates, so now it’s time to see what the outcome would be with your mind’s eye. If you ask to see the answer to “Should I stay or should I go?” the universe will respond. It may not happen instantly, but usually you’ll get some type of response shortly after. Let’s say an hour later you see a red hexagon shape in what you think may be your imagination, but you’re not entirely sure what it means. The cool thing is you can ask for clarification. When you do, you see a stop sign. This is a symbolic message that your intuition is giving to you to make it easier to recognize your sixth sense. You can be reasonably assured it is a directive to not make the move.
Let’s pretend you’re still curious and want to know why you shouldn’t take the proffered job. You can ask for another vision, possibly a precognitive sight that will show you the future. If you draw all your attention to the center of your forehead, you can kind of jump-start your gifts. Envisioning a blank piece of photo paper, you could ask for an image to show you what would happen if you were to take the new position. At first, the paper may look blank, but give it a chance. Soon enough, that paper may start to fill in, showing you pictures in your mind’s eye of what would have been. These images, along with the original stop sign vision, are enough to help you understand that by not accepting the job, you are making a better decision.
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This intuitive vision is also where you can conceptualize your goals. Then, by setting your intention, you can use your clairvoyance to help you realize your goals. Ask questions such as the following and expect to see your answers. Again, they may not happen instantly, so give them time!
- Is my goal going to be beneficial to me?
- Am I headed in the right direction to achieve my goal?
- What steps should I take to reach my goal?
- Does it make sense to go after this?
- Will I be able to realize my goal within a month? A year? Five years?
- Is there anything I should be on the lookout for?
- Is there anything I should avoid?
- Should I adjust my goal?
Asking these questions, along with any others you can think of, can help you accomplish what you set out to do. You are planting the visual seeds by expecting answers. Now all that’s left to do is to follow the images your clairvoyance is showing you and you’ll be on your way to attaining your goal.
There are no rules when it comes to your clair senses. Using your vision to support your business endeavors will give you so much more insight than just utilizing data or even guessing in order to make decisions. Using your other intuitive gifts will increase your advantages even more. You will absolutely benefit by tapping into and even combining your other senses as well. Think of your abilities as a metaphysical garden, ripe and ready to be picked.
That Inner Voice: Clairaudience
We’ve all heard it—that inner voice that talks to us even when we don’t want it to. Sometimes it’s a quiet, gentle voice and sometimes, it’s loud and nagging and won’t leave you alone. That’s your intuitive guidance, your inner counsel, trying to help you. When the nagging voice escalates, it’s usually because you’re not listening, kind of like when you didn’t listen to your mom or your partner. It’s saying, “Pay attention to what I’m telling you! I am trying to help you!”
In business, we have that same voice, waiting to be heard, trying to provide direction to us. It goes beyond balance sheets and bottom lines. It is that first, and what should be the last, directive we have. Depending on tactical and strategic data alone to provide us with definitive guidance is extremely limiting. Intuition is a powerful business tool and we would be foolish to overlook it. We have the option to employ so many techniques. We would be remiss to restrict ourselves and not use everything in our arsenal. The more we listen to our inner voice, the stronger it gets and the easier it will get to rely on its accuracy, which ultimately can increase our bottom line.
Do you enjoy listening to music? Talking to people? If so, this may indicate that you have a natural clairaudient slant to your intuitive awareness. This means that you may be more inclined to hear the information that will help you flourish in business and life. Unlike clairvoyance, this intuitive hearing will present itself audibly, rather than visually. And, no, hearing voices does not necessarily mean you’re crazy! Rather, it might instead prove to you that you can indeed gain valuable assistance.
So how do you tune in to your psychic hearing? Start by listening. Be quiet! Are you the one who doesn’t know how to shut the heck up? Do you find yourself talking over others or constantly telling others your stories without hearing theirs? Listen, I get it. When I get passionate about a subject or have (at least what I think is) a great tale to tell, I tend to ramble on as well. But in order to really tune in and allow your intuition to come through so you can hear it, you need to pipe down. Revel in the serenity of the quietness around you for a moment. You can’t hear anything if you are constantly making noise.
Now that you’ve quieted down, what can your extrasensory hearing tell you? It depends what answers you need. Anything you can have answered in the physical world can also be answered metaphysically. Stop for a minute and pretend that you want some business guidance. The problem is you don’t have anyone around you that you can ask for help, so you need to get your answers yourself. Perfect! This is where your clairaudience comes in.
Try This!
What kind of direction are you looking for? Much the same as we did with our clairvoyance, we can ask anything we want in this clairaudience exercise. How about we start with something good? Using your imagination, you can imitate how it can work for you by making a mental list of questions, and then ask them out loud or just in your mind and wait for an answer. One of the easiest ways to do this is to think of yes-or-no questions as they pertain to your subject. For the sake of practicing your gifts, I’m going to give you a few sample questions:
- Should I look for a new job?
- Would I be happier doing something else?
- Would I make more money if I switched positions?
- Do I already know what career would be ideal for me?
- Even though I’m not making a lot now, should I stick with it?
- Should I ask for a promotion?
- Should I ask for a raise?
- Should I start my own business?
- Would I make more money on my own?
- Should I pitch this new product or plan to my boss or customer?
- Is it time to create something new?
- Should I fire my employee?
- Should I move my business or home?
While all these questions may not be specific for you, you can cater them and ask whatever you want. But wait for an answer. Remember, you want to ask yes-or-no questions. Be Zen-like. Quiet. Peaceful. And expect to hear a response. It might take you a bit of time to hear it but give it a good three to four minutes before moving on to your next question. You can always go back to it. You might not hear a yes or no. Lisa K., PhD, author and teacher, agrees that “when you first ask your intuition a question, especially when you are first learning, you probably won’t understand what the answer means. If you don’t understand the message you can ask again, and ask for clarity.” 5 You might instead get something that means yes or no, such as “sure” or “okay” for yes or “not” or “veto” for no. If you receive an answer but can’t tell if it is a yes or a no because it is revealing itself in an imprecise way, ask for clarity. This is about you, so take advantage of it and listen!
Listening with Your Intuition
Some people find it difficult to drown out the noise, specifically the background static. It reminds me of a commercial I used to see on television that advertised a hearing aid to get rid of the sounds that weren’t important so you could hear the ones that were. This to me is what really needs to be done in order to successfully use your clairaudience.
John, a client of mine, came in for a session one day. He described to me how he had been trying to tap into his intuition but was having a very difficult time. He needed to decide whether or not to sell his company, and having previously trusted his intuition in other business matters, he was quite disappointed that he wasn’t able to tune in this time.
“I am hoping you can get a feel for what I should do. I can’t seem to get a line on it,” he told me.
“I can definitely give it a shot!” I told him.
“Good, because it seems like I have a million voices and sounds coming at me all at once. I can’t decipher anything. I don’t even know if I’m actually getting any messages or not because I can’t sift through the noise,” he explained further.
“Well, let’s see what we get,” I responded.
I began tuning in, opening up all my senses to receive whatever I could. I expected to utilize most of my gifts as that is my norm, but I was surprised to get the same type of response as John.
“I hear some chatter,” I told him. “It seems really loud. I am going to work on trying to weed out what is important.”
I opened up my clairaudient senses further, rather than trying to shut down the noise. Then, I cleared my mind, grounded myself down to the earth, and opened myself up to the energy so I could raise my vibration. By quieting my spirit, I was able to tap into the universal energy. Remaining in this meditative state for a bit, I asked the universe to help me. What I began to decipher made me stop and laugh.
“I totally get what you’re talking about! It sounds like I’m in the middle of a dance club!”
But what was even more significant was the song I started to make out amidst all of the hullabaloo.
“I think you should definitely sell. First of all, I hear what sounds like people laughing and dancing and celebrating. But, even more significantly, I’m hearing the song ‘I Feel Good,’ which tells me that you for sure should do it. The exhilaration will last for a long time!”
Sometimes the noise you hear is actually part of the message. Listening to everything can be difficult when you are trying to listen to your clairaudient senses, which is what happened to John. He was getting his answer but just having trouble interpreting it. There are no precise directions when trying to weed through what you’re hearing. Raising your vibration can help you sort out the noise, to either interpret all that you’re hearing or quiet down what is not significant. Overall, using your clairaudience, and all your intuitive abilities, further strengthens your power in a world where you should take advantage of all the opportunities you can to succeed. Learning to ground yourself is an essential part of that, regardless of which clair sense you are using.
Try This!
Ground Yourself to Raise Your Vibration
Be somewhere comfortable and quiet. Close your eyes and take a deep breath. When you’re ready, imagine that coming out of the bottom of your feet are roots. These roots are reaching deep down into the ground. They continue reaching all the way down to a giant boulder in the center of the earth and wrap themselves around it.
Now, as you continue breathing deeply, imagine there is positive earth energy rising up through the roots into the soles of your feet. As it rises up, you can feel it warming your feet, your ankles, and your calves, all the way up to your knees. Feel that energy moving up even further, and as it does, it is clearing out any psychic debris that no longer belongs there.
Feel the energy continuing up through your thighs, into your hips and your abdomen, getting rid of any negativity you don’t need to hold on to. Allow it to move up even more, into your chest area, warming your body and clearing anything that is no longer yours.
The warm earth energy now moves into your neck and shoulders, relieving any tension you may have, and continues into your face and your head. As it does, it removes any lingering stress in your jaw and your forehead.
Now the beautiful earth energy moves to the top of your head, where there is a funnel opening up toward the heavens. As it does, feel it rising, almost stretching you up, pulling your energy strongly but calmly through the tunnel. Your incredible earth energy is mixing now, with the energy of the universe, and as it does your vibration is lifted, flowing toward the vibration of the universe, mixing and melding together. You may even find you feel lighter as your vibration is raised.
When you are ready, take a deep breath and open your eyes. You’ve raised your vibration, which can help you connect on a deeper level. It can also aid with opening up your ability to interpret and translate intuitive messages. Whether using your clairaudience or any other clair sense, you can always stop, take a deep breath, ground yourself, and raise your vibration to allow you to better connect.
Listening with your clairaudience is an important tool. Learning how to listen in any situation is important, but going deeper with your intuition gives you a stronger connection to people in general. If you are having a conversation, listen to what’s not being said—employ your gifts to gain a deeper understanding of what is significant to the person you’re talking to. For example, if they say one thing to you, but you hear something else, pay attention. It may be the universe sending you a message. If while they’re talking about opening a new business, you hear the ominous sounds of the beginning of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, it might help them to let them know to be sure they’ve researched everything about their prospective endeavor. If they ask why, tell them the truth—I heard it! It’s their choice whether they heed your advice and use it to their benefit. Your clairaudience may just help them be more successful.
Getting the Feels: Clairsentience
We all know we get in our feels sometimes. Simply put, we can feel things deeply, and this in turn can change how we act or react to things. They can also adjust, almost automatically, what we choose to do. Well, similar to our emotional feelings, our intuitive feelings are just as valuable in swaying our opinions. Called clairsentience, these psychic impressions can give us goosebumps and cause us to question what the heck is happening. These goosebumps are nothing to mess around with! They are your body manifesting proof that your sensory input is alive and well.
Clear intuitive feelings contribute to decision-making. These (sometimes gentle) nudges can really sway your opinions about everything from evaluating a new project at work to which comforter your daughter would like for her college dorm room. It’s the trusting of this mostly subtle vibe that can be difficult. Listen, I know it would be easier if your gut instincts could be clearer, but would you want your stomach clenching up uncontrollably every single time you felt something negative? Or would you rather it be a bit more restrained? Once you learn to recognize them, your psychic feelings will give you a huge advantage.
Now that you know about your extrasensory feelings, how do you actually recognize your clairsentience as being more than just indigestion? You practice. You won’t always readily understand your metaphysical feelings or what they are telling you, but the more you work with this ability, the stronger it will become. You will begin to recognize how it feels in your body. You may get goosebumps or a tingly feeling or even butterflies in your belly, and these are all validation that your senses are working.
Think about when you walk into a room and the tension is so thick you can cut it with a knife. You’re not picking up on that because of the décor or what is being served. Nope. It’s about the energy of the people. Even if outwardly they show no signs of having been arguing or angry, you can feel it. That’s your clairsentience, and damn if it doesn’t affect you too, especially if you are empathic, meaning you feel what others feel. This enhances your clairsentience tenfold and can wreak havoc if you don’t protect yourself.
Envision yourself walking into a work meeting. You’ve gotten there a bit late because you had to put together a presentation. You skip through the doorway, excited about the brilliant idea you are going to share with them, only to feel like you are hit in the gut. It can stop you dead in your tracks and change your entire mindset. That’s because you feel the people already in the room have a negative attitude in some way. They’ve been arguing, or maybe it’s as simple as they just don’t feel like being there. Maybe they are a bit jealous that you were given this opportunity that they wanted. It doesn’t even matter what it is, just that you can feel it and there’s no way in hell you think you can get back the enthusiasm you felt seconds before.
So what can you do now? You adjust. You know that you’ve picked up on the less-than-positive energy, so immediately you can adapt and redirect your own energy to pick up the pieces you’ve been left with. If you had no connection to your clairsentience, you would not be able to quickly adjust, but because you are an intuitive badass, you can! You know from the vibes that the energy you walked into has nothing to do with you, so you don’t have to doubt yourself. This automatically gives you a leg up toward your own personal success.
One of the best ways to tune in to your intuition is to pay attention to how your body feels. When you are trying to decide on something for business, notice if your body feels good or bad. When you are thinking of your situation, become aware of whether your body feels heavy or light. Also, does it make you feel happy? Mad? Sick? Excited? All these intuitive feelings can be good indicators of your clairsentience providing you with answers.
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You can take this as far as you’d like, but you should start with the basics. Practice feeling with your gut instincts by tuning in about certain situations in your life. Pay attention to your body’s initial response to the following situations or people; you want to go with your first impression, which is usually the most accurate with clairsentience. Notice, for each one, if you have overall positive or negative feelings and more specifically if they make you feel happy or angry or even ill or ramped up. These are the cues that your clairsentient gifts are kicking in.
- Your current job
- Your significant other
- Your family
- Your career path in general
- Your health
- Your boss
- Your employee
- Your home
- Furthering your education or training
- Your financial balance
After you’ve given yourself a bit of time to really experience how each item made you feel, you can weed out the negative ones and start making plans to change those aspects in your life. By utilizing your clairsentience, you have quickly gained access to what your intuition is telling you, without question. Now, it’s up to you to get the ball rolling in your favor!
What You Know: Claircognizance
Does it ever seem like a lamp just switched on in your head? Like the light bulb didn’t just flicker but really lit up. So often it’s your claircognizance, or your clear knowing, that surprises you—it’s your extrasensory perception that occurs when you just know something, even though you really have absolutely no actual basis for the knowledge. But you all of a sudden know it, without a doubt. It’s like a vent just opened and the understanding just floated in out of nowhere.
This gift is actually more common than you may be aware of. Though similar to clairsentience or clear feeling, claircognizance is more black and white, more definitive. Imagine needing to decide if you should invest in a particular market or stock. If you use your intuitive feeling sense, it might leave you a little wishy-washy, and that is no place to be when you want to spend your hard-earned cash. Tapping into your clear knowing, however, can tell you yes or no, good or bad, and give you a very conclusive answer.
This knowing can come through in many ways, and however it works for you doesn’t matter. Usually, it’s a combination of gifts that impresses the knowing upon you. For example, you might be looking at two different business prospectuses, and all of a sudden you just know you should invest in business A over business B because you’re drawn to it and it’s like you saw a beam of light highlighting it. Regardless of how the initial knowing happens, you usually have some type of supporting intuitive guidance to confirm it.
What’s interesting about this type of impression is that it can be harder to trust than your other intuitive senses. The others can provide you with a kind of backup, like even though you can’t see anything with your physical eyes, clairvoyance offers you images in your mind’s eye. With this mode of perception, you must rely on and be confident in your own gifts. Otherwise, you will doubt yourself every time, and that can really suck. Learning to have faith in your ability to discern using your claircognizance will eventually lead you to expect that it will happen and help you when you need it.
As if you don’t have enough to think about, we’re going to add some more. You can count on your instincts to just seemingly randomly show up with answers to things you didn’t even know you had questions about! Yes, this really happens. Take a moment to wrap your head around it. For the sake of practicing, we can work with a variety of subjects but leave the timeline a bit loose. Here are a couple of topics to let marinate in your mind throughout the day. Just allow yourself to receive a response. When you know the answer, you’ll just know. Don’t question it. Just believe it. And more importantly, don’t think about the question after you ask it. You can read these aloud or in your mind, whichever you prefer.
- When’s the next job coming?
- What can I do to get my name out there more?
- How should I pursue a collaboration for a new partnership?
- What can I do to make a lot of money over the next month?
- How can I leverage my intuition every day?
- Where would be most beneficial for me to live?
- What franchise would best suit me?
- Where should I take my team on a retreat?
- What type of retreat should I lead?
- What should I pitch my boss?
- What flavors would my customers consider best for my newest item?
Again, feel free to tailor your questions to your life and your work. The most important thing here is to be open—expect an answer to just sort of show up over the course of the next day or two. Your knowing may come in conjunction with your other intuitive senses or just as the light bulb–like spark of understanding. It might appear in an image or with a sound or even a feeling, but it will be a very distinctive realization of what your inner guidance is telling you. Pay attention! This may be the only guidance you get, and it can make or break your decisions.
The knowing can show up when you least expect it. In high school my husband was secretly in love with me, although we didn’t even officially meet until my twenties. At that point, I was not interested in anything more than a friendship. I had recently gotten out of an intense relationship and quite frankly wanted my freedom. This time, he was not taking no for an answer, and he not only talked to me but continually asked me out in a friendly, I-am-totally-into-you way. However, I kept saying no—I just wanted to be friends. Until that one day.
That day, so long ago, I was at the beach with my girlfriend watching a softball game. He and I had had a lengthy conversation about a week prior about how much I liked riding motorcycles, and he explained he’d ridden since he was a little kid. He told me he was thinking of buying a new bike. Well, he did, and he showed up at the beach, asking if I wanted to take a ride with him in a bit. I said okay but wanted to wait until the game was over. When he came back, I got on the back of the bike, which in and of itself is rare because I don’t usually trust other riders, and I put my arms around him. The second I did, I felt like I was home. That was it. No other way to describe it. I just knew we were meant to be together. I knew it, though I hadn’t felt that way with him at all, even after all his attempts at getting me to date him. Two weeks later he moved in, and we’ve been happily married for over twenty years. I felt his energy attached to mine, and it just felt complete.
I understood in that moment that my intuition was telling me something very important. He apparently knew since high school; it just took me a while to catch up. I share this story not as a means for you to find your next significant other, though it can definitely help you, but as an example of how incredibly powerful your intuitive awareness can be when you’re not even trying. Think of what I would have missed out on had I not been open to my claircognizance. Imagine how mighty it can be when you focus on it.
Employing All Your Gifts
All your intuitive gifts can be employed individually and in conjunction with the others. Knowing which one you are utilizing is not as important as simply using them. Frequently, it can be hard to decipher which ability is giving you the guidance you’re looking for, as they may actually blend together. Remember the basics, though. Clairvoyance is about seeing an image in your mind’s eye and can be used when looking for an answer symbolic in nature. You can also rely on the snapshot-like images it will present to you. Clairaudience provides you with auditory insight and can be helpful when you are trying to understand a name or even when you need directions on how to accomplish something. Clairsentience helps you feel things with your gut instincts and can help you gauge a situation. Claircognizance is there to give a no-nonsense answer or to allow you to instantly know and understand a situation. Having said this, you are not limited to using one ability over another for anything. The examples listed here are just common functions and a brief introduction so you can practice.
By now the concept of and using your intuition may be second nature. You’ve probably discovered one or two psychic senses you can relate to naturally. We come into this world with intuitive gifts, and now that they’ve been demystified, it should be even easier to tune in to them. According to Rick Snyder, business intuitive, “Intuition is connected to a deeper intelligence inside all of us that enriches our lives personally, professionally, and creatively.” 6
You have all the clair tools you need to really start tuning in. Both your waking moments and your dreamscape contain flashes of intuitive awareness. You may have found yourself feeling more successful with one or two of the earlier exercises—this may suggest you are stronger in that particular ability. Did you figure out if you possess predominately one sense or another?
All these gifts can help you with your life changes and can vary from situation to situation. Just when you think you know exactly how you tap into your vibes, you may realize you are getting your impressions differently, so you really must step it up and always be alert. Although you might discover that you just don’t click with a specific gift initially, you possibly get better at developing it the more you practice using it. You also may realize that all of a sudden that same gift just pops up to help you. You become more aware of each of your gifts as you utilize them, and depending on the circumstances, you can really count on your intuition to help you on your path to being fiercely successful, especially when you protect yourself.
Stay Protected
You’ve learned what it means to tune in, but do you know how to protect yourself when you do? Essentially, you need to protect your energy so you don’t get attacked or take on the energy of other people. Think back to walking into that room full of negativity. What you feel can be absorbed if you’re not careful. Whether you have a natural empathic propensity or not doesn’t matter—what does matter is that psychic vampires (people who feed off others emotionally and psychically) are everywhere, and they can suck your energy dry without even meaning to.
Before employing your intuitive gifts in your professional or personal life, you should create a circle of protection around yourself. This is one of the easiest and quickest ways to ensure your energy stays unharmed and positive. Imagination and visualization, which you’ve just developed, are the main facilities you need to safeguard yourself.
Try This!
For your first time you’ll want privacy. You’ll also want to be somewhere you can relax and sit or lie comfortably. When you are ready, close your eyes and take a deep breath. Then another. When you breathe in again, imagine a beautiful silver bubble beginning to grow, starting at the bottom of your feet. Imagine on the next inhalation that bubble growing, moving up around your knees and your hips, moving around your torso. Take another deep breath and visualize that bubble spreading all the way up around your neck and your arms and to the top of your head.
This bubble allows the oxygen you need to come in, but it keeps any negativity out. Visualize this bubble continuing to grow, expanding out four feet from you, shimmery and silver. As your bubble gets bigger, set your intention to only allow positivity to flow in and to protect you from anyone who tries to suck energy from you. Continuing to breathe, visualize your bubble of protection and know that it can be created anytime you need to work with your intuitive gifts to keep you safe from anyone else’s energy or negativity. Relax and revel in your protected space for another moment or two. When you’re ready, open your eyes, leaving your bubble around you.
You’ve not only protected yourself, but you have made your intuitive abilities, the clairs, accessible. You’ve essentially got your gifts with you at all times, in your pockets. You’ll have plenty of time to apply your newly opened abilities throughout the rest of these pages. As you move forward, you’ll want to know where those vibes come from, and you’ll need to understand how to receive and interpret the impressions simply and in a way that makes sense for you.
4. Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year (New York: Bantam Dell, 2008), 429.
5. Lisa K., Intuition on Demand: A Step-By-Step Guide to Powerful Intuition You Can Trust (Scotland: Findhorn Press, 2017), 32.
6. Rick Snyder, Decisive Intuition: Use Your Gut Instincts to Make Smart Business Decisions (Newburyport, MA: Career Press, 2019), 8.