This is actually quite an ironic article for me to write as I am the poster child for not trusting intuition. I get a lot of intuitive messages that I do not heed, however luckily they tend to be about small things, and the outcome of not following them tends to be minor inconveniences rather than total disasters. On the big stuff like larger decisions and choices, I mostly heed my intuition. 

I give a couple of examples in these posts of the times when I haven’t listened to my intuition:

• Do You Sometimes Ignore Your Intuition?
• Is It Possible to Read the Future? The Latest Research Says Yes

I know I am not the only one who doesn’t follow their intuition and then ends up kicking herself, because I’ve had some messages from students lately (following the recent intuitive experiment that I did on my social media) letting me know that they also struggle in this area.

In this article I am going to give some pointers to help you to trust and follow your intuition more. I feel confident I can help you with this because this is something that I have personally grappled with, and many of my students have too, so I feel like I understand where this pattern can come from.

First I’m going to give you some common reasons for not trusting your intuition and then at the end of the article I’m going to go into some tips for trusting more.

Here are some common reasons we don’t trust our intuition:

1. We’ve been trained to second guess ourselves 

Those who were raised by emotionally or psychologically abusive care-givers have the hardest time with this because abusers undermine you by challenging your perceptions and opinions constantly and have you second guessing yourself. It’s just how they roll. Have that done to you often enough during your formative years and you’ll end up as someone who tends to second guess themselves a lot, and it’s actually quite hard to train yourself to stop doing it.

2. We have a life lesson of inner authority

Through my work in the Akashic Records, I’ve found that one common primary life lesson that people can have is ‘inner authority’. (It means learning to trust yourself and your perceptions about things.) And people who have this life lesson tend to doubt their intuition more.

Just a little background about life lessons: many souls incarnate here on earth to learn and expand. Most souls will choose a “curriculum” of life lessons to explore – there’s usually one primary life lesson and several secondary life lessons and it normally takes several lifetimes to fully explore one life lesson. We tend to attract people, situations and experiences which allow us to learn our life lessons. When I say “learn lessons” it is a bit of a misnomer because what we actually do is explore themes (aka lessons) from all angles. So, if we have a life lesson of power, for example, we may have one lifetime where we ascend to a position of power and we learn to use our power ethically. In another lifetime we may find that we are a victim of some injustice or in a situation that leaves us feeling powerless and we have to find out way out of that sense of powerlessness that has permeated our life. 

If the first point I mentioned above (about having an emotionally abusive caregiver) applies to you, it could be that you have a life lesson of inner authority. We choose the conditions of our childhood before we even incarnate, and often our family of origin is chosen on the basis of what we have to learn. Having grown up in a way where we have learned to second guess ourselves really allows us to learn this life lesson of inner authority, because we have to consciously train ourselves to trust ourselves and our intuition. So, I’m saying that these patterns can run really deep for some, and having awareness of that means you stop beating yourself up about it and instead see it as something that is part of your path.

Let’s have a look at another reason for not trusting intuition (this is definitely one that applies to me):

3. We are rebellious

Some of us have a strong rebellious streak to us, to the point where we may self-sabotage to satisfy this side of us, and this can involve refusing to listen to intuition in specific situations, just because we don’t like being told what to do. Some people do have this contrary side to them, and it’s good to be aware of that so that we can manage it.

4. We have a very strong analytical side

If you cannot trust your intuition much, even after seeing evidence that it has been correct, it could also be because you have a mind that is used to being in control. This is often related to one’s personality. Most people who have trouble trusting intuition are those who are highly efficient, type A, analytical, detail-oriented people. It is good to see the gifts that come with being a cautious, analytical person and realise that the reluctance to follow intuition is often the downside of having this particular set of gifts.

OK, now let’s have a look at what we can do to start to trust intuition more – here are my tips for trusting more:

1. Keep a journal of your intuitive insights and how they turned out

This is something I recommend to my Intuitive Awakening students. It is super important to bring awareness around your intuitive hits, how they came and how they felt. 

This can not only help you to improve but also learn to trust your intuition, as you look back over your insights over time and see how you were right.

2. Start experimenting more with your intuition, with small things

Trusting your intuition is like a muscle that you can exercise. Something I have done to exercise mine in the past is to play a little game with my intuitive guidance. The game is to do with parking. When I am going to the place I get my groceries from, there are a few possible places to park, all of them usually very busy and you’re lucky if you get a place to park, plus you can’t see if there are any spots until you’ve made the decision to choose that place. On the way, I talk to guidance and ask to be told which place to park is the best. (I do it right before I get there because Spirit may not know until I’m there.)

Things like this are a fun, low-risk way to learn to trust your intuition more. And if your intuition is wrong, it’s still useful because you can look at how you received your insight. Sometimes one clair gift that we have is more reliable than another. For example, at this moment in time you may be more clairsentient than you are clairvoyant, so your gut feelings about things could be more reliable than your visions. Explore, and you will learn more about this for yourself.

So, look out for small, low-risk opportunities to use your intuition in your life (those opportunities could be, for example, related to which route to take in the car or where to park.)

3. Ask Spirit for more clarification on what really IS your intuition 

Sit down, do a little meditating and then call on your Spirit Guides and ask them to give you a sign to show you more fully what characterises true intuition for you, and then see if you perceive something immediately. It could be that when you do this, you get a feeling that comes up; which means that this is the feeling accompanies true intuition. You might not get anything straight away, which is OK, too. Spirit will have registered your request and will give you more insight about it a bit later on, if you pay attention.

I hope these tips help you to trust your intuition more.