Intuition - do you listen to your (higher) self?

Intuition - we all heard it so many times. We all know we have it. And we all know that we should listen to it. Somehow it seems really difficult though, to live a life that is lead by our intuitive knowing. There are things that block our intuition and fear stops us from following what we deep down know already. Maybe the question is not how do we know if it is our intuition but more how can we stop giving in to our fear?!

Don't get me wrong, fear is good. It also helps us make smart decisions, it helps us to survive. Here is the point though - we often feel fear in a very irrational intensity. Somehow our Neanderthal brains are still very quick in fight, flight or freeze mode and we believe that we are in danger. In reality in this day and age we barely ever come into a situation that is about life and death. In fact, we might have never been as safe as we are now. It seems though that the more security we gained the more anxious we became as a society and therefore we constantly fear making bold moves. One reason might be that we don't have to get out of our comfort zones anymore. In the western world we have everything available. We don't even have to leave the house in order to get food and don't even have to talk to the delivery person anymore. In some ways this is great but it also trains our brain to be used to as little 'confrontation' as possible and as creatures of habit we become familiar with this amount of convenience. So now for some people even talking to a stranger in the supermarket can trigger anxiety.

Media and Social media is a major factor in how safe or fearful we feel and it instantly turns off our intuition. Now, on the one hand we have this big amount of security and convenience and on the other hand we created these tools that suggest this huge and unrealistic amount of fear. We can sit at home with food in a heated apartment and have the nervous system state of someone who just got chased by a tiger only by regularly watching the news and scrolling threw social media.

Our connection to nature is playing another big role in how intuitive we are. Most lifestyles these days are quite unnatural and shrink our ability to listen to our intuition. Nature calms the nervous system and decreases stress and anxiety, it activates our parasympathetic nervous system which is responsible for feeling calm and safe. This is the state we have to be in if we want to hear what our intuition tells us. It is the state that we mostly should be in but this is for a lot of people not the case. Not to mention that nature, as we are part of nature, is our natural habitat, it is simply an extension of ourself. It is home and home means safety.

Increasing our intuition and decreasing our fear is therefore not a complicated practice but it is a practice and takes persistence. Minimize your news and social media intake as much as possible, regularly get out of your comfort zone to teach your brain that you are not in real danger and be in nature every day, just to name a few things you can do to connect to your self.

Calming our nervous system and getting out of a state of fear is the base for a solid connection with our intuition. This way we cannot only hear it but also act on it and that might be the biggest struggle. Very often we already know what would be best for us but we are too scared to follow through. There is this voice in our head that blurs the line between intuition and fear, that 'what if something goes wrong' - voice that can destroy really great things for us if we give in too often.

The thing about intuition though is that it is connected to our higher self and our highest good. If we follow an intuitive urge it is, I dare to say almost impossible to not have a positive outcome. On the other hand though, if we make decisions based on fear they are usually followed by a lot of struggle, roadblocks and stress. The best outcome can only happen if we are in a frequency of trust and calm. If we make decisions based on love, which is our intuition, more amazing things will follow. All of my most incredible experiences happened because I followed my intuition and the effects showed often even years later but were still connected to this one moment where I followed my intuitive feeling.

Life is meant to flow, not always with ease of course, but definitely with way less fear and struggle than we think. Let go of your fear, just for today and do something that has been calling you for a long time. Trust your intuition, follow it and experience what it wants to show you. In reality we don't have that much to loose. We are very safe and way more capable than our mind wants us to believe.