Have you ever entered a space and felt a significant urge to get out of it as soon as possible? Or maybe you’ve visited a city or museum and felt unease? This could have been the result of an encounter you had with someone in this place or something you observed happening. Maybe it was because you felt ill already, so you associate that place with feelings of discomfort and sickness. Yet, I believe there is yet another possibility at play.
Intuition
We all have a sixth sense – our intuition. Some of us are more in tuned to our intuition than others. Have you ever had a gut reaction or feeling about something, but couldn’t quite explain why? That’s what I’m talking about. Some people have grown to ignore their gut feelings or at least not give them much attention, relying instead on looking at facts or balancing data. Of course facts and data are significantly important and have a place in decision making. However, this invisible sense of ours that works beneath all the other senses, is the inner workings of your intuition.
Places & Spaces
I know there have been many times that I’ve walked into a space like a hotel room or someone’s house I rented through Airbnb and felt a vibe. On the occasions when my initial vibe was negative or poor, there are typically events that occur or things that are uncovered that validate that initial response. In turn, the positive vibe is often expanded with further discoveries that are equally, if not more pronounced than that initial response. Even if something alters from that along the way, I seem to find a way to reconcile the encounter and return to alignment with the positive vibe. It’s much more difficult for me to do this when the picture painted is predominately negative that began with a gut feeling.
The right feeling
Have you ever went house shopping? Wedding dress shopping? Car shopping? Didn’t you have an initial reaction when you walked into the house no matter how many amazing things the realtor tried to point out to you? I recall this as well with shopping for a wedding dress over 15 years ago. There were many dresses that I saw, tried on, and the person helping me pointed out what she thought were nice in just about all of them. While I could agree to some extent on what she saw in the dresses, I knew the dress for me when I knew. I don’t know if I could have really written you a list of what made that dress different than the 20 others that I had tried on, I just had a sense that it was the right one. Shopping for a vehicle has a bit more criteria that is usually present on our list of desirable traits, but once all of those have been met – it’s really our intuition that makes the decision.
Give thinking a break
Sometimes there are decisions that we need to sleep on and I believe this is the case because our conscious mind is so busy weighing out all the pros and cons that it hasn’t left space for tapping into our sixth sense. However, when we go to sleep and let all those variables settle and rest, we often wake up having come to a conclusion on what our unconscious mind was able to do while we weren’t actively chewing on the information. If we are very busy and working out a lot of things in our brain, we lose sight (pun intended) of what our other senses are picking up on. It can be very beneficial to take a few moments to close down our problem solving brain by closing out everything that we’re working on, walk away and sit in meditation for awhile or go for a walk and get some fresh air. If you know there is more of yourself that isn’t present at the moment, but you’re stuck at accessing it, it will not come by thinking harder or longer. We really need to give the thinking a break.
The feather
There is a part of us that knows what is best or is giving us information through a gut feeling that we can lose sight of over time if we fail to recognize that it’s there. It really is like observing a feather falling in the midst of bright, flashing lights and loud noises. It can be difficult to shut everything out and seek that much quieter voice waiting for you to pause and check in. However, you have it in you – it’s there. Maybe you haven’t been acquainted for some time and need to reintroduce yourself. The first step in this is recognizing that you haven’t felt that sixth sense speak to you in a while and then open up the space for it to make an appearance. It’s like anything that doesn’t get the nutrients it needs to thrive, without attention, it becomes almost soundless and hidden.
Act on it
The next thing to do would be to actually listen to it and act on it. If you are feeling ill to your stomach about something or you’re in the company of someone or in a space that makes you uncomfortable, leave, move, do what it takes to free yourself from it. If it’s a situation that you cannot immediately amend, determine what you need to do in order to bring yourself ease and comfort to stay as long as necessary and then walk away taking note to what you learned and applying it next time. Rest assured, the next time is not very far away.