Discovering Your Intuition (That Gut Instinct) and How to Connect with It

Hello and welcome to blog post three based off of the Phoenix Rising podcast. I have gotten some messages on social media and some texts from you guys listening to the podcast and it makes me so happy because it lets me know what I am sharing is helpful for you! It inspires me to continue to do it!

The last few weeks have been a little crazy for a lot of people and there's multiple reasons for that. Usually with the new year things get a little chaotic because people are working on resolutions, making this year so much different than the year before, we also are currently in a mercury retrograde which if you are not familiar with the mercury retrograde, I will not go into a ton of detail about it, but basically, it's the idea that mercury moves backwards slowly. It's moving in the reverse direction. It is actually an optical illusion, so it isn't actually happening, but from a spirituality and astrological standpoint what happens with us is we all get affected by it. This is usually a time where you might have some issues with your phone, technology is just not working properly, communication is really weird between you and people or things that you use to communicate with people like email, social media, etc., might not be working well. You also might experience some stuff that feels like a blast from the past. The purpose of retrograde is sometimes it brings back old things, old people, old projects, to revisit and kind of get a gauge of is it something you should continue doing or someone you should continue communicating with?

A lot of people see mercury retrogrades as negative, but they can have a really good, positive effect. It can also give an opportunity to reflect on where you've been, where you want to go moving forward, and what you want to take with you. If you've had some people from the past, or thoughts and ideas from the past, all of that you can contribute to mercury retrograde. If you're curious to learn more about it you can just Google about it.

On top of that there just seems to be a lot of people that seem to be experiencing a lot of shifts across the board from relationships, to changing jobs and careers, complete shifts in their energies and personalities. That's kind of what led me to wanting to discuss this today. We're going to discuss discovering your intuition but also learning how to connect with it consistently so that you can navigate all of this. It can be very uncomfortable experiencing a lot of change in your life and trying to get some direction. Your intuition is the tool you want to use to guide you through all of this. I'm calling this intuition because that's what sits and resonates with me. What I call intuition some people might call God, some people might call source, universe, guides, spirits, holy spirit, whatever you call it is not important as long as it is something that makes sense and resonates with you.

Another thing I want to address and why I want to talk about it is because I've heard multiple times from a lot of people how they're trying to get directions and answers in trying to get the right answers and choices, and they hear about people connecting with their intuition but that's just not something that they have or a skill that they have. That's just not the truth at all. Everybody has an intuition. You're born with it. Some people call women who have their sixth sense on picking up on things, on being maternal, that's not the case. We all have an intuitive side to us that is our most innocent, but also our most clear, authentic inner self that is constantly guiding and communicating with us. However, a lot of times it can feel like you don't have that, because you haven't put in the time and effort to understand it and develop a form of communication with it to know when it is speaking to you. It could also be pretty crystal clear with you, but you just do not like what it's saying for you. We're going to address all these things on how to really decipher whether if it's your intuition, brain, or if you're just making it up. That's what we're going to dive into today!

We all have different ways that we connect with our intuition, but the important thing is that you first learn how to discover it if you're not already super familiar with knowing what's intuitive and what is coming from your brain. The thing that keeps a lot of people from being able to clearly hear what is going on with their intuition is you have to learn to turn off the outside noise. That's the distractions, and one way you can tell if you haven't been connecting and you have a lot of outside noise going on is if you tend to wake up a lot during the night. Your mind has just been racing and I'm not talking about once in a blue moon that you have disrupted sleep, that's totally different. I'm talking about consistently waking up because your mind is racing.

Here's the way it works: Typically, if people don't take the time during their waking hours to sit in stillness and silence, to connect and to go within, you give your intuition no other choice of when to speak to except for when you lay your head down at night. You finally are shutting out the TV, social media, the noise of being around all these other people, and you finally experience silence. If you have issues sleeping because this is going on, the first thing I would recommend is take the time during your waking hours to get that same stillness and silence that maybe you're only getting when you sleep at night. I'm saying you don't have to do it for eight hours, maybe it's just 10-15 minutes. This takes the time for your intuition and subconscious to speak to you so that it's not waking you up at night.

Now, if that's not the case and you sleep fine you could still have way too much noise going on in your daily life that is distracting you from being able to hear your own thoughts and guidance. The best time that usually your intuition speaks to you is first thing in the morning, before you get on your phone, before checking emails or texting people back, whatever else you're doing that is mindless work, or at night like I just described before you go to sleep. The reason being is because your brain and your intuition has not taken on a ton of outside information to be impacted. It's had stillness, silence, it's fresh. First thing in the morning it's really easy to be crystal clear. If this is new to you and you don't already spend this time, you can sit down, focus on some breath work, and really just giving your conscious a break.

There are parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems. Your parasympathetic is what I am talking about with the subconscious. It's the same thing with your intuition. All these are the same things. In order to relax it, calm it down, and give it room to speak, you have to literally sit, calm down, be still, and be quiet. That's number one thing to really learning to connect with it. I was in the gym one day and I was talking about this with somebody and they just kind of shook their head and they were like, "I would rather do the hardest ten-minute work out I have ever done, than have to sit in silence with no noise or no distraction for ten minutes." It makes total sense. It gives a lot of people anxiety to have to do that and sit still, because you have nothing to face but yourself. You can't distract the thoughts and discomforts by scrolling through social media, but that is also the only way you will ever get the answers you are seeking. Discovering your intuition requires you first to sit still with yourself and take the time to check in with what's going on inside. This leads me to the next point.

We all have different ways that our intuition communicates with us. Some people are very big feelers, they feel things. You know this if you've said, "I have this feeling, I just know." This means you're a feeler. You deeply feel what your intuition is telling you. I'm also a huge feeler. Normally there's a lot of different things I can use as gauges to figure this out, but most of the time if I'm working on something new or I get this idea, all I will be talking about is how, "I get this feeling, I just know." If this is also you and you're nodding your head yes. That's your intuition. You probably are also an empath. I am definitely an empath.

Typically, if you are someone who is highly sensitive and empathic, you normally feel other peoples emotions, true intentions, energies. You're somebody who walks into a room and can immediately tell or sense that something is off, or you meet somebody new, and you can instantly tell their intentions. Like, "This person doesn't seem okay." "This person seems really light, bright, and they have really good energy about themself." That makes you an empath. Use this as a strength, as how your intuition communicates.

A way that I check-in with myself is I'll sit with myself in stillness with a piece of paper and pencil. I'll check-in and then I'll bring up an idea, person or a situation to my mind and I'll literally see how it feels in my body. The way you can do that if this is resonating with you as someone who feels empathic, notice how your body responds. Do you feel shortness of breath? Does your chest feel tight? Do your shoulders start to round out and close off? This would be your heart, so your heart is closing off to this. Or do you feel yourself opening up? You're breathing a bit deeper, you're feeling a little more relaxed, or maybe you feel something around your gut that feels excited, inspired, and different things that require different inspiration and energies. Pay attention to that, that's one tool that you can use. Really see that as almost your spiritual superpower. Use that in a way to guide yourself.

If you're not a feeler and you have no idea what I'm talking about it's totally fine. Some other ways that people get communication from their intuition is through thoughts. Sometimes they just have this thought pop-up in their mind, and they have no idea where it came from, but perhaps it's a really crystal-clear idea, or a crystal-clear message that comes to them from the form of thoughts and inspiration. Some people feel like they're having conversations with themselves, because they're answering their own questions. "Should I go to the gym today?" Immediately you get a voice back that's like, "No, you should take a day off, probably rest, and do some active recovery." "Really? I kind of want to go to the gym." "No today's not the day, you should really rest." Then you ignore that, and you go to the gym and you hurt yourself. You're like, "Dammit, I knew it." You just ignored your intuition. If that's how you feel like you get communication, you can practice this communication with an example I just gave, of kind of back-and-forth. It sounds crazy, but you're talking to your intuitive self.

You can also take out a piece of paper. There's something called automatic writing. The easiest way to practice automatic write is to write out a question and immediately write out the answer to that question. That might not make sense at first because you might be very confused and wanting to get the answer to what you're looking for. I would ask that you be open-minded to this, because you might surprise yourself if you remove judgement from it. Learn to create that space to be able to figure things out and trusting what comes up. You might get some pretty clear direction on that. There’s been multiple times where my feelings and emotions are just all over the place, because I'm not grounded, that I use this tool to help ground myself.

When it's intuitive it doesn't require thought. Intuition is feeling, your brain is thinking. Don't give room for your brain to talk you in or out of a situation. Simply trust what comes up right away. You can do this for as long as you want. The goal with automatic writing is to really teach you that instead of going outside of yourself, asking your family members, asking a therapist, or anyone else who is not living in your body, life, heart, and brain, tell you what to do with your life. Ask yourself. The biggest thing that comes up for people with is a lot of times when you start to check-in with your intuition it might not match what your life currently looks like. It might require a lot of change. Give yourself the space and freedom, take out a pen and paper, start writing the questions that you are seeking the answers to, and try and get direction on. Also write out the answer and trust whatever comes up. Don't second-guess it.

The other way a lot of people get intuitive information, and this is also another way that I get intuitive information, is through dreams. There's something called lucid dreaming and I've considered this a portal for me. Lucid dreaming is basically where you are dreaming but you're conscious in the dream. If you've ever seen the movie Inception, while parts of the movie are kind of crazy and creepy, that concept is very close to lucid dreaming. It's basically where you can kind of control a dream, you are communicating, and actively participating in a dream, but you're accessing a very deep part of your subconscious that perhaps when you're awake your analytical and your conscious mind keeps you from being able to access. If you have lucid dreams regularly or this is something that you've experienced from time to time, what you can learn to do is participate in them. It's kind of one of those things where you can practice it in meditation, but you also have to open yourself up to the idea of it, and then your subconscious almost starts showing up in your lucid dream to help you with this.

There's been times in lucid dreams where I've had premonitions of things happening, and then in my waking life they've ended up happening. Or I will get very clear messages and information regarding other people in my life that I'm close with, and I share it with them. While it sounds crazy and makes no logical sense to me, it'll make perfect sense to them because this is not about your logical mind it's about your subconscious mind. That's another way that people get communication, and it is not so much about the form of communication, it is more about you discovering what resonates best with you, and then using that to your advantage to consistently check-in.

Now, I will warn you that usually when people start doing this and they start taking the time to sit in stillness with a pen and paper and they're going through this entire process with the intention of developing communication with their intuition. It may feel very overwhelming because:

• You may have a lot of emotions and thoughts that have been going on in the background for a very long time that are going to come screaming at you because you've been ignoring it and shoving it down
• If that does happen it's okay. Let those emotions be there, work through it, and eventually when you clear out all that inner noise and that mind chatter; it's going to be like someone turned up the volume and now you're really dialed into your intuition.
• It can feel a lot like you are learning a foreign language except for you have no translator to tell you what things mean except for yourself.
• This definitely has happened to me more as a lot of things have gotten stronger for me.

It can be very frustrating sometimes, because your intuition will speak to you in symbols. Like if the color green means something to you, or a bird, or a song, or a memory, if something has some sort of meaning to you, you might find that it's coming up a lot in your life. You might hear the same song three times in one day that means something about your life, that can be something in the form of communication. Perhaps it's a color. You've been seeing the same color everywhere you look. Look up what that color means. If you've been seeing green it usually represents a lot of different things around healing, around the heart, but it can also represent getting grounded in the earth and your life. Start paying attention to things that are repetitive. Usually, things that are repetitive are a form of communication from your intuition and there is something that it is trying to tell you in that.

The other part of that though is sometimes not quite as simple. Sometimes it's very literal, straight-forward, and to the point. Especially if you aren't getting it. This can be a little crazy feeling because if you've got this repeated thing going on, a repeated song playing over and over and your intuition is over here like, "God, he's is not paying attention. Listen to me. I've sent him six different people that have told him the exact same thing and he refuses to listen." This is the part where it comes screaming at you where usually something in life, and I'm not trying to give you a bad feeling where something is going to happen, but there is something that usually comes up to get you to pay attention. Maybe some stranger comes across the gym and slaps you in the face and is like, "Hey, quit eating sugar. It's ruining your body." Then they walk away, and you never see that stranger again. That's a very ridiculous example, but it could be something like that where your intuition has no choice but to wake you up. It's always better to just take the time and have this kind of communication with your intuition instead of having to experience one of those moments.

A lot of times as well, another way you can kind of gauge this is just ask it. If you're getting all kinds of symbols and things that you're like, "I feel like I am learning six different languages and I have no idea what any of it means." It's fine, don't go ask your three best friends and your family what it means, because they have no idea. Sit down with that pen and paper and write the question, or just sit in stillness and say, "You keep showing me the color red. I've looked it up, what it means doesn't really resonates with me. Can you please explain to me what the color red means and why I keep seeing it everywhere?" Sit and be open and something will come up for you. Maybe it's just a symbolism of love and letting you know that you're loved. Maybe it's letting you know that love is coming in. Maybe it's about passion, getting back to what you're really passionate about, and pursuing that instead of pursuing things that leave you feeling empty, bored, and lifeless.

Most of the time when we're talking to people and going through different things in life, here's the thing, it's not that you don't know what you want to do or that you don't know what you want. You know exactly what you want to do, and you know exactly what you want. It's just that when you check-in with yourself and your intuition, you may not necessarily like the answers or the things you have to do in order to get that. That has happened to me, it happens to all of us, it is not a fun time, and normally what we do is, "Hey, so this is what I want in my relationship and that's not what I'm in. What should I do?" Please don't take this as my advice to you, I'm just giving an example first of all. So, we check-in and we're like, we're in this zone man, we're Zen. We're deep-breathing and our body feels great. "Hi intuition, I'm really not sure if I'm in the right relationship. This is what my heart wants, and we have all these qualities, things, and ideas that we want, but this is what I'm in. What do I do?" Your intuition says, "Dear loved one, what you should do is stop trying to change things in people outside of yourself. First, give yourself that love that you're seeking and stop blaming everybody else that you don't have it. Then once you practice that love with yourself and you know what it feels like with yourself, then open yourself up to the possibility that maybe you can have that with somebody else. Maybe it's not with the person that you're with." That's the answer we get. What do we do then though? "Dear intuition, I'm not really sure what to do with my relationship." You know why? Because it would require you to take responsibility and give all the love you're seeking outside, within yourself, but then it would also require you to stop controlling, manipulating, or blaming other people AND it would put you in a place of having to open up to the idea of maybe what you want is not going to come from what you currently have. You might have to let go in order to have that. This happens all the time. We tell everybody, "I don't know what to do. I keep trying to find the answers." It's pretty clear, you just might not be liking what you're getting.

However, if you're not liking what you're getting, just keep checking-in, you're going to keep getting the same answers, eventually you're going to stop fighting it, but don't let the response you're getting keep you from developing that communicating and developing that relationship with yourself, because you still need to use that in all other areas of your life.

Different ideas of what you can do to practice this stillness, because I know it's hard when you first get into a meditation or a spiritual practice to really even understand how to do that. I want to make it clear that there is no wrong way for you to connect with yourself. There's no award, it doesn't matter how long you sit for. You do whatever feels right to you. Maybe sitting in stillness right now though isn't helpful for you and it's making you so frustrated and you're just creating all this mind chatter that you can't do it. Some other ways that you can get in that space are:

• Music
• Sometimes music can take people to a different mental and emotional space
• Being out in nature
• Nature is very grounding
• I mean leaving your phone and your headphones in the car and actually being out in nature
• Writing and Journaling
• Exercise

There's a lot of different ways you can do this. All that matters is that it is something that brings you completely to the present moment, and it kind of turns off your analytical mind and your brain. It lets you connect with yourself. Whatever that is, that is the right way to do that for you. Keep that in mind, don't worry about how long it is. All that I want you to worry about is:

• Does this feel right to me?
• Does this get me in a place where I truly feel connected to myself so I can trust the answers that are coming up?

That brings me to my next point and probably one of the last points. How do you tell if it's your intuition, wishful thinking, or if I'm just making this stuff up in my head? Here's a couple of things that I use for myself and that you can use for yourself as well:

• Your intuition is not emotionally charged
• Very neutral
• You're thinking with your brain instead of your intuition (feeling)

This is because your intuition is the part of you that's connected to the past. Any kind of trauma, resentment, whatever it might be it just is. When a message comes up that feels almost neutral, gentle, and just like a soft nudge, that more than likely is your intuition. If it's your brain it's a lot analyzing, thinking, justifying, and convincing.

I always tell people if you start to down the road of convincing yourself, convincing yourself it's the right job, person, thing for you, you're talking and talking and trying to make it make sense, it's not right. It's pretty easy. If you've got to convince yourself of it, it's not right. That's not your intuition. You already know the answer is no, you're just trying to make it seem like it's right because of other people's opinions, maybe you're scared, whatever it might be. That's one thing you can tell the difference between your intuition and your brain. When it's your intuition you just know. As cliche as it sounds, people say that all the time. Whereas your brain will try to explain it and try to tell everybody else about it to get them onboard. That's not how your intuition works. Intuition is neutral, it's not emotionally charged.

The other thing is intuition is a feeling. If you do the automatic writing thing and you try the Q&A, this is crazy but I actually notice I do this too, when I'm doing Q&A for myself and I can't tell whether it's my brain or my intuition, I'm not kidding but without even trying, when I'm functioning and giving myself answers from my intuition, I will write out things like, "I feel like this is the direction I need to head, and it really feels like this is where I need to go." When I'm functioning from my brain, I will write out things like, "I think I should try this and the direction might be to try this." I'm doing a lot of thinking, trying, and figuring out when it's my brain. When it's my intuition all I write out are things about feeling. If you try the exercise of the Q&A, that can be a good indicator as well.

Honestly the more you practice this, the more you're going to know. The more you're going to realize when it's your ego and your brain working and when it's your intuition. Keep with it. What it's like is a brand-new relationship. You have to learn yourself, how you communicate, how your intuition gives you signals, symbols, red flags, and green lights. You can't communicate in a new relationship one day a month and expect it to awesome, thriving, and everything that you want it to be. You have to show up, be present, and be willing every single day. It might start out that you have a five-minute practice in the morning and five minutes at night of doing this practice. However, what you will find out is as you continue to this, it's almost like you will end up needing it more and more.

I always use workout and fitness as my analogies because it's something that is very relatable for people of understanding the concept. It's kind of like that. The first day you work out it might be a little bit of a struggle. You hate it, your body hurts, your lungs are burning, and you might feel like you're going to die. That might be how it feels the first day, week, however long. The more you stick with it though and you see how much better you feel, how much lighter you feel, and you have more energy, and your body just feels cleaner, you become almost addicted to it in a healthy way though. It becomes a craving; you just can feel and know when you haven't moved in a while and you need to go exercise. It's the same way that your intuition works. It might be a little rough in the beginning. You might feel totally clueless and almost stupid with what you're doing, but when you stick with it, that will be the thing that you come back to regularly as your place for answers and for grounding. You may even realize that some of the things in your life don't actually fit anymore, because now you're no longer functioning from everybody else's answers for your life. You're totally functioning from the answers that you're getting for your own life, and you might have to make some changes. Ultimately though, this is how you discover your intuition. Shut out all the noise outside of yourself and spend time inside, figuring out what the heck is going on with you internally. The more you do that, the more you will start to hear it overtime. That volume, that frequency, all of that will get turned up and fine-tuned.

Hopefully this helps you! I really appreciate all of the response I've gotten about this podcast. My whole goal with this is to inspire and help you with learning to connect more to yourself. That way you can really connect more to your life and show up and live this life in every area as the most authentic, genuine, and happiest version of yourself. All of that starts within!

Ashley Drummonds

P.s. Need help breaking through your mental blocks, getting clear on your goals, getting motivated and creating the body and life you want? Connect with me here and let's chat about your goals!