Intuition: Your internal navigation system

I’ve always followed my own North Star in my career. If you’ve ever looked at my LinkedIn profile, you’ll see that I’ve held jobs in many different areas, from education to media to psychology, even engineering!

But starting my own business involved a new level of pioneering, and sometimes that North Star has felt fuzzy or even absent. It’s like being in the middle of the forest without a compass on a cloudy evening. What do you do when your compass is cloaked in clouds?

Stillness allows your internal navigation system to lead the way

You stop. You step into stillness. And you go within, letting your intuitive navigation system lead the way.

Why stillness?

Your internal navigation system operates from a gentle strength. Sometimes it seems so quiet, but it’s actually you who are creating the interference.

When I had my first preschool teaching job, I thought I needed to yell over a rowdy class to match their emotional intensity. In what I thought was my best teacher voice, I shouted, waved my arms, strived to make them listen. It didn’t work.

Over time, I learned that a consistent, clear voice brought their level down to mine. In that way, we all were calm. This is called attunement, and it’s how I think about intuition. It’s the consistent, clear voice.

If it’s loud and bustling, we can’t hear it until we match its stillness. Then it sounds crystal clear.

 

Stillness in the unknown

One of the things I’ve learned in having my own business is that one of the least effective things you can do when you are facing the unknown is to try to force a direction to appear. I’m so guilty of this. Uncertainty makes me uncomfortable. I even joke that I am ok with the unknown as long as I know where I’m going.

It’s funny because that’s literally what I do for a living–help people navigate their way through change and uncertainty. And I can do so precisely because I have learned to sit with that discomfort. I know what it feels like and how to make it through, so I can help others do the same.

Intentionally not knowing–that’s oddly how you end up on the path of knowing. Instead of bursting forward in a frenetic zig zag, you stand still, take everything in, and receive. We forget to receive sometimes because we are taught to pursue, to produce, and move to action. But consciously receiving in a place of not knowing allows us to have a beginner’s mind (or I dunno mind), and that opens up so many more possibilities.

 

How to get at what’s behind the not knowing

In her book, The Soul-Sourced Entrepreneur, Christine Kane lists four reasons where not knowing is like a call to go deeper.

• It’s possible you aren’t ready to know yet. This is an incubation phase of sorts, where stillness can help us make space for what’s to come.
• It might be the first time you’ve ever really pondered not knowing. Give yourself some kudos for starting.
• You’re going through some big things. Oh yeah, confusion can hit just when you’re on the cusp of a breakthrough.
• You’re exhausted and burned out. It’s hard to have clarity when you have no fuel.

So how do you tap into that intuition? Do some stillness exercises like this one. Ask yourself, what’s behind the urge to push forward? What’s behind the [insert emotions] I’m feeling? Journal. Meditate. Go for a walk. Rest. Get a Tarot Reading. Do some imaginative coaching work with me.

It takes a lot of kindness and love to allow yourself to ground before moving forward. All the “but you should be…” thoughts come up like a whirling dervish. But oh how much better you can serve yourself and others when you stop and recalibrate once in awhile.