How to Tap into Your Intuition

I firmly believe that we all have the answers within us. We all have a guiding voice deep in our hearts or guts that knows exactly what to do. This voice is calm and confident despite any uncertainty or chaos. Learning how to tap into this voice, which I refer to as my intuition, has literally transformed everything about my life.

It is what prompted me to walk away from my career in medicine and pursue a more aligned life path. It has shifted the way I approach every decision I make. It has deepened relationships with my family and friends. It has even changed the way I experience my days on a moment to moment basis.

Basically, it’s pretty powerful stuff.

And yet, many people either don’t believe they have this voice, or have no idea how to access it’s power.

In this post, I want to explain my conceptualization of intuition, walk you through how I personally tap into my intuition and show you how it guided me through my decision to leave my career in medicine.

What is an intuition?

I like to think of my intuition as my higher self. It is the part of me that always knows the next right step and feels calm and peaceful about it, even if that step involves jumping off a career cliff.

When I made the decision to walk away from my career in medicine, one of the things people kept saying to me was “you seem to calm and confident about this.” People were so surprised about how I was keeping it together while making such radical life shifts.

My secret? Tapping into my intuition. Seriously, that thing is a well of calm and confidence in even the craziest of situations.

You can also think of your intuition as “your gut” or your “inner voice”. Source energy. The universe. Your soul. God. Your creativity or muse. It goes by many names.

Whatever higher power you believe in, there is a piece of you that is connected to something greater. That is why I always say, all of the answers are inside of you. All you have to do is tap into that wisdom that is in there.

Are you sure I have an intuition?

Yes, literally every human being has one and you are no exception to this. I guarantee you that you’ve had intuitive experiences before. You maybe just didn’t realize that’s what was happening.

Your intuition is the voice that says “I’m going to marry this guy” the first time you met your now husband. Logically, it seemed ridiculous and borderline insane. You couldn’t explain WHY you had that thought about a practical stranger, but there was a part of you that just knew. That is your intuition.

Your intuition is the nudge that prompts you to, out of the blue, call a friend you haven’t spoken to in months, only to find out she desperately needed to hear from you in that exact moment.

It’s the quiet whisper that keeps insisting “you were meant for more than this” as you slave away at your mediocre job to fund you mediocre life.

There are a million other ways that your intuition can show up in your life. I am positive that you can think of your own personal examples once you start looking.

So how do I start listening to my intuition?

Hopefully by now you are on board with the idea that you have an intuition. Now I want to walk you through my personal process of learning how to access it.

Fair warning, this is not always easy.

For me, someone who spent years of schooling flexing my logical mind muscles, it was insanely frustrating at first. I couldn’t hear anything. And then when I did start to hear some things, I wasn’t sure if it was realllllly my intuition or if I was just making it all up.

Stick with it my friend. This is a skill worth cultivating.

It’s also good to know that your intuition can communicate with you in so many different ways. Sometimes I hear full words and sentences with crystal clarity. Other times I just get a feeling of warmth or expansiveness that leads me in the right direction. And even other times, an idea just pops into my head out of nowhere or I get a nudge to reach out to a certain person or do a certain action.

Meditate

For me, the first step to accessing my intuition was developing a regular meditation practice.

Until I started to observe my ego and the incessant chatter of my monkey mind, I was completely blocked from tapping into my intuition. Learning how to step back and observe my thoughts allowed me to access a deeper dimension of my consciousness. It created a space where I could press pause on my swirling thoughts and allow the wisdom of my intuition to come forth.

If you are new to meditation check out my blog posts on why meditation is a must and how to start meditating.

But seriously, until you start meditating and learning how to sit in silence, tapping into your intuition will be ridiculously difficult.

Surrender

I know I’ve talked about surrender before, when I wrote about how to make a life changing decision. And I will bring it up again, because that is how important it is.

Surrendering is about making a decision to trust the universe instead of relying on your own power. Making this decision comes from recognizing that the universe is leading you to the highest good. So whenever you let go and trust the universe, your life will take a turn for the incredible.

This part of the process is not about asking for specific answers, that comes later. I think of surrendering as a sort of warm up to help prepare you to really tap into all the goodness of your intuition. It is how you begin to let go of your attachments to outcomes and offer it all up to the universe.

The way I practice surrendering is through prayer. I either pray silently to myself or write them down in a journal.

When I was deciding to walk away from my career in medicine, I spent about a week purely surrendering. Stepping back and letting the universe know that I was getting out of the way.

These are some of the exact prayers I used to surrender:

“Dear universe, please help me. Help me to find my inner peace. I don’t want to ask you to help me “power through” because that’s not what I want. I want to find a different way to approach the whole thing”.

“Please give me the courage to face my resentment and do this tough work.”

“Please guide me and help me to listen to you. My only intention this weekend is to tap into your guidance and let you lead me into a more peaceful approach”

“Dearest universe, I need help seeing this whole thing differently. How can I find a way to be happy?”

Do you notice any patterns?

I asked for courage. I asked for help. I asked for peace and guidance. I asked for a new perspective, a new way of seeing the whole thing. But most importantly. I just kept asking.

During those first few days, I didn’t hear anything back, but I was opening myself up in a profound way.

Write to your intuition

So this is the juicy part, where you actually get to start hearing some guidance. The way I do this is by writing to my intution.

This is a technique I learned from Jess Lively when I took her course “Life With Intention Online”. She is someone who radically follows her intuition while traveling all around the world. I definitely recommend checking out all of her material about accessing your intuition.

Whenever I feel lost, confused, overwhelmed or in need of guidance, I open up my journal and simply write a question to my intuition. Then I close my eyes and picture lowering a bucket down into my gut to receive the answers, as if retrieving water from a well. Kind of weird, I know, but this visualization is what helps me stay open to answers.

The most important part about this step is that you are listening and you are OPEN to receiving. You are not responsible for coming up with the answer or thinking of a solution. You are purely listening and allowing an answer to come to you.

This takes practice. At first, your mind will want to jump in and come up with an answer. When this happens, I just let my mind know “Thank you for trying to help, but you are off the hook right now! I’m actually going to listen to what my intuition has to say.” Yupp. I legit talk to my mind like it’s a child.

Once I hear or feel an answer, I write it down as verbatim as possible. Then I ask whatever question comes up next. Sometimes this is a clarifying question like “what the heck does that even mean” and sometimes it’s just a follow up question. Basically I am having a full on conversation with my intuition.

I keep doing this question and answer dance until I feel a sense of clarity, calm or peace. Usually all three come at once.

I think it is also important to note that sometimes I don’t hear anything. This can happen especially when I have a TON of resistance on the topic. When that happens I will try asking a different question. If I’m still blocked after trying several different questions, I will offer up a prayer of surrender and then go do physical activity of some kind. This can help shift my energy and clear my mind.

An example of how I write to my intuition

Here is an example of how I write to my intuition. I’m sharing this with you as a tangible example of the process I’ve been describing because I think examples are super helpful.

This particular conversation is so powerful because it is the exact moment I finally heard the answer to leave my career in medicine. To give you some context, before this excerpt I kept asking questions like “should I quit residency?” and “what should I do next?” and I could NOT hear a clear answer.

I’m so frustrated. Why can’t I hear you? Why can’t I tune in when I really need to?

Fear.

Fear of what?

Not liking the answer.

How can I let go of my resistance and surrender to you?

Release and breathe.

I can’t make this decision for myself. I know that I can’t rely on myself or my own power. I need you. I need to tap into your wisdom. I feel so pressured to make this decision in less than two weeks. What if I mess it up?

Never.

I can never mess it up?

No, never.

How can I see this differently? How can I see this from your perspective?

Not with your eyes

Ok, so how can I see this differently?

With your heart.

What does my heart see?

You want the opportunity to love others. It doesn’t matter how. You just have to love them the best you can.

I feel like residency is making it so much harder for me to love others is this just an obstacle in my head?

All obstacles are in your head. There is only love.

So does it matter to you which one I choose?

It never matters.

Then how do I decide? I was counting on you to guide me and decide for me and tell me my exact next step.

It is here.

What is my next right step?

Love.

Love, how?

On fire.

Does that mean whatever is setting a fire in me right now is what I should do?

Yes.

So I should pursue all of this personal development life coaching type path?

Yes.

**And that my friends was a RESOUNDING yes. I didn’t just hear the word yes I felt this feeling of warmth, growth and expansiveness tingling all throughout my body.

So that was the moment I realized I had to walk away from my career in medicine. That was the moment I really decided to take a leap and trust my intuition even if it felt like it was taking me off a cliff.

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This level of wisdom, decisiveness and clarity is within you too. You just have to start asking the questions and listening for the answers.

Have you ever heard something from your intuition before? I’d love to hear about any intuitive experiences you’ve had!