Five Steps for Strengthening Your Intuition

1. Tune Into Your Literal Gut

The more you take care of your actual gut, aka your digestive system, the more you’ll feel clearer messages coming from within. Take care of your belly with fermented foods, probiotics, and a wide range of produce. Plus, your gut and nervous system are constantly communicating, and your body gives you information all day long. Notice the butterflies, the heaviness, the relief, the tightening, the softening, the goosebumps, the energy. Your body is always a part of the conversation.

2. Connect To Your Breath

Most of us breathe high and tight, shallow, or unconsciously hold our breath. Deep breathing gives you a literal pause and brings you back into your body, creating a little space between the noise around you and whatever you actually know. I suggest 5 low and slow deep breaths to recalibrate and bring your intuition into clearer focus. 

3. Ask Questions – For Everything

I am always asking myself questions, sometimes in my head and sometimes out loud. This has been one of the most powerful ways I have learned to connect to my own intuition. Ask: What would feel most supportive? What is my next right step? What do I need to see here? What am I holding onto? What would be most fun right now?

Also, do not keep your intuition on the special shelf!! Ask intuitively led questions for everything from what you want to wear today to what you want to eat for lunch. Do not save it for big/special occasions only! 

4. Create Space To Hear The Answers

A lot of us think we cannot hear our intuition clearly, but really we are not creating enough time or space to listen. Sometimes your gut speaks through your body, sometimes through your heart or mind, in meditation, while journaling, walking, showering or dreaming. Just like you need time to digest your food, you need time to process what is happening in your life. We fill every in-between moment now, and sometimes five minutes of buffer is enough for something to come through.

5. Follow The Feeling

You can ask yourself questions all day long, but eventually you have to notice what happens when you hear an answer. What creates relief? What feels expansive? What feels alive? What feels quietly true?

Not every right decision feels easy or joyful, but intuition often has a quality of knowing underneath the noise. The more you ask, listen and respond to what you hear, the stronger that relationship becomes.

And that, to me, is such a big part of This Is Who I Am Now: learning to hear yourself clearly enough to know what is true for you now, instead of automatically reaching for the answer that used to be true, the answer you think should be true, or someone else’s answer entirely.