Adding Intuition to My Skill Set
I’ve always believed I’m fairly intuitive; trusting my gut a large portion of the time. In fact, it was a combination of gut feelings, and the support of the people in a healing class that convinced me to make a dramatic career change a few years ago. Though I’ve yet to see the rousing success any new entrepreneur would like, there’s never been a single doubt that the choice I made was the right one.
Still, I know I could be using my intuition more in regards to my business as well as with my personal life and choices. When the opportunity was presented, I signed up for a 5-day challenge which was meant to help me connect better with my intuition. All in all, I got a couple of useful tools out of the challenge, didn’t have to invest overmuch time, and actually finished it for a change!
I treated the exercise as an opportunity to learn on multiple levels. First was the intent of the challenge; to boost the use of my intuition with regard to my business. Second, it gave me an opportunity to evaluate things I might or might not do in the next challenge I offer on Putting Your Whole Heart Forward.
Learning by Observing
In the woman’s defense, it was her first challenge, and she was limited by factors such as time 
zones, and her children’s requirements on her limited time. I also know that first-time challenges are a time to gauge what will appeal to your audience and what won’t, and how large to make the daily tasks. I know I fell on my face with my first one.
I can definitely learn from how she promoted the challenge. She did a great job of putting it out there and getting participants. She also stayed engaged through the entire challenge, not only with the daily videos explaining the current task, but with opportunities to answer questions posed by participants, both before and during the daily Q & A videos.
However, I feel that not only did she seem to disengage by the last couple of videos, but she did a lot more selling than made me comfortable. I’m not saying what she did was wrong. It may well have served her purpose. I tend to be highly sensitive and critical to sales pitches, especially when the presenter treats sales as more important than the challenge, or at least seems so to me.
Setting Realistic Expectations
At any rate, given I did learn a few things from the challenge, and have another tool or two to add to my daily activities, I’m going to consider the experience successful. I know I tend to over-expect from these challenges, forgetting that they’re, in the words of Landon Porter, “just the tip”. I know many have learned the hard way if you give too much away for free, people will feel they don’t need to pay for your services. As such, I think she probably gave away the right amount in order to further her goals. Or at least, that’s what my intuition tells me!
One of the biggest take-aways for me was to refocus on how I get messages from my intuition. In thinking about it, I typically get them in two ways. The first is via some kind of image (clairvoyance), be it in my dreams, my meditations, or even occasionally with eyes wide open.
The second way is through a physical feeling (clairsentience); a clenching or fluttering in my gut, goose bumps, or occasionally, a pain somewhere. It can also mean feeling someone else’s physical pain, or emotions which, as an Empath, goes without saying. Though these aren’t the only ways I connect with my intuition, they are by far the most common.
Trusting My Intuition More
I learned there are people who just know things (claircognizance), hear things (clairaudience), or
even smell things. The biggest challenge, regardless of how you get your information is to trust the information, and if necessary, act on it. That isn’t to say every time I’ve felt something, I made an accurate determination as to what it meant, or what I needed to do, which adds to the challenge of trusting your intuition. There are times when you won’t get it right, or won’t act on it because you dismiss it.
What’s most important, at least as I see it, is to continue trusting in yourself, and when in doubt, ask for more information. Again, each of us is different, and will do it in their own way. I tend to ask for clarification from my guides in several ways:
- Meditate on the question
- Pull a Tarot card, or even several
- Ask for clarification in a dream before I go to sleep (it’s important to set an intention to remember the dream, too)
- Put it in the back of my mind and wait for more information
Often, there’s room for interpretation. Sometimes I’ll figure it out while recounting my dreams in my Morning Pages. Others, I’ll have the urge later in the day to sit down and write, either longhand or in a Word document. I’ll do a kind of brain dump where I put whatever comes to mind down on the page, knowing I’ll go back and interpret it all later.
Asking for Clarification When Messages Are Vague
As I focus on learning more about promoting my business and creating more exposure, I’m finding little tidbits in my dreams; some of which are blatantly obvious, while others are frustratingly vague. While pulling a tarot card, or asking for guidance while I meditate helps part of the time, there are other times when all I can do is wait until I receive more pieces to the puzzle, either via dreams and meditations, or when something I see or experience triggers the memory of the dream message, giving me one of those rare but insightful Aha moments.
Until now, it hadn’t occurred to me to ask specific questions regarding my business. I realize I’ve been doing myself a huge disservice. It’s like having a tool that performs many functions, but only using half of them, and going about everything else the hard way. Not only am I wasting one of my most precious resources; time, I’m not using the tool to its fullest capabilities, and wasting a lot of its value.
If I learned nothing else in the Intuition Challenge, it was to expand my horizons and start using one of my gifts for more than a door stop.
About the Author
Sheri Conaway is a Holistic Ghostwriter, and an advocate for cats and mental health. Sheri 
believes in the Laws of Attraction, but only if you are a participant rather than just an observer. Her mission is to Make Vulnerable Beautiful and help entrepreneurs touch the souls of their readers and clients so they can increase their impact and their income.
If you’d like to have her write for you, please visit her Hire Me page for more information. You can also find her on Facebook Sheri Levenstein-Conaway Author. And check out her new group, Putting Your Whole Heart Forward.
Be sure to watch this space for news of the upcoming releases of ” Rebuilding After Suicide” and “Sasha’s Journey”.
