The Things We Let Ourselves Get Talked Into

Listening to your heart and trusting your intuition takes practice. Fortunately there are opportunities all the time:

Do you want to go out with friends or stay home and have some blessed alone time. Your friends might think you’re a party pooper and quit inviting you out. Do you care about that more than you care about taking care of yourself? You choose to stay in. Maybe deep down you know you could use less time with that crowd anyway.

Score one for reinforcing the heart decision.

Family is gathering for Thanksgiving. You know from past experience that things start out fine then fall apart as the day goes on – little and big annoyances, too much alcohol, you’re tired of the same routine anyway. Risking hurt feelings from the traditionalists in the family you opt out.

Yeah for you. You followed your heart again. It’s getting easier.

“Everyone” says you should have clipless pedals on your bike…you’ve done fine without them for years, you don’t really want clipless pedals but you want to know what the fuss is about. You get clipless pedals and the shoes that go with them (and had to dip into the cash you were saving for your winter hut trip) and hate them. You fall way more than you ever did without them. You knew you didn’t want them to begin with and you didn’t really need them. Your set-up was fine.

Another point for you because now you know what it feels like to go against your intuition.

Other examples -

You didn’t want to take on the mortgage, even though it’s a “wise financial decision”. Now you’re there and can’t so easily go on that open-ended trip you had planned in the back of your mind.

You didn’t want to get set up with your friend’s friend but you agreed to be nice and out of a little drummed up curiosity. The curiosity faltered and now there’s some backing out to do.

You love your job, you’re good at it and you were offered a chance for a supervisory position. It’s a “great opportunity” and you’d be making an unwise career move to not accept, but you know deep down you don’t want to manage and your ego could care less too.

Choosing to move forward with any of these examples is fine. But it gets complicated when we have that “off” feeling, like something’s not right. This is intuition getting active.

The situations are endless. We constantly have choices and deep down our soul knows what it wants, but the clarity has been muddled. We often lose the trail of our soul’s intention. It’s still there, we just have to dispatch the cobwebs. But how?

Take every opportunity to check in with your initial response to a situation. Some things take time to simmer and that time is important. But keep coming back to your gut reaction. What just feels right? Staying or going?  Do you have to talk yourself into something or rationalize it? Maybe a big opportunity sounds good but the timing isn’t right. If it’s the right thing for you it will present itself again. The Universe wants the best for you and will give you another chance if you missed it the first (or second) time around.

Practice saying no. Or yes. Reinforce your good decisions. Soon you won’t have to do so much analyzing and the decision-making will come more easily.

Notice when others are trying to talk you into something. Was the mortgage their idea or yours? Is it really time you “settled down” or are you still ancy to move about the world? Do you both want kids or is there unbalance in the conversation?

The soul is wise and can be trusted. And don’t let anybody talk you into the clipless pedals if you don’t want them.