This is Part 1 of a 3-part series on Trusting Your Intuition:
- Part 1 – [You are here] How to Make Decisions you Can Trust (Article)
- Part 2 – How to Solve When Your Intuition is Right for Everyone Else but Hopeless for Yourself (Video)
- Part 3 – Coming soon – Accessing Your Inner World for Accurate Decision Making (Meditation)
How do I know if it’s the right move for me?
Jane pondered…
The ‘what-ifs’ pounding through her head, she sat momentarily paralysed with anxiety.
Most people won’t make a decision because they are worried it’s going to be a repeat of the past.
You’re particularly at risk of decision impossibility if you’ve been:
Humiliated or had the threat of humiliation when you’ve tried to be assertive.
As a sensitive, empathic person who doesn’t realise their own worth, it might surprise you, those in your immediate vicinity are often sub-consciously terrified you’re about to leave them.
There is method behind their madness, they’ll only encourage you to the level at which their own self-esteem can cope with.
Jane’s boss had always been encouraging of her work in her current role. Now though, when she’d been offered this role in a different department, he’d switched between attentive, cold, back to attentive, the ‘jokes’ although in jest, seemed to be at her expense.
Intuitive-Sensitive people need change. It may not feel like that at times, they need change – why?
You need change because your deepest world, your inner world, is creative and needs a wider view. The drive for purpose, to feel connection, to feel you’re of use in the world, is driven by the need for change through expansion.
The trouble is…
Others feel threatened by it. Their self-worth interprets it as rejection.
When people feel rejected, they are mean with a capital M.
Jane’s loyalty was torn, should she go to the other department? Should she stay?
Most serial procrastinators have been on the receiving end of countless putdowns and criticism in their life. The inner drive for soul expansion, in conflict with the desire to avoid further emotional hurt, they avoid making decisions that may impact other people.
In other words, you can’t make a decision in life because you’re afraid it might upset someone else.
Who’s Your Authority?
Authority likes us to grow within a framework they are familiar with.
Trouble is, ‘their’ framework, in most cases is outdated.
The authority in the form of parents, teachers, older siblings, often can’t express or are not in touch with their survival apprehensions.
Survival apprehensions will be around the question of their emotional survival. Their main question always as: How do I keep my emotional insecurities secret?
Their survival apprehensions mean they use sulking, moods, sacrificing their needs, as a way of manipulating what they want. It’s a way of keeping their deepest emotional insecurities out of sight.
Trouble is…
If your own character is based on pleasing others, pleasing people who want to keep their survival apprehensions quiet, you grow to associate put-downs, put-offs and even humiliation as expressions of love and protection.
Decisions then become impossible because a decision means:
Which authority will I upset?
The inner drive for expansion continues, although it feels there is a more urgent need to please.
Decisions thus stagnate.
Life Divided
When pleasing others by keeping THEIR survival apprehensions at bay, we then find our only decisions made are based in:
Life in the past
Or
Life in the future
Life in the Past
Human nature looks automatically to history. We are programmed to avoid pain, so we look to our history to make a current decision. That’s particularly strong if in the past, we have a history of bad decisions. For example, the bad ex- boyfriend, we’ll have a metal check-list now for whatever man we meet.
Jane was frightened.
When she’d changed jobs before it was uncomfortable, she’d made a flight decision. This time, in this moment, it wasn’t. She liked her job, this new one offered opportunity, expansion. It wasn’t necessary to change this time because of fear.
Jane’s early life experiences had taught her, you only make changes when you’re terrified.
How do you make a decision from choice? Jane began to feel making a decision when calm and unstressed was near impossible.
Life in the Future
Skip to the future then.
Associating decisions with the future is the great pain escape.
Using the future as motivation for decision making helps us avoid feeling anything uncomfortable in the present.
Jane decided: “I’ll make a decision when…”
Pondering to herself – “Perhaps I’ll make a decision on this kind of job when I have more confidence.”
When we can’t make a decision now, we’ll often ‘decide’ to make it in the future.
Why is it safe to make a decision in the future?
In the moment, making a decision means a possibility of getting it wrong. The potential pain of getting it ‘wrong’ is so great to the emotional mind, that we leave it. The only decision made is to make it in the future.
Making a Decision You Won’t Regret
We’ve all heard about living in the present.
‘Yesterday was history, the future is a mystery, the gift is…why it’s called the present.’
Blar, blar…
Why is it then so hard to live in the present? To not worry about making the wrong decision?
Living in the present put simply, means you have no humiliation storage
To live in the present, to make decent decisions you don’t feel will let you down, you have to relieve your inner world of humiliation storage.
All those little check-points your psyche has notched up to avoid the possibility of humiliation:
- People please to avoid upsetting survival apprehensions. CHECK.
- Minimise your desire for expansion so others don’t fear losing you. CHECK.
- Mentally reconnect with the public put-downs you had when you voiced your early life dreams. CHECK
Your inner life is expanding; there is a strong desire for something new. That newness won’t go away, it’s why it tries to chase out the old.
It’s time now to access your release from your humiliation storage before you’re the one manipulating with YOUR secret survival apprehension.
How do you release your humiliation storage?
You activate, you expand your intuitive capabilities.
Why? How?
Intuition releases your history. It takes you out of linear processing.
Trouble is…
You’re often correct for other people, but for yourself, your intuition is patchy.
How do you know when it’s genuine insight or your imagination?
How can you recognise if your humiliation storage or survival apprehension is in the way?
Free video to access the next stage:
[Video] How to Solve When Your Intuition is Right for Everyone Else but Hopeless for Yourself
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