Have you ever driven down a dark highway at night using your headlights to see the road ahead? Probably. Without your headlights, you wouldn’t be able to see where the next strip of pavement goes or turns. Ok. Have you ever wondered how or where the road will come from and whether you should continue to drive because you can’t see it yet? Probably not, you just know the road continues. Trusting your intuition is kind of like this.

Nearly everyone I speak to about intuition shares how they know that intuition is something they should follow, and then acknowledge they don’t always do it because it’s not always easy. But why? And how can you overcome the hard parts?

The first challenge in trusting or following our inner knowing is that intuition doesn’t come with solid reasons why you should trust or follow it. You can’t see where the road is taking you, only the next step in front of you. You might brainstorm a list of reasons why you should, but the truth is, your inner voice doesn’t come with reasons or logic. It’s usually just a feeling, inspiration, a knowing, and so you aren’t sure whether you can trust it or whether the outcome will be a good one. 

This is where you have to let go of the final outcomes, acknowledge what you love in your heart, and trust the process. Step one is being willing to follow the path of your inner knowing without needing to know where your intuition is taking you. 

The second challenge is being honest about what you feel. In other words, sometimes you don’t want to know where the road is going and you don’t want to start traveling it. Maybe you are afraid of the possible outcomes you could experience, like failure, pain, or rejection. If I say no to someone, I could hurt or disappoint them, or they won’t love me anymore.

Consider this: you are in a relationship with someone that you have cared about for a long time, but your sense is they are interested in someone else, or you feel to leave for whatever reason. Do you really want to know the answer even though you’re sensing it? Or do you want to put your head in the sand even though you have that deeper knowing?

Step two is being willing to hear what you already know deep down. Clients often share how they don’t know what their love or truth is or what option to choose. In my experience, they do know, they either aren’t trusting what they know because it doesn’t make sense, or they don’t want to know because then they’ll have to do something that right now may bring up fears or discomforts. 

It’s scary to change your life around when you can’t see where the road is taking you. When you follow your inner knowing, you can’t see the full length of the highway. Learning to follow your intuition is like learning to read a map that you can’t see where the road ultimately ends up. You have to trust that where it’s leading is where your heart truly wants to go.

You have to trust that where it’s leading is where your heart truly wants to go.

To access your deepest desires, stop. Get quiet. Listen from that quiet of your heart. What do you really want? What do you love? Who do you love to be? And instead of looking for the answers, allowing your heart to come to you with what’s real for you. 

The final challenge is almost always one word: how? You’re willing to listen to your inner knowing, and you’re willing to follow it, but then your limitations rise up. Well, you’ll say to me, I know what I love, I’m willing, but I don’t have the money, or the time, or the infrastructure, or know how to do it, or where to start. 

The answer to this challenge is a much longer conversation we would need to have, but for now I’ll say this, when you follow your intuition, it’s like traveling down that long narrow road at night, the pavement reveals itself as you go along. All you need to do is just keep driving, just keep taking the next step and wait for the waves of creativity to move you along. 

Photo by Joy of Light Photography.

Kirra Sherman is a speaker, author and Intuition coach sharing the key to using your Intuition for more ease in every part of your life, which takes you on a deeper road to living a life of ultimate freedom: the freedom to experience and express what you desire without fear or judgment. You can find her podcast “The Deeper Spark” & “Mind over Matter” 14-day challenge on her website:  www.TheDeeperSpark.com