To follow up on my last post about listening to your body, I want to talk about trusting your intuition. You probably hear people say this all the time: Listen to your gut. Trust yourself. Shit like that… This seems simple in theory, but in practice it’s much harder. That’s because your intuition and your ego are very closely related. They often might even want the same outcomes, but for different reasons. I’ll expand more on that later. It’s important you learn to tell the difference between the two if you want to make better decisions.
I believe that your ego acts out of fear. Your ego is there to protect you and keep you safe or comfortable. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it can get in the way of helping you reach your full potential. It often uses logic to justify its decisions and can feel like a mental battle.
Your intuition, on the other hand, acts out of love. It’s pure energy. It’s there to guide you towards the truth. It doesn’t need to make sense, it just is. Unfortunately, it often gets drowned out by your ego. Listening to your intuition takes practice.
Let’s say you are unhappy with your current job. You know you want a new one but you are unsure why you’re unhappy or what else you would do. When you think about getting a new job, your ego is probably telling you to look for something that will pay you more money. Your intuition is the voice telling you to find something you’re passionate about or do something you’ve always wanted to try. The outcome is still a new job, but the reason and type of job you’ll be looking for will be completely different. This is then the part where your ego will probably step in and list out all of the reasons why you need to find a job similar to what you’ve been doing and make more money. It’s important to learn to tell you ego to respectfully fuck off in this scenario. If you don’t, you’ll just end up in the same position in the future.
Your ego is never quite sure what it actually wants either. It can switch sides in a matter of seconds. Your intuition is ALWAYS looking out for your best interests. It doesn’t care about money or status or whatever other bullshit might be trying to distract you. Intuition will bring you closer to your truest self and helps you feel love.
If you’re anything like me and have decided at some point in your life that you don’t need love, I have some bad news for you. You do. It’s that plain and simple. It’s actually the only thing in this world that truly matters. Ego is there to seek love and validation from others. Intuition is there to help you love yourself. That’s it. If you can learn to decipher between the two, you can start listening to your intuition more in order to live your life with greater love, fulfillment, and peace.