"I Should've Listened To My Intuition"
How people pleasing blocks your intuition + how to get underneath it so you can hear your Authentic Truth (Go easy on yourself!).
me and my dear friend, Alice Inoue. Sharing because I couldn't figure out another photo to use for this essay, and I think we look too cute not to.
When my friend Sierra complained that she didn’t listen to her intuition, when she “just knew” and should’ve better listened to herself, I instantly replied: “Maybe it didn’t all happen in the way that you wished it would have but ultimately you did listen, and you still got what you needed.” She agreed.
An hour later, she said the same thing again -that she should’ve listened better/sooner- while also walking through the moment she had known and she didn’t listen. I reiterated: “But you got what you needed and all is well now.” By this time I was also thinking: Gosh, she’s being pretty hard on herself.
Well …the very next day I was my “friend”! I was telling myself that I should’ve listened to my intuition, I should’ve known a thing, and I hadn’t listened.
As a result of not listening, I disappointed someone close to me- always incredibly hard for me. But I did have this kind thought: Yes and you are listening now. You’re still getting what you need (good on you, pats own head).
Then, just like Sierra, I started mentally replaying that moment I had not listened to myself. Guess what? It wasn’t because I was being hard on myself!
By mentally replaying that moment of knowing but not listening, I was also going back in time to investigate what had happened in order to not do it again. Years ago, I learned to do this to figure out where an energy had come from and what had prompted it to lodge itself in my energy field.
Oh! Once I realized I was trying to figure out how to better protect myself, and prevent it from happening again, I did this in a more structured way.
3 Questions To Ask When You Should’ve Listened To Your Intuition
o Where was I, and what was I doing when I had this knowing?
o What did it feel like in my body? How did I “just know”?
o What caused me to override my intuition? Thoughts? Urges? Feelings?
After grounding myself, I went back in time to that moment when I should’ve better listened: I had met a different friend for lunch at a restaurant. We’d been talking about something else, when she extended an invitation to me. My answer to her invitation was 100% clear: I had no energy for it in my sacral, or Root. This always means NO. Or, not right now. Or, try later. I don’t know why, I don’t need to know why (but if I try and figure out why, I pop into my head which is not where my intuition lives. In other words, I “screw the pooch”- as my Texan husband says). This is just how it works for me.
If I got such a clear NO, why did I say YES? Why didn’t I listen to myself?
I recall looking at my sweet, loving friend who supports and values me so much, and who clearly just wants to make me happy, and who just extended this beautifully loving invitation, she loves me so much. That’s when I said yes.
Boom. There it was. I am a recovered people-pleaser but I’m not perfect; I’m still in recovery! I had said yes to an invitation to make her happy, not because it was my Truth. This was a good revelation for me and frustratingly familiar, too. Because I really don’t want this to keep happening, I asked my embodied Connection about it: “When someone I care for deeply asks me to make a decision and I know what would make them happy, what to do…?”
Here’s what I heard:
Ask yourself two questions:
Do I want to make this person I care about happy? (YES! ALWAYS!)
Do I want to share this experience with them? (_my Truth here_)
The first question gets the people pleasing out of the way. You ask it so you can move past it and into your authentic Truth, your true answer.
***
Conditioning is real. Conditioning is the number one culprit keeping you from allowing your authentic and illogical inner knowing, aka, your intuition, to breathe and live. Sometimes it’s distraction, sure, but more often for those recurring times when we don’t listen to our intuition conditioning is at play.
The good news is: WE ALWAYS KNOW THE EXACT MOMENT WHEN WE KNOW. I find this to be 100% true. You can go back in time, investigate the moment you “just knew,” yet did otherwise. This is so empowering. Why? You learn about yourself. You figure out what kept you from listening and come up with a plan for the future. Try it! Then… brave soul… chat with me about it.
Intuitive Energy Practice Invitation: The first quarter of any lunar cycle is the time when the little seedling of an idea pushes through the earth; when the rubber meets the road, when we can break ground on a thing we’re working towards. This, right now, is the first quarter Virgo Moon. Virgo Moon is great for practicing discernment around inner listening (Gemini Sun).
How did your week of inner listening go? Did you pause to ask: What am I feeling, sensing or knowing, here? Did you have an experience of listening inward —and then acting on what you knew, heard, felt, saw?
Can you think of a moment when you did not listen to yourself? So good. This is how we learn about intuition. I’m not joking. All those times that I didn’t listen to myself taught me exactly how my intuition works for me.
If you should’ve listened to your intuition…Ask the 3 questions. See if you can discover something new about how you’ve been conditioned out of listening to your Authentic Truth. ←Really take that in for a minute. You, me/we have been conditioned out of listening to your Authentic Truth. The reason you are not listening to your intuition is not because you’re not intuitive; it’s because you are telling yourself something untrue.
Do you celebrate the victory of listening to your Authentic Truth? Do you support yourself in the same loving way you support your dear friends?
I really loved the way you laid this out, and the questions you've posed. I've gotten better about people pleasing, but the other place I sometimes get caught is in culture pleasing--ie: my intuition says, "you know, you can just have a nice flow day, and not worry about getting things done." And the voice of my culture is like: "You need to MOW THE LAWN! You need to BE MORE BUSY." And I have to remember: my intuition is always right about having a flow day, especially if I lean into creative flow. It's the best! Thanks so much for writing this practical and magical piece!
I love those two questions! Getting past the initial people pleaser stage is so important, and allowing yourself to acknowledge that it’s not about how you feel about the other person, but how you feel about yourself in that moment… brilliant!