Hard decisions and intuitive wisdom
Full confession: For much of my life, I have felt plagued by indecisiveness.
What do I want for lunch? Do I like this shirt in green or yellow? Do I want to go to the party or stay home and watch a movie? Which restaurant should I choose?
I relied heavily on input from others. And when I didn’t have direct input from others, I would empathically discern what others thought I should do or wanted me to do… especially “important” others like parents, teachers, role models, or trusted authorities. As I grew older, I began performing what the world thought I should do. I would perform what cultural narratives suggested I do.
Life, from this way of living, can quickly become an ongoing performance for pleasing other people. But at the end of the day, can you ever truly be happy living this way?
Sure, you get a brief moment of reinforcement when you please others. Making other people happy or proud of me felt really good. Being an achiever, I developed a sense of pride around my ability to please. I rarely made mistakes in my youth. (I mean, who says that???) The truth is, I was too scared of screwing up and who I may disappoint.
However, all of this came at a very high personal cost.
As you can imagine, it’s exhausting. It’s also a losing battle because, as far as I know, it’s impossible to please everyone. But there are deeper layers too – it can feel a bit like self-betrayal when we aren’t following our own true north. We might even begin to feel resentful.
Imagine taking direction from someone on a road trip—fully trusting that they know the way—but somewhere far down the road you suddenly realize you’ve ended up in completely the wrong place. Does any of this ring true for you?
We short-change ourselves in other ways too. By second-guessing myself and turning over the “wisdom reigns” to external sources so quickly, I was not developing what is perhaps the most subtle yet powerful form of wisdom I have access to:
My intuition.
The more that I practice making hard decisions from a place that is attuned to my inner compass – which is attuned for what feels right to me, rather than what others think is right – the easier hard decisions become. I can make hard decisions more efficiently because I know and feel intuitively what is right.
This does not mean that I don’t still agonize over the outcomes of disappointing others. As I began growing into this way of decision-making and discernment, I would sometimes delay the inevitable hard decision until my emotions felt steady enough to follow through. It was all part of the process of shifting my decision-making gears to value more of my internal knowing versus the external opinions and validation from others.
This is not to say that research isn’t valuable…. It is.
This is not to say that I’ve stopped asking other people for their feedback…. I still do. Often.
But at the end of the day, I can now take ownership of the hard decisions I make in a way that feels much more authentic. I can make hard decisions that I know are in alignment with my inner compass, even when the follow through feels painful or uncomfortable. I can rest easy through that process and trust myself more, rather than feeling anxious, agonizing, and second-guessing myself.
This is a new experience compared to how I lived most of the first half of my life. I am still practicing and developing these muscles.
In the January issue, Psychology Today featured an article on the value and pitfalls of intuition. One of the primary ways that gut reactions, for example, can steer us wrong is in cases of implicit bias. Fear-based reactions and avoidance due to past experience are other examples. But these examples of unconscious processing are qualitatively different than the intentional practice of developing our intuition.
I am hoping to explore, write, and speak about intuitive wisdom more in the coming year – how to recognize it, use it, and strengthen it. How can we discern intuitive wisdom from fear-based, subconscious responses?
Stay tuned…and stay attuned to your inner compass.
*I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences with intuition in the comments below!
Reference:
Hutson, M. (2020, January). Truths about intuition: What to know about what you don’t know. Psychology Today, 55-63.