Listen For Your Intuition: It's the Hero of the Story

First published on May 21, 2021

Listen for the words. Not the words you think, but those words that emerge from somewhere different. From something that isn't you, at least not the you you normally think of as you. Listen for the words. Share them. Trust.

That, essentially, was the transformational message I received from the Coaches Rising training, Coaching From Source (now renamed Become a Transformative Presence), which was a part of creating the biggest step change in the power of my coaching since I first trained. At the same time I was spending time in the company of Rich Litvin, and Rich's work gave me the same message. What Rich would call 'Fearless Coaching' (but which, for me, would be better defined as Courageous Coaching - I was and still am afraid of saying some of the things I say, but I say them anyway), is essentially to trust what comes to you, not to hold back because you are afraid. Listen for the words and share them.

By that time I had already been practising writing in this way for more than a year. Set the timer, write, share. In that time, see what emerges. Sometimes, these articles come from thought, a swift plan emerging on the walk to the train station or in the morning before the timer goes on. But sometimes, they emerged from somewhere else. Listen for the words, share them. Trust.

It was several years earlier, though, that I had first learned that there was more to me than my thoughts. Emerging from a relationship which, by the end of it, was stifling for the souls of both people in it, I needed to reclaim something. Part of that was to reclaim my masculinity. Who was I, as a man, now that I was outside that relationship? As I asked that question I found that the decisiveness which can be categorised as an expression of my masculine energy had been lost in a long, drawn out attempt to keep us happy. If, that is, it had ever really been owned before at all.

My practice to change that, originating, I think, in The Way of the Superior Man, was to begin to offer choices. Every time I was asked. Instead of my normal 'I don't mind' and indecisiveness (because I mostly didn't mind, because none of the questions were that important), I began to practise decisiveness. And I could almost feel my soul strengthening. I could choose. I learned that decisiveness didn't have to lead to domination (as I on some level feared). That, in fact, it could be an incredibly supportive thing to provide. (For men reading this, the perfect response when a woman in your life asks for your opinion feels to me to be something like: 'If it were my decision, I would choose X. But I trust you, you are wise and know what you want.' Remind her that you're here, you can choose if she wants you to, but that you admire and love her for her wisdom and intuition.)

And how did I come to make those decisions? I began to listen. 'If I have to choose what we have for dinner, what do I choose?' It turns out, when I listened, I could make that choice. About dinner, about dresses, about anything. From somewhere a feeling came, and I began to recognise it as my intuition. Listen. Share. Trust.

As Daniel Kahneman explains in Thinking, Fast and Slow, our intuition is really the hero of our stories. Without it we couldn't operate. And as he (and Douglas Hofstadter, in a slightly different way) explain, our intuition is in some ways the sum of our experience. It carries with it all we have known and experienced, and so is far wiser than our thinking self (most of the time - read Kahneman's book for the times when it isn't).

That's one way to think about it, from a rational, scientific point of view. Another way to think about it is that it is guidance, it is source, it is God.

Listen for the words. The ones that don't quite come from you, at least not the you you normally think about. Share them. Trust.