The six voices that are NOT your intuition

We are often told to listen to our intuition, but how many of us really know a) what it sounds like, and b) how to distinguish it from the many other voices that fill our heads and cloud our judgment?

Many of us believe that intuition is a feeling in the gut and that it is very noisy. I think this comes from the association of fight or flight with intuition, the belief that our intuition will shout loudly at us if something is wrong.

In fact, intuition is more often defined by its quietness. It is the quietest voice in your body, the most peaceful, the most consistent. And it is a persistent bugger.

Whatever choices you make, whatever you choose to be guided by, your intuition will repeat the same message even as your world views change and other influences wax and wane.

I like to call the voice of intuition Little Voice.

So how to listen to it? In order to explain what Little Voice is, I will first explain what it isn’t.

1, It is not your id.

The voice that Freud identified as screaming "I want, I need", is loud and urgent. “I want sleep. Ice cream. Somebody else’s husband.” But these are very basic desires, and although they may feel loud enough to be your intuition, not all of them will serve you.

2. It is not your ego.

The voice that says “But I’m important, I’m special, I deserve,” is the crying toddler within you, the petty tyrant that wants to be important wants to be in control. Boy is this voice noisy, but each time you are having these thoughts, recognize that they are not the voice of truth, they are the ego.

3. It is not the superego.

The superego likes to yell shoulds at you. “I really should take this decision” and “You should behave this way.” The superego has a certain concept of who you are and what it would like you to be, based on opinions and structures that for whatever reason matter to you. However because these opinions come from outside they do not necessarily serve you, which brings me onto point 4.

4. That Person.

We all have this person inside us. It could be a family member or a friend. It might even be the voice of someone we don’t like, a bully, or it could be a fictional character or someone dead.

Yet they are the most important person in your head. You are comforted when you believe they will approve and distressed at the thought that they might not.

The actions of other people are viewed through the lens of That Person’s opinions and you judge them harshly. It doesn’t matter what the real That Person thinks at all, it is your construct of them that counts and you live each day feeling safe if you are following the opinion of That Person.

5. It is not fear or anxiety.

Fear and anxiety have only one message. FRIGHTENED FRIGHTENED FRIGHTENED. It is very loud. Fear is so pervasive that it makes you frightened not just of a new action, but the old pathway too. It paralyzes and shuts down to the point where you can’t go forward or back.

6. It isn’t your so-called ‘rational’ voice.

The one that tells you that it is sensible and objective, the one that makes SWAT analyses and lists of pros and cons. So what if you have 18 cons and 2 pros? What is informing your ‘rational’ voice that something is a con?

It’s the other voices: id, ego, superego, That Person, and fear. Setting up home elsewhere is only a con if your fear is very loud. In another mindset, it could be an active pro. Rationality is not as objective as we may think.

Little Voice is the only voice that will take the sum of your own experience, filter it through a thousand tiny observations that you could never compete on a conscious level, and apply it to serve your own needs and happiness and no one else’s.

It cannot know what will happen in the future, it does not claim to prophesize, but what it can do is guide you moment by moment, day by day, year by year to the right decisions for you, which in of itself ensures your future will be a path of your own making, in all ways feeling authentic, feeling right.

Outcomes that right now feel scary or unwanted could be the correct ones, provided the right voices to guide us there.

So how do we tap into it?

When making a decision of what direction to go in, sit and listen to your voices. Perhaps your superego will be telling you what you should be doing.

“Take the job, you should be grateful.”

Your ego chimes in: “You deserve this.” But now you have a conflict. That Person always begrudged success. That Person tells you that you are a sellout. Now you are confused. Fear kicks in.

FRIGHTENED FRIGHTENED FRIGHTENED.

None of these voices come from you. Listen to them as you would listen to the hubbub around you on the bus. They are catching a ride with you but they are not you. Underneath all of them is the engine.

It is Little Voice. It is so quiet that it is very easy to ignore. However, it’s message will be unwavering and it will be simple:

Yes. No. Pause.

If you want it to scream no at you then you will be disappointed, because Little Voice is not fear. Instead, it will whisper no at you every single day, so quietly and indiscernible that you can happily ignore it.

You can show up for your job every day, ostensibly proud, making That Person happy, keeping fear at bay, paying dividends to the superego.

Little Voice doesn’t ask for you to obey it. But it will whisper quietly and it will not stop doing this until you are ready to make a change.

Then, when you do change that job, you’ll have a funny feeling, and you’ll say it, out loud or to yourself. I always knew it wasn’t right. It will be the odd feeling of truth.

Yet listening to Little Voice is a scary thing to do. Your other voices are much louder. From a personal perspective, I have genuinely had the thought: “But I can’t follow this path, because all the other voices will shout at me.”

And oh they will. They will scream, hop up and down, go red in the face and jab their fingers. And when they do, you have to remember its just excited football fans on the bus. The engine is the only thing running the show. Find a quiet moment, summon up Little Voice again.

Its message will always be the same.

In learning to trust this voice, we can experiment. Take a morning. Ask Little Voice what it would like to do.

You’ll probably hear some other voices first. “Go to the gym” (superego). “Try not to spend any money.” (Fear). “You promised you would call by the football game” (superego). “They won’t like you if you don’t go,” (fear again). Let them talk, knowing who they are. Eventually, you will hear Little Voice.

You’ll know it when you do because it will be very calm in tone, expecting nothing, speaking something that sounds like truth. Go back to bed. Or, stretch your legs. Or, eat.

You have nothing to lose by following it. Eat, then ask again. Then again, then again. You could find yourself walking down the street in the full sunshine picking up a leaf if that is what it wants you to do. Or going back to bed and reading a dear book, if that is where it leads you.

When you return to your obligations and errands, you will feel nourished, with a sense of trust and direction.

There will always be things we have to do regardless of whether our Little Voice wants us to or not. This is fine, this is why Little Voice is very quiet, it understands that sometimes we must ignore it.

But if we listen to it too, then we can respectfully say “I hear you, but not now.” And if we act on it on the small, we can reassure ourselves that it has our best interests at heart on the big.

But what if Little Voice doesn’t know?

That’s ok too.

It will be a quiet feeling of doubt, a quiet request to pause. Listen to it. Perhaps no decision is correct right now. Ask it what it would like you to do instead.

You’ll be guided towards people and activities that look after you and energize you. Then, when it does want to nudge you in a new direction, it will tell you. Quietly.

Don’t worry if you don’t hear the yes first time.

Apart from being quiet, it is also persistent.

It will still be whispering it tomorrow.