How to trust your gut feelings … when they make no sense

A while back, my car got locked in a parking garage on a random city street in DC.

I was walking back to my car after an awesome business event for women entrepreneurs, and when I was about a block away, I realized the gates were closed for my parking garage and it looked pretty dark in there.

Oh, shit.

I checked my phone, and realized it was almost 9:30 … and the garage closed at 9pm. It was locked up for the night.

I started to internally panic. I live 40 minutes away from the city, the metro doesn’t go nearly that far, and I wasn’t at all familiar with the part of the city I was in. Plus, I was planning to leave early in the morning for a trip, so I really needed my car.

The closer I got to the garage, the more my fearful and annoyed thoughts started to kick in. I had no idea how I was supposed to get home, and I was pissed at myself for not checking the time earlier.

I saw a bench and thought of stopping to check a few things on my phone to make a new plan. Then a saw a deli that was still open — maybe I could sit inside and try to call someone?

HEARING VOICES IN MY HEAD … UMM, DOES THAT MAKE ME CRAZY?

Before I could make a decision, I heard my own voice in my head calmly say, “Keep walking to the garage.”

That’s dumb, I thought. I could see from where I was standing that it was very clearly closed and locked up. There was no one near the garage, and the lights were dim inside. What was I supposed to do, bang on the gate like a maniac?

But I decided to listen to the voice. (I couldn’t think of any better options at the moment!)

As soon as I crossed the street and stood outside one of the gates, feeling helpless, a middle-aged woman meandered around the corner and leaned on the side of the building, fiddling with her phone.

The voice in my head whispered again, “Ask her to help you.”

She was wearing jeans, a faded T-shirt, and sneakers — nothing at all to indicate that she worked at the garage or could help me in any way. But, having nothing to lose, I desperately blurted out, “Do you work here??” fully expecting a curt “No” or, more likely, for her to ignore me completely.

Instead, she said, “Yeah, I work here. Is your car in there? Do you need to me call someone to get you the keys and let you out?”

Relief flooded through my body. I was going to make it home after all, and in my own car!

THE VOICE OF INTUITION

Within 20 minutes, I was holding my keys and and feeling immense gratitude to be back inside my own car. As I drove home, I remembered that little voice telling me to keep walking toward the parking garage, even though I could clearly see from a distance that it was closed and empty.

I realized it had been my intuition, clearly speaking to me in my head, calmly guiding me to the simplest, easiest, and best solution.

That’s certainly not the first time my intuition has told me to do something that didn’t seem to make any sense, but that ultimately ended up being the very best thing I could have done.

I know, without a doubt, that each and every one of us has that inner intuitive voice, and it’s trying to communicate with you all the time. It wants to guide you in the right direction — toward the perfect job, away from the wrong relationship, to call the right person at exactly the right moment for exactly the right opportunity.

YOUR INTUITION IS TALKING TO YOU … ARE YOU LISTENING?

My intuition only rarely gives me such clear, vocal messages like it did about the parking garage (although it’s really cool when it does!). Mostly, it talks to me in gut feelings, which is probably the way your intuition speaks to you most often, too.

You know those times when …

… you somehow just unequivocally know that something is right (or wrong)?

… you get a spark of inspiration that you instantly want to act on, even if you’re in the middle of something else?

… the thought of taking any other action seems completely absurd?

… you instinctively feel drawn to (or repelled by) someone the moment you meet them?

… you try to explain it to someone, and you can hardly put your knowing into words because it doesn’t actually make logical sense?

Yeah … that’s your intuition talking to you.

Are you listening?

Your intuition is always talking to you. The question is … are you actually listening?

Most of us — especially those of us who pride ourselves on being logical (which was definitely me up until a few years ago!) — get these strong gut feelings, but immediately dismiss them because we don’t fully trust our intuition.

But I can tell you now, without a shadow of a doubt, that’s a mistake.

HOW TO TRUST YOUR INTUITION

If you’re ready to start trusting your gut feelings instead of always leaning on your own logic (which is exhausting!), then you’ve got to give your intuition a chance to prove to you that it’s trustworthy.

The same way you’d expect another person to earn your trust, give your intuition the same opportunity to prove itself.

Next time you get one of those strong gut feelings, allow yourself to act on it. Ask for help, call the person you’re thinking about, act on the inspiration, take a different route home. Whatever your gut feeling is encouraging you to do, give it a try.

Then pay attention to the ease, simplicity, connections, synchronicities, and magic that follows.

I’m not saying this will be easy for all of you. Acting on your gut feelings takes courage, especially when they don’t align with your logical mind.

But I’m challenging you to try this for just one week. Then make sure to come back and let me know how your experiment went!

I hope you’ll leave a comment to let me know how this topic resonated with you today!

Much Love,

Kristen (+ Rachel)

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SPOTLIGHT ON … FIGURING OUT YOUR PASSION

We’re doing something new. At the end of each blog, we’re going to take a beat to share something meaningful with you. Maybe it’ll be something we read that really moved us. Maybe something we’re currently offering that’s going to really help you out (like the PPVE, when it’s around). Or maybe it’s an empowering story about one of our clients.

Today, we want to share how inspired we are by our current group of Passion Plan Virtual Experience members.

We’ve been having so much fun with our current PPVE group, and we’re sad to be wrapping things up with them this week.

Each time we run the PPVE, we’re always amazed by the breakthroughs, the brilliant insights, the inspiring stories, and the exciting “ah-ha” moments of our participants.

One of them wrote to us this past week to say …

“After less than 2 weeks in the PPVE, my mom told me that I sounded happier than she had heard me in a long time.”

How awesome is that?

The fact that we get to inspire (and be inspired by) such cool people as our job … well, it’s pretty incredible, and we have immense gratitude.

If you’re struggling to figure out your passion and you think you might want to join us the next time we run the PPVE, make sure you get on the VIP interest list here. You’ll be the first to know when we re-open enrollment (in early 2016), plus you’ll get a special discount when it’s time to register.