The Voice That We Silence

Think about all the times you made decisions that didn’t sit quite right: When something was nagging you, but since you couldn’t articulate what it was even to yourself, you went ahead with the choice that “made sense”. How many of them ended up being bad decisions, where the reason for your discomfort was crystal clear in hindsight? 

For me the answer is all of them. I once convinced myself that the stress I felt in my body every time I spoke to a potential boss prior to accepting a job offer was nothing - they were amazing! That stress was indeed nothing… compared to the stress I felt actually working for that person.

I always felt that I had a strong intuition. However, I also have a very analytical mind, which means I perfected the art of making choices by weighing pros and cons and calculating probabilities of success. You see, my intuition doesn’t give me decision criteria. If I don’t understand its reasoning, how can I justify the “irrational” choices it pushes me to make to other people?

Becoming a responsible adult is about learning to make the “right” choices - usually those with the safest financial or social outcomes. Coloring within the lines is rewarded from early childhood, to the point where we lose the connection to our own internal compass: The part of us that shockingly doesn’t care about money or status or what others think, but about what feels true to us and who is good for us. It’s fearless - in a world governed by fear. 

I learned the hard way that the word “should” - whether uttered by me or by others - is a big red flag for “I’m being asked to ignore my intuition”. Anything important we think we “should” do is likely something that deep down we don’t want to: Stay in a job because “it’s stable and a recession is coming”, get married because “there’s no reason not to” etc.

How do we rediscover that inner voice? By deciding that we want to. By watching for the “shoulds” and asking if they feel good in our body. By doing what feels intuitively right even if it’s not the “responsible” thing to do, first in some minor decision and then in bigger and bigger ones. By letting go of the need to justify every decision to others. By realizing it’s a long journey to undo years of training in ignoring our intuition. By knowing that sometimes there will be a price to pay - even a stiff one, but that it’s small compared to the price we’re paying for not being true to ourselves.

But most of all by getting quiet and listening to our heart, our gut - wherever that inner voice comes from, and not giving up even if we can’t hear anything. Yet.

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