Training Intuition 🏋️

I believe we can train ourselves to listen to our intuition. Relational mindfulness does this. By allowing ourselves to include more types of input in our relational network—not just body, not just emotions, not just thoughts, not just awareness, but all of them, plus intuitions, stillness, allegorical/dreamlike images, group “vibes”, etc—we tighten feedback loops and give ourselves real-time data on our intuitive hits.

If you suddenly start wondering about someone’s mom, you can ask them if what they’re saying is related to their mom. To the extent that you trust their commitment to the relational context of truth, their response lets you know how to classify that feeling, and what kind of risk you can take in the future.

There are better and worse ways to interpret the intuitive signals. A key factor in good relating is not assuming we know what it means. Sometimes people have super clear intuitions that tell them what to do, like “call your friend now” or “don’t walk down that dark alley”. But most of the time it’s like a compass heading that tells us a direction to go without telling us what we’re going to find there. In the above example, if I assume it’s about their mom instead of my mom, or the mom archetype showing up in the group or something else, I’ll miss the potential the intuition is pointing to, the same way I’ll miss if I fail to take a leap of faith, and risk the embarrassment of bringing in the weird intuition. We can learn to separate the signal from the noise by paying attention to the feelings, running experiments, and being honest with ourselves about the results. But it requires a surrender into the unknown; a willingness to show up somewhat “unfinished”; to bring a half-baked intuition and let the relationship finish the baking for us.

With love, Jordan