Many things in life form part of a cycle. The thing about cycles is that they end where they once started, but we can choose to either break those cycles or make new beginnings happen. The life cycle of intuition, once we have realised how we have been socialised to ignore it, gives us a chance to put it to better use. However, starting over with anything is not easy and we need some perspective. A good perspective to start with is the gift of hindsight. With hindsight, one can observe situations, witness their outcomes and rewrite those outcomes by imagining what we could have done to avoid adverse outcomes. This is a form of practice and preparation for future occurrences of similar nature – another useful element of the cyclical ways of life.
Once we have practised, the opportunity to use intuition anew will come again, but the practice is simply a guide. A decision still has to be made at the moment. Complementary resources to the intuition that must also be sharpened are emotional intelligence and memory. We have to develop the ability to recognise patterns and apply the lessons they teach us. Saying this, I think it is important to note that this is not possible for everyone, especially those who live with executive dysfunction as a result of neurodivergence. If you can’t recognise and respond to patterns as a result, it does not mean your efforts are wasted, but simply that you need additional tools that can be provided by a mental health practitioner.
We sharpen our emotional intelligence by engaging our emotions and the signals they send us. Feelings like fear, anxiety, sadness, excitement, and joy are things we must take notice of and be able to contextualise. Where and when we feel these emotions give us clues to the environments we should embrace and which we should avoid. These are often experiences that recur and every time it happens we have a chance to respond differently based on what we have learned. This is an important resource for us to use in curating our social interactions for our benefit and the benefit of those around us. As time goes by, we don’t need to find ourselves in certain situations anymore to know how they will end.
When we find ourselves in new situations, we would have engaged our emotions sufficiently to let them guide our decision-making processes, allowing us to proceed or retreat. This ability also filters into our ability to form better relationships. Reading situations is easier than reading people, and I would be the first to say that we cannot know people completely, but as we avoid messy situations more frequently we also tend to notice who are the people involved in those situations and learn to avoid those characteristics.
Ultimately, using intuition requires that we retain the lessons it teaches us and that requires attention. This inclination towards perceptiveness is a resource that ends up shaping the way we interact and how we show up for others. It makes for authentic and genuine interactions in which details matter. Better ways to interact and do relationships are always available to us, and intuition and its helpers can show us the way, but it is up to us to take the steps.