7 Tips for Improving Your Performance with Intuition

By taking a moment to focus on what's going on just below the surface of the object-and-event world, you can prevent unnecessary mistakes and wasted time, find accurate answers more quickly, communicate without distortion, light upon workable innovations, and market yourself more contagiously. Here are a few shortcuts to tune in to your intuitive self:

1. Make space for surprises. Learn to identify your judgments and attitudes about the way the world works, who you think you are, or how it "should" be—and be able to suspend those ideas temporarily. Maybe life could teach you something new if you let yourself become innocent, like a child again—with "beginner's mind."

2. Become friends with your feelings. Just as there is no such thing as failure (there's only feedback), there are no "bad" emotions. Emotions are simply energy coming from your body bearing messages. Feelings and emotions will move through you and evolve to their next level of expression, if you don't label them, eventually turning into an Ah-ha!

3. Consciously pause between actions. Throughout the day, remind yourself to drop into the here-and-now and feel the world from your body's simple perspective. Life is proceeding in harmony. There's something "just right" about each situation. What is it?

4. Cultivate the habit of acknowledging yourself and others for good deeds, successes, uniqueness, and beauty. Speak words that benefit others and the world, that describe what's real in the present moment. Intuition flows when you see the glass half full.

5. Develop the "warrior's attention." Like a great samurai, be alert and present 100%, in each moment, 360 degrees around you. Be ready to act, without any biases. Practice "engaged indifference."

6. Learn to check with your body and your "reptile brain" to see what you instinctively want to do next. Don't assume that once you've decided, the choice will last forever. Check in many times throughout the day: "Now what feels right? Am I totally comfortable, at the deepest level, with this course of action?" Intuition first occurs in the body, and what's true always has "juice." Let go of needing things to be nailed down in advance. You can still have a vision and goals, you can still make plans, but let it all be fluid. Visions and plans evolve constantly. Affirm to yourself: "I know what I need to know exactly when I need to know it." In any given moment, there's just one piece of information, one urge, one action, that's a perfect fit.