I Don't Know What To Do | Betraying Intuition
Have you ever caught yourself uttering these words…”I don’t know what to do?”This one phrase has been sticking out like a sore thumb and popping up everywhere lately. I hear people repeating it as if on scripted autopilot.Reality check: If you have thought it, you are merely distracting yourself from your own intuition. And if you have mentioned it to someone else, you probably aren’t really going to listen to their response anyway. So what’s the point of this exercise? It’s kind of like running in circles chasing your tail. But you don’t have a tail, and this is simply a bad habit.Can we regroup a minute?Lose the – “I don’t know what to do,” and replace it with – “let me sit with this a moment to figure out how I really feel about this situation.” There is nothing more pure and authentic, working for your highest good, than your very own built-in GPS. The issue is that when your intuition tells you something you don’t want to hear, you keep on trudging along on your merry way pretending you didn’t hear a thing.One of Don Miguel Ruiz’s 4 Agreements is to be impeccable with our words. OK- so when you mumble, “I don’t know what to do” about such and such – ask yourself, is that the truth? It is certainly the convenient-unconscious-bad habit truth, but it isn’t reality because you do know what to do, you have just forgotten how to access it.“I don’t know what to do,” is really code for – I don’t want to offend someone, I don’t want to hurt so-and-so’s feelings, I’m uncomfortable speaking up for myself, etc. Why is it more comfortable to be uncomfortable in our own skin? This laundry list of excuses can go on to infinity and beyond. One of my brilliant Best Self Magazine co-creators recently told me, “the thing that is best for you, will be best for everyone in the long run.” Snap! The martyr in me initially scoffed at that thinking. It sounded selfish, but it instantly resonated with me from another perspective.Have you ever found yourself doing something because you feel it is what someone else wants to you to do? We were given intuition for a reason…to use it! Betraying your intuition is throwing yourself under the bus. When we make decisions for the wrong reasons, we may not please anyone. The results of that experiment: you’ve betrayed yourself and still no one’s happy.If you don’t care for yourself, you can’t care for others.Could you catch yourself the next time you begin to go down the “I don’t know what to do path?” Could you reframe instead by asking yourself:•What feels right to me in this situation?•What is my intuition telling me?•What am I going to feel best about?Could you simply say – I actually do know what to do in this situation. I don’t need to look outward, or ask for approval – I simply need to touch base with my internal navigation and bravely state my truth. The more we flex this muscle, the sooner the “I don’t know what to do’s” fade away into the horizon. And if you can catch someone else saying it, be the beacon – remind them of their inner strength and ultimate power to make conscious choices.Our words, used improperly, can be powerful bad habits like any other addiction. Let’s use our power (and our words) for good!
“We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.”