How do you handle situations in which you simply don’t know the right answer? Life hands us these gems on a regular basis, and for many, it can become incredibly stressful. We reach out to friends and family. We talk to strangers (sometimes disguised as therapists). We journal. We cry. We pray. But do we ever just stop and listen? More often than not, we already know the right answer. We just don’t believe it. Things that seem to be pulling us in one direction are questioned, while we look for logic and reason in other places. We ignore our built-in intuition that speaks volumes, if only we would have eyes to see and ears to listen.
As a fifth grade teacher in a public school, I spend a significant amount of time preparing my students for standardized testing. One issue we run into over and over is that of listening to our intuition. My students are notorious for overthinking their answers. They will choose the correct answer because something inside them told them it was the right choice. Then they will read the question again, interpret the answer choices differently than they did the first time and change their originally-correct answer to a wrong answer that they feel better equipped to defend. The problem lies in the fact that on the test, no one will be listening to their logical explanation or defense. When the test is being evaluated, they either made a right choice or a wrong choice.
We tend to do the same thing in our daily lives, whether with major decisions or small issues. Chocolate or vanilla ice cream? Short hair or long? Private college or state university? Usually, we actually already know the answer. That’s our intuition whispering to us from within the depths. But unless we still our minds, become quiet, and pay attention, we will not be able to know if that small voice is our own or one of the many other noises that crowd our thinking. The good news is, once we begin to tune into our intuition, it will become easier. It becomes easier to hear that voice. It becomes easier to know which voice is yours. It becomes easier to trust that it has your best interest at heart, since it’s your heart, after all.
Recently I was talking to a friend about a major decision I was facing. There were definitely pros and cons to be considered. It was not something to be taken lightly. I kept saying that I would rather make a responsible decision than a rash one and have to clean up the mess later. But as I discussed the pros and cons, my friend kindly pointed out that it sounded as though I already knew the answer. The funny thing was, she never told me which side I seemed to be leaning toward. Just by saying those words—“It sounds like you already know the answer”—she bolstered my confidence to hear my intuition whispering to me what I really had wanted all along. The more I choose to trust my intuition, the more I find that I make good decisions. The more I see positive results from trusting, the easier it becomes to listen and act on what I already know to be right.
So what happens, you may be asking, if we take this leap of faith in our intuition and realize later that we’ve made a mistake? My personal answer to this would simply be: learn. Learn from the mistakes. Let them teach you—find value in them. What was the lesson? Where was the misguided step? What could you do differently next time? As a teacher, I value mistakes more than right answers. Once a student makes a mistake, they are far more likely to pay attention as I show them the correct way of doing their work. When a child feels so confident in their own abilities, they often stop listening and thus learning. As adults, we tend to be the same way. Fortunately, very few mistakes in life are as permanent as they first appear. There will always be a chance to redirect your course. As you redirect, choose to listen. Choose to trust. You may even find, upon reflection, that the mistake lay simply in not listening and trusting your intuition the first time.
