How to Tell Your Intuition From Your Ego - Battle of Your Inner Voices

July 14, 2008

Photo by Hryckowian

Your instincts, your intuition, your gut, your heart. All things that are supposed to tell you the truth, right? All things that give advice which, when heeded, cannot fail, right? If that’s true then why do we still make wrong choices? Just think if we could discern when the information we’re feeling is “right” and when it’s leading us in the wrong direction. We would never again have to live in fear or in doubt of our own abilities. We would live everyday knowing that we’re heading in the right direction and could never be lead astray. Imagine the freedom that this would grant you! But how do you tell the difference between a decision made out of fear and one made out of intuition? We’ve all experienced moments in our lives when we felt a flash of “insight” and suddenly knew the right path to take in our lives. What was different between that decision and one that failed horribly?

Just think if we could discern when the information we’re feeling is “right” and when it’s leading us in the wrong direction. We would never again have to live in fear or in doubt of our own abilities. We would live everyday knowing that we’re heading in the right direction and could never be lead astray. Imagine the freedom that this would grant you!

To understand the differences, we must first understand how these two methods of decision making manifest themselves. They can manifest through mental symptoms, meaning they both illicit not only different types of emotions but also different types of thoughts. Learning to identify the type of thought is far easier than identifying differences in content. The physical manifestations are far more varied, spanning the gamut of sensations from an ecstatic buzz to total numbness. By going through how each manifests mentally and physically and the differences between them we can identify the larger trends and learn to tell one from the other when they arise in the moment.

For the sake of simplicity in this article we’ll stick to the terms insight and ego. Insight is the decision made from your “higher self” or your intuition. Ego is the fear-based rationalization put forward by your mind.

Let’s start with ego, not only is it more easily recognizable, it also the more often experienced of the two.

Posted in Emotions, Fear, Happiness, Motivation, Self Improvement, The Mind