How to follow your intuition in life ?

[Rishabh R]

@Ramanujan I used to take MBTI and could possibly check them in the future too.

And as per the book I prefer contemplation more than it.

[Ramanujan]

3 hours ago, Rishabh R said:

 

And as per the book I prefer contemplation more than it.

ok 

good luck

[Rishabh R]

58 minutes ago, Ramanujan said:

ok 

good luck

Thanks

[Sugarcoat]

I think what helps is decluttering the mind to make space for the intuition, to hear it better. Sometimes it can be subtle so not always easy to follow. So that means for example getting rid of neurosis, stressors, distractions etc

[theleelajoker]

On 12.7.2025 at 8:23 AM, Joshe said:

Intuition is kind of domain specific. Whatever realms you like to dwell in, that’s the realm your intuition will develop in. I used to enjoy analyzing human psychology, behavior, and motives. As a result, I developed high intuition in that area, but this does not transfer over to the stock market, lol. 

Whatever you want to get good at intuiting, you have spend time in that realm observing, asking questions, making predictions, reviewing and fixing your mistakes. 

If we’re talking about developing the intuitive faculty itself as to be more robust in general, I’m not sure how much one can develop that, but if you could, developing metacognition seems like it could be a force multiplier. 

Also, I think it’s in the way you use your mind. For example, I noticed that when I observe a dog’s behavior, if I see it do something that I don’t understand, I immediately begin trying to solve that puzzle.  I might spend 30 seconds contemplating it’s behavior before I come up with some reasons to explain it. I might come up 3 reasons but can confirm neither, but I will choose (predict) what I think the answer is. 

Then, in the future when more data comes in, I will eventually be able to solve the mystery, and because I went through the process of contemplation and prediction, it all gets lodged in my head somewhere and pops back up the moment the data I need to solve the mystery shows up. 

Constantly treating reality like this would give you relatively high intuition. Most people don’t give a shit about why the dog did what it did, but I want to know. As a result, I can predict dog’s behavior and know what’s going on with it in a split second.

 I have a feeling high intuition is strongly correlated with high Need for Cognition and metacognition. 

So I think a lot of it has to do with asking questions non stop and trying to find the answer but not jumping to conclusions. Leaving the possibilities on the table, waiting for them to be confirmed or removed.

Great comment IMO. Agree.

Btw, yoga sutra says very similar things. Wherever you put your intention, you'll improve.

Life, God, universe - wherever wisdom comes from - will give you gradual insights as long as you put time, focus, effort. Openness and curiosity are key.

Edited Monday at 09:31 PM by theleelajoker

[Joshe]

1 hour ago, theleelajoker said:

Great comment IMO. Agree.

Btw, yoga sutra says very similar things. Wherever you put your intention, you'll improve.

Life, God, universe - wherever wisdom comes from - will give you gradual insights as long as you put time, focus, effort. Openness and curiosity are key.

Thanks! Yeah, I don't think it's some magical thing you just receive without any work. Curiosity is a good word. 

It's more like a muscle and thinking exercises the muscle. So if one is prone to do a lot of thinking, that seems to be a prerequisite, but not necessarily enough.

If someone is highly aware of their own thoughts (metacognition), those thoughts are more real, more experiential, which means they would lodge into the subconscious more deeply, thus being more accessible for intuitive processing. This is why I think metacognition would be a force multiplier. 

But also, you can make things lodge even deeper in the subconscious by how you engage with the thoughts. For me, if I engage in some sort of probabilistic thinking, that seems to make things stick in my head for a very long time because I have some sort of stake in the game. When I claim something is highly likely and it turns out to be false, that really sticks out to me and I correct it. Over time, this correction mechanism pays dividends for intuition, or at least filtering intuition. In this case, the intuition or filtering is enhanced by the correction mechanism. 

All just speculation really, but my best understanding so far. 

Still haven't gotten around to checking out the yoga sutra. Thanks for the info. 

Edited Monday at 10:55 PM by Joshe

[Joshe]

[Rigel]

On 2025-07-11 at 6:44 PM, Davino said:

For me, the way to sharp intuition is by serious feedback mechanisms after following through your intuition.

By burning your feet in the fire of truth is that a solid and sharp intuition is developed.

In other words: fuck up & learn

[theleelajoker]

The best advice I got was from a girl some years ago. We talked about intuition.

I told a story where I was in the subway, heading the wrong way without knowing it (I mixed up the directions). As I was sitting in the subway, I got a strange feeling. I also overheard other people's conversations about stops on the way, and I had this strange impression of "hmm does not sound like the way I'm heading, strange they talk about stop XYZ".

When I write this now, it seems clear, but I didn't think these words, there was just a strange feeling. It's like seeing an outline in the fog, but not enough to recognize what it is. So, I stayed in the subway and found out 30 min later that I fucked up the directions 🤣

I told this story to the girl, and she just looked at me and asked, in a friendly way sth like "why not listen to this feeling? Why not act on this feeling? What reason did you have to not trust yourself?"

I had simply had no answer to these questions.

Some years later, I still remember this part of our conversation. Grateful because she opened up a door for me to trust "these strange feelings" more and more over time. 

Women in general have been/ are a great teacher for me re intuition. Not saying that men don't have this, or cannot be at the same level of intuition as women. But watching my sister, GFs etc act has resulted in great learnings. I learned to not ask them how they do it because it gets them into their mind and then the connection to their intuition gets blurred/ lost (which might be a good pointer how to not improve your intuition 🤣)

 

[Aaron p]

Generally increasing in intelligence and wisdom makes you more intuitive. Everything that we do here will increase your intelligence and wisdom so I'd be tempted to say that the most direct avenue to increasing subtle intuitive clarity is just pursue enlightenment. And at the same time just constantly rely on your intuition in active situations in life. It's a skill that typically accompanies high level developments of mind as a byproduct. 

Think of the law enforcement agents at high levels, they are paid to do more than just follow the rules, push buttons and pull levers. High level detectives will rely *heavily* on intuitive senses at times. They are just high level people. I'd also say that, with intuition, simplicity is your friend. Sometimes you'll get a feeling and just sense it without any ability to articulate it in the mind or by words and you just follow it and sit with it and use all information to derive as accurate of a message as possible. Then you can respond to that message. 

For example I use my peace as a compass in life. If I have a disturbed peace about something, usually it's trying to tell me something. Your body speaks to you every minute of every day, listen to it. After the simplicity is established with a gauge as to the level of assurance and opacity of each message...you can build more complex stuff on top of it. You'd be absolutely shocked at how much information you can get by doing this practice after 10 years...and I hope I'm going to be shocked in another 10. 

 

I've got so good at reading stuff off people that I can nearly instantly tell if someone, for example, has difficult marriage or tons of other mad shit. It's like a second sight. Shits dope. When it gets the point where you don't even need any contact with a person or situation to know what happening in it it's gets more spiritual. Christians call it word of knowledge. (I can do it)

Edited yesterday at 11:56 AM by Aaron p

[Joshe]

7 hours ago, theleelajoker said:

I told a story where I was in the subway, heading the wrong way without knowing it (I mixed up the directions). As I was sitting in the subway, I got a strange feeling. I also overheard other people's conversations about stops on the way, and I had this strange impression of "hmm does not sound like the way I'm heading, strange they talk about stop XYZ".

When I write this now, it seems clear, but I didn't think these words, there was just a strange feeling. It's like seeing an outline in the fog, but not enough to recognize what it is. So, I stayed in the subway and found out 30 min later that I fucked up the directions 🤣

I told this story to the girl, and she just looked at me and asked, in a friendly way sth like "why not listen to this feeling? Why not act on this feeling? What reason did you have to not trust yourself?"

That’s a good anecdote. This type of intuition is what I was referring to as the general intuitive faculty (my own term, probably not the best). I’m not sure how you’d go about improving this. Increased metacognition would allow you to be more aware of the patterns, micro-observations, subconscious cues, etc… but how do you actually train or develop this kind of intuition? I suspect one has it or they don’t, or maybe most people have it but lack awareness/metacognition such that they rarely notice it.

Women do seem to be more intuitive. I think you have a good point that thinking can get in the way. 

Maybe the key for this kind of intuition is to just become aware of the mental processing and to reach a place where fewer and fewer things slip through the cracks. It is something like an openness. Subtle patterns would be harder to detect if one uses the majority of their mental bandwidth on thinking. For me, I bounce back and forth between open perception and thinking very quickly. If one’s default state were predominantly thinking, maybe that’s a blocker of this kind of intuition. 

But the other type of intuition is like the intuition of a chess master. Their trained intuition is what allows them to play 20 opponents simultaneously, just by glancing at each board for a few seconds, then make their move and move onto the next board. Every chess pro records their moves for review. 

So yeah, it’s a good idea to differentiate between these two types of intuition. 

 

Edited 21 hours ago by Joshe