Why is it we only hear about a woman’s intuition?  We very seldom hear about a man’s intuition.  Is it because they never listen to it?  Or are men generally all practical, reasoning beings while women go by how they feel?  Sometimes women are judged as being weak because they may go with a feeling or that intuition, sometimes over what seem to be logical, cold hard facts.  But what if paying attention to and following that intuition is what makes us more discerning, more relationship oriented, more powerful?  What if our superpower in this world is following that still small voice of intuition.

Do you ever just “know”?  Like you meet someone and you just “know” they’re the right person for the job or they’re a soul mate?  Perhaps you walk into a job interview and you know it’s “the one” or, despite how great things look on paper, you just get that feeling that this is not the right place for you. How often do we dismiss this kind of thing because there’s no way we could possibly just know?  I can name the times in my life when I went with my intuition instead of what made sense logically, and those are the times my forward movement was amazing.  I can also name those times when talked myself out of my intuition and was, at the very least uncomfortable and at the most, miserable.  Notice I said I talked MYSELF out of my intuition.  It doesn’t always have to be from the outside.

The problem with not going with your intuition is that it means you’re not where you’re supposed to be.  It means that someone is missing out on your gifts and that you’re expending your gifts in a place that just isn’t right.  Chances are you’re giving and giving all you have to make something work that’s just not meant to be, and your bucket is empty.  Oh, friends and family will work hard to support you and help, but it’s like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.  It’s just not where you were meant to be.

Now I was raised to finish what I started, to honor a commitment.  I was told as a youngster that I was lazy and I work very hard so that others don’t believe that about me.  But if you’re working against your intuition, you’re really working against yourself.  Your soul becomes sick, and eventually, it shows up in other places – your mind and body follow suite.  Everything is interconnected, so if one part isn’t working the way it should, none of it does.  If I’m forcing something that doesn’t bring me joy and a sense of satisfaction, using the gifts I have, that emotional turmoil will eventually manifest itself in my body.  I can push through it all I want, but eventually, it pushes back.

Sure, I could blame this on any number of things, a need to prove something to myself or others, to make more money, to meet other’s expectations of me.  It’s not that people want the worst for me, sometimes they want the best and believe I can do certain things.  It’s not that I can’t, it’s that it’s just not me.  I am the person responsible for my life – in the end, all along, it has been up to me.

I’ve been told that I’m a failure if I walk away from something and so I believe if I quit something, I am truly the failure they told me I was.  But what if I’m pushing to do something that I wasn’t really meant to do in the first place?  I gave it the old college try but life is short.  

The truth is that I can stop anything at any time.  I can just say no.  I can just let go.  I need to know that no matter what I do, whether I stay and do something I’m not meant to do or if I leave something unfinished because it isn’t where my strengths lie, people will have their own opinions.  I can’t control what people think, I can only control myself.  Harder than it sounds.  So hard that I tend to let others drown out my intuition, making me feel like I’m making the wrong, illogical decisions, taking the easy way out, not working hard enough.  How much of my life have I given away because I’ve done what I’ve hoped people would be proud of?  

At my age, these are difficult questions.  Even should I live to be 90, two thirds of my life are gone.  Have I been fulfilling my mission on earth, or just following the prescribed path that makes us look successful?  Is it finally time to stop all the voices, mine included, that are drowning out the voice of my intuition?  Is it time to free myself from the “what ifs” and embrace the “what can be”?  Imagine the freedom!