Trusting Your Gut Involves A Fully Functional Pituitary Gland, Emotional Intelligence & A Broad Perspective
Intuition is that ‘inner knowing’ or a feeling in your gut when you instinctively know that something you are doing is either appropriate for you or inappropriate for you. Specifically, it’s our ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. It allows us to delve into the ‘what happens next’ through the use of all of our senses, which are generally unconscious. What’s more, it happens fast! However, learning how to trust your gut doesn’t happen quite so quickly.
How To Get In Touch With Your Intuition
In fact, seeking an answer from your inner guidance system by trying to force a connection can be unhelpful and prolong the process. You’ve got to create enough space to be receptive, you allow your profound insight or deeper intelligence to manifest in a way that you can read or perceive it.
Firstly, you’ll want to identify how your insight speaks to you. Do you see something, hear something, feel something or get a sense about something. As you start to explore this you can become more aware of yourself and the messages coming from this part of yourself.
Getting out in nature, changing up your routines, engaging in yoga and martial arts, or practising mindfulness and meditation can train your mind to be present in the moment. Moreover, stillness and a focus on your breathing can allow you to let go of thought crowds in your mind. Consequently, as the crowds in your mind dissipate, the quietness allows you to receive your inner messages.
Everyone knows what it’s like to experience a ‘gut feeling’. We get an idea about a situation or a person and we either repress that feeling and consider rely on our rational thinking to make a decision, or we find it challenging to commit to a decision and find ourselves in stressful ‘over-thinking’ hamster wheels. Actually, we can even make decisions and then spend long periods of time wondering if the decision was the right one.
Sometimes It's a Physical Block To Trusting Our Gut - Enter The Pituitary Gland
The pituitary, a small pea-sized gland that sits at the base of the brain, produces a number of hormones. Each of these hormones affects a specific part of the body. It’s often called the ‘master gland’ because it influences so many different bodily functions. So, the question is, how does a balanced pituitary gland help you to trust your gut and connect to your intuition?
Quite simply, an imbalance in the pituitary gland can create hormone imbalances that trigger mood swings, depression and isolation. Consequently, the concept of separation in the mind of a person detaches them from their inner teaching and social connection. When we can’t stop anxious thoughts, or re-running scenarios in our mind, it’s always a good idea to get our hormonal system checked to ensure the challenge is not physical.
What Does The Pituitary Gland Do?
The pituitary gland [1] secretes hormones that act on the adrenal glands, thyroid gland, ovaries and testes, which in turn produce other hormones. Through secretion of its hormones, the pituitary gland controls metabolism, growth, sexual maturation, reproduction, blood pressure and many other vital physical functions and processes.
Some symptoms of pituitary disorders are less commonly linked by medical professionals. The Pacific Neuroscience Institute states, “It has been documented that clinical depression and anxiety are common with pituitary disorders. Some patients report memory and mental confusion, anger and/or rage and even changes in a patient’s overall sense and awareness of themselves.” [2]
The Pituitary Gland Sits Behind Emotional Intelligence
When the pituitary gland is functioning as it should, we find ourselves in emotional balance. Specifically, emotional balance is the ability to have an awareness of our mindset in the moment. When we have a reaction, either positive or negative, we can take a step back and ask what part of us is reacting to an external event or a thought in a certain way. In fact, when we are in emotional balance we can access our emotional intelligence, giving ourselves the ability to distinguish between fear and intuition, knowing whether we’re reacting to our own demons or getting a message. Effectively, we can assess whether what we’re feeling about a situation is about us, or the situation. Moreover, we have the space to step back and question what our mind is focusing on.
The more we operate from emotional intelligence the greater potential we have to make friends with our gut feeling and intuition. In essence, we can take a much broader perspective and shift consciousness at will, enabling the connection of foresight as part of our inner teaching. It’s not logical, we just KNOW.
Should We Be Learning How To Trust Our Gut & Intuition In Business?
Increasingly, intuition and gut feelings are perceived to be important decision-making tools for high-level executives and CEOs. This study states “The effective use of intuition has even been seen as critical in differentiating successful top executives and board members from lower-level managers and dysfunctional boards (Agor, 1986;Barnard,1938;Harper,1989).” [3]
Back in 2011, Modesto Maidique wrote in the Harvard Business Review “analysis also plays a role, but intuition was found to be a major or determining factor in 85% of thirty-six major CEO decisions that we studied.” [4]
Now in 2020, we’re more accepting of ideas of Emotional Intelligence and Intuition. So, the real question is, can we train intuition and should we be developing it as a leadership skill?
Certaintly, the answer is yes. So, how do we do it? Clearly there are many ways to develop emotional intelligence and intuition. In fact, age and experience naturally develop these functions. It would be reasonable to suggest that the hungry fast-paced approach of youth does not necessarily cultivate the stillness that teaches us how to trust our gut. However, we can also work on our ability to trust our gut independently with coaching and using tools such as meditation.
Coaching In Business Supports The Development of Intuition
Coaching is a very useful tool for developing intuition. Firstly, to develop intuition we must first feel safe in our role and in our selves. This safety builds the foundation for trusting our decisions and building self-confidence and self-esteem. NLP Purpose Coaching is also a fast way to bring more harmony into our mind. We can work with a coach to release self-judgement and outdated ideas and beliefs that may have been limiting our perspective.
Secondly, we release old ideas that may limit our thinking, we also become less defensive and more open to ideas. We can see ourselves and others in a more expansive way, allowing us to develop a meta perspective that connects us to every element of our world from personal to business. When we’re more open, we’re more flexible and when we’re more flexible we have a greater chance of success. Moreover, we are more likely to see connection and similarity, generating more creative ideas and finding solutions and innovation everywhere.
Thirdly, coaching offers us a useful mirror. That is to say, an opportunity to keep our ego in check. When we work with someone who has no vested interested in our company or business, merely our success, we have a safe space to share our thoughts, ideas and opinions to assess whether they are being influenced by previous experiences or judgements in a helpful or unhelpful way. Quite frankly, this mirrored perspective is invaluable.
The Meditation World Looks To The Third Eye Chakra (Ajna) For Intuition And Gut Feeling
The Third Eye Chakra or sixth chakra find balance from an equilibrium in the lower chakras (1-5) and a subsequent balance between logic and intuition. People with balance in their third eye chakra tend to be highly charismatic, highly engaging and very intuitive indeed. Quite simply, a balanced third eye chakra allows us to see the flow of life, giving us the perspective to assess how situations may play out.
Many truly great scientists and inventors, such as Tesla, Einstein and Edison will freely admit that their discoveries came from their imagination rather than their logic. Specifically, one of Einstein’s theories came from a daydream where he imagined riding a sunbeam. After this particular imagining he concluded that the Universe is finite and curved. Fancy that!
The Archetypes of The Third Eye Chakra
Ruled by the elements of energy as light and linked to the planets of Neptune and Jupiter, our third eye chakra relates to our ability to see the flow and connection of every element of life experience. Moreover, it teaches us that wisdom and knowing operate far beyond the realms of knowledge and data; giving us access to a deeper level of unconscious knowing.
From an archetypal perspective, we are either The Rationalist or The Psychic.
The Rationalist
The Rationalist develops in us when we have have experiences that teach us not to trust our inner wisdom or our feelings and insights. We may even have grown up in a very logical household, or perhaps our feelings were ridiculed. Whatever the reason, we decide to repress our inner knowing and rely solely on external evidence or logic proof.
The Psychic
When we have taken the time to balance our lower chakras and work through our personal demons, we can start to trust and build confidence in our inner knowing.
We begin to understand the difference between living by the book and usings our instincts to guide us on our path. When we learn to hone our skills, we develop insights that can support us in any mode of creativity, healing and expression.
Opening To Possibilities
The simple truth is that we are entering the age of intuition and creative solutions. No matter what we believe or who we are, it’s time to hone our skills of inner wisdom and intuition so that know how to trust our gut. This skillset is now fundamentally important in all aspects of personal and business life. The intuitive will lead the future. Moreover, the future starts now.
If you’d like to learn more about the Chakra system, please read my article “9 Things You Should Know About Chakras.“
The Third Eye Chakra In And Out of Balance
Third Eye Chakra Spinning Too Fast
- Highly logical
- Dogmatic
- Authoritarian
- Arrogant
Blocked Third Eye Chakra
- Setting goals with no stretch
- Lack of confidence or trust
- Fear of success and/or failure
- Lack of self-discipline
- Extreme thoughts and emotional reactions
Watch My Third Eye Chakra Meditation - Self Help Tool
Use this 40-minute meditation to bring your third eye energy centre back into balance. Pop your headphones in and let go. All you have to do is follow the instructions.
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Find Out More About Working With Me
To find out more about coaching with me, or if you’d like to arrange a call to see if we’re a good fit for one another, please send me an email to sarah@sarahmerron.com.
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