If I had to tell people one thing about myself that I absolutely despise, it’s this – I hate that I ignore the signs and messages that my Introverted Intuition (Ni) sends me on a daily basis. Even when it has lined the messages with neon red LED lights and flashed them in front of my face, I still manage to disbelieve its importance, or veracity.
It’s not just me, though. Lots of INFJs message or email me on a weekly basis with stories of how they ignored their intuition to their own detriment, and that still didn’t teach them to stop doing that foolishness. It irks us to no end. We are like Spiderman who knows he has the capacity to save the world, but spends all of his city chasing after Lois Lane instead. I mean, lust aside, how many people in the world have such a powerful intuition at their fingertips? Not many.
Why can’t we just appreciate the messages coming to us from our intuition? Can’t we just believe what it says? Why do we doubt its accuracy, time and time again? Why do we falter and disbelieve and end up needing more proof?
How Do INFJs Know What We Know – Where Does It Come From?
One of the many reasons I have a hard time believing my intuition is because sometimes I just know these random things without actually knowing how I know them.
For example, one afternoon I was walking through a market in Medellin, Colombia. With my sister. And she decided she wanted to copy one of those K-pop bands she follows. She wanted a pair of suspenders. Ah, what? How am I supposed to find suspenders here for her? I looked around and my eyes fell upon a vendor who was selling leather belts. Hmm, I thought to myself. He will have them, I told my sister. We went over to him and in my broken Spanish and through the help of Google images, got a pair of suspenders for her.
How did I know he would have suspenders? My intuition told me so. Why? How? Whatttt?
Authenticity Of Intuition’s Message
In this way, we begin to doubt the authenticity of the messages that our intuition sends us, because we have no idea how we could get to know some of the things we end up intuiting.
There’s also the other aspect of it – when we were children, we believed in our intuition more. But we were told over and over again by overly protective, cautious caregivers, that we shouldn’t rely on a random voice in our head. It’s false. It doesn’t know what it’s talking about. Focus on what you can see and touch. Only your first five senses matter. Not your sixth sense, whatever they might be.
It’s black magic, witchery, and hogwash.
Thus, slowly over time, we end up not believing what our intuition tells us. We would be better off believing what our eyes, and ears tell us. What we can see and what we can hear. Nothing else matters. The physical world is all that counts. There is nothing else. Or so we are taught.
Thankfully, As We Grow Older, INFJs Begin To Trust Their Intuition Again
It took me until my mid-twenties to really begin trusting my intuition again. Until that point, I was ignoring its messages to me, and living a life far away from my ideal.
It would keep on tapping on my head saying, “You need to be a writer, you need to share your ideas, you need to do more creative things.” And I would ignore it. I would see the message, and I would paint something over it – Ah, you are saying, I need to buy more shoes, and make more money, so I can in turn buy more shoes. Done.
Finally, in my 25th or 26th year, as I did more and more yoga, and learned to tune into my mind-body connection, I realized the power of my intuition, and how I had been misinterpreting it all this time. It was an important messenger and I had been shooting it down cold without even bothering to listen to it.
Listen To Your Intuition
I decided to do everything to listen to my intuition then and focused my efforts on building my connection with it. It took a while, and through intense measures, such as a daily morning meditation practice, a daily long walk, journaling, deep breathing, and yoga, I was able to repair the bond to my intuition again.
I notice this trend in many of the INFJs I speak to. Many of us tend to recover this broken connection to our intuition in our late twenties, and early thirties. It is as if we are born again INFJs.
Listen And Learn – The Messages Are Given To Us For A Reason
The problem, as I have said earlier, is that we believe as INFJs that we are unworthy of our intuition. Or we are just hearing random voices, unrelated to anything useful.
Either way, the key here is to rebuild your affinity to your brand of intuition. Different people will receive the messages of their intuition differently. Some receive it while they are dancing in their living room listening to Bob Marley. Others receive it while they are sitting absolutely still and observing their breath in a morning meditation. And yet others receive it from their children and their brutally honest questions.
There are many ways the messages of an intuitive universe can come at you. Sometimes it bubbles up from your internal subconscious. Other times it comes at you from a billboard that you pass by everyday, but you never noticed until today.
The point of all of this is to realize that the messages are being sent to you for a reason. Your intuition has something important to tell you. Stop. Listen. Assimilate. And use it all to enhance yourself and your life. Become the best version of yourself, using your intuition’s power.
It’s totally possible for you. If I can do it, you can do it as well.
