Lately, out of necessity, I’ve thought a lot about intuition. For a little over a year, I have been in a relationship with a beautiful woman. And even though I love her deep and dearly, doubts and thoughts constantly cloud my relationship to her. So, to combat these, I’m working to get more in touch with intuition, and quite frankly wondering what the hell it is.

It seems to me many people have different ideas of what it is. For my sake, it’s simply knowing how I should live without constantly being clouded by doubts, confusion, and the devil’s advocate.

The devil’s advocate… “One who argues against a cause or position, not as a committed opponent but simply for the sake of argument or to determine the validity of the cause or position.”

As an example, I was talking to my therapist about a recent situation of ours. I kept stumbling over my words and the conversation. I would start to say something and quickly stumble. My therapist says, “You have it. For a brief moment you have it, then confusion arises and blocks your thinking.” This really struck me. My first thought is my intuition, I thought, then all of these counter thoughts and counterpoints pile on – causing me to not trust that first spark of genius. They’re all playing devil’s advocate.

In a book called the 5 personality patterns, there’s one type of human expression who lives his life controlled by this confusion. It’s called the rigid pattern. The rigid pattern develops often from a rule-strict society or rule-strict parenting. A child grows up being out of touch with how he feels and what he wants because he’s constantly told rules, don’t run in the house, don’t scream, boys don’t cry. And what develops is a strong ego, so that every time the boy feels sadness, his ego, the devil’s advocate, jumps into action, “Boys do NOT cry,” and the boy becomes confused and conflicted.

This is what was happening to me. Let’s say, my thought is I want to buy her roses, I want to get closer to her again. Quickly, my devil confuses me by chiming about how she hasn’t done anything like that for me recently. And on and on, it goes.


So my practice of getting in touch with my intuition has started. Once I can recognize this, I can live how I want, without confusion and doubts hindering my freedom. This all has sparked many ideas of how to use intuition in writing. (Being in touch with it is similar to the flow state, I’m thinking.) In this series, I hope to discover and define what exactly intuition is, enabling me to leverage it throughout my life, and to discover how this all applies to my writing.