The Answer Is Within You

I’d like to believe that I live according to my intuition.

For starters, I write and read tarot cards for a living. I have precognitive dreams, with glimpses of the future that eventually play out. I pen stories that feel as though they’re channeled onto the page — after the fact, I have no memory of having written them. I keep a loose editorial calendar of future newsletter topics, but sometimes a piece won’t feel “right” for a given week, and I’ll go in another direction. In many ways, I feel my way through life, an approach I am proud of.

And yet. There are times when I don’t listen.

When the message isn’t fun, or is terribly inconvenient, or threatens to upset someone, or flies in the face of rational thought. Like the feeling that arises on the wrong side of a coin toss, the answer may be loud and clear. But I choose to ignore it.

There was the time we found a rent-stabilized apartment in our dream location with enough room for both my husband and me to have in-home workspaces. On paper, it looked ideal. Yet when we signed the lease — a reason for celebration — I burst into tears. The feeling lingered for days. I’d walk by our future home, squinting up at the windows, sensing what I can only describe as a weird, foreboding energy. Though logic supplied nothing to support it, I couldn’t escape the feeling that this move was a very bad idea.

We talked through it every which way — the place was a gem, an upgrade, the answer to our space-related struggles. Surely, rationally, we were just resistant to change, filled with nostalgia for the home we were leaving. There was no concrete reason not to take it.

We packed our stuff and forged ahead, my heart growing heavier with every step. Our furniture was barely across the threshold when we discovered we’d landed atop the neighbor from hell.

Other examples abound — the job I’d describe as a “complete nightmare;” people who set red flags waving in my gut; trends I attempted because other people swore by them — all of which looked good enough on paper for rationality to override my inner knowing. The good news is, I’ve learned. Now, when I feel that kernel of solid, unmovable dread, I trust it, no matter how shiny or tempting an opportunity may seem.

Yet this isn’t the full spectrum of intuition.

Put another way, I’ve grown fluent in stop signs. But I still struggle to see — and trust — the green lights. This is especially true when they light a path I am forging for myself.

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As Annie Dillard famously put it, how we spend our days is how we spend our lives. By this logic, all the micro decisions we make without even noticing — the Sliding Doors moments, so to speak — create the arc of our larger narratives. It stands to reason that heeding our intuition in small, everyday ways not only trains us to recognize its guidance but ultimately shepherds us toward alignment.

In many ways, intuition is the copilot of this experiment. It led me to the concept, as well as the themes and topics I plan to explore. What would happen if, for just one season, you didn’t let logic run the show? it asked. What if you let me lead you to each next step?

This was both scary and tempting. What would happen if, instead of thinking myself into a tizzy trying to weigh what the numbers say, or what society demands, or whether a move is “sensible” or “advisable” or “likely profitable,” or whether my actions would please someone/everyone else, I did my best to lean into my feelings? I really couldn’t say, because despite placing intuition on a pedestal, that’s not how I normally live.

It seemed worth finding out.

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Before we go further, it probably makes sense to determine what, exactly, I mean by intuition.

Is it pattern recognition? Coincidence? Confirmation bias?

Is it predictive? Prophetic? Primal?

…and how do we access and interpret it?