Quieting your mind

If you want to get in touch with your inner voice, you must quiet your conscious mind. For some people, this involves a mind-relaxing activity such as running, walking, or fishing. Other people must sit quietly for a few minutes. Do whatever works for you in order to let those inner messages surface. Try meditation, which has been scientifically proven to increase mental clarity and thinking ability and integrate left- and right-brain functioning. Meditation also can improve physical, mental, and emotional health. If this is a new idea to you, you may have to practice. You have to work extra-hard to quiet your conscious mind until you get used to accepting the complete messages that come from the subconscious without explanation. As you do, the messages come to you more often and more clearly. Don’t be discouraged as you attempt this process, and remember that listening to your inner voice is a personal process. Your subconscious is your own storehouse of information, unlike anybody else’s. It’s where your entire life is captured. You can enjoy great success if you can use that information by following your inner voice.
The disadvantage of articulating answers and decisions brought to you by your subconscious is that you are unable to discuss the process that occurred or describe the logic that was used. You were not conscious of the process while it was occurring. You cannot explain the entire process to someone in the same way you can explain a conscious, logical path from problem to solution. The logic occurs too quickly and uses too many bits of data to explain rationally.
How many people in your life can question you about how you arrive at your decisions? The longer the list, the less comfortable you are with decisions that you cannot rationally explain. Very successful people have fewer people to answer to, which is one reason they can get away with intuitive problem solving. When the boss says, “I smell a rat!” nobody asks for a detailed analysis. Subordinates accept the intuitive process. “Put it in a memo” is simply not an appropriate response to the boss’s hunch . . . intuitive process . . . inner voice.
For a perfect example of someone getting in touch with her voice and then trusting it, see Little Miss Sunshine. This loopy, dark comedy of a road picture ends with 8-year-old Olive, played by Abigail Breslin, having to decide whether to compete in the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant. Her father and brother are passionately telling her not to do it. Her mother is telling her to go ahead with it. The camera pulls in tight on Olive’s face. She goes quiet for a moment. You can actually see her mind going quiet as she gets in touch with her inner voice. Then she makes her decision and follows through on it.
The scene is a good demonstration of the process of quieting your mind so
you can hear your inner voice, and it shows how the inner voice can be used
by anyone at any age in any situation.