Having a strong sense of creative intuition plays in hand-in-hand with being a confident creative. If you can’t trust your own creative intuition, how can you ever truly give into the unforgiving dance that is the creative process? Have you ever encountered someone who is just so confident in their own abilities and processes that nothing seems to phase them? That’s a strong sense of creative intuition. They know that their gut will guide them to the end result they inherently desire.
But let’s back up. What exactly is creative intuition? Creative intuition is the ability to quickly identify valuable or useful creative ideas without conscious thought. As with all intuition, it is instantaneous without any conscious understanding of how the mind created the idea. A successful creative relies on their intuition just as much as their skillset, using strategy and intuition in equal measure. They trust and follow those inner hunches and gut feelings that tell them to drop a project if it no longer ‘feels right,’ or to persevere with a project that presents numerous challenges or difficulties because they know it will work out.
Don’t let yourself get discouraged, though. Luckily, your creative intuition is like a muscle you can grow and strengthen, as long as you work on it. Those gut feelings come easier to some, but they truly stem from experience. Highly developed creative intuition is a secret weapon. It gives you all kinds of information you wouldn’t normally have. This isn’t the brain analyzing; this is nonlinear knowledge. It’s a second kind of intelligence. You want to use both.
Ready to give it a try? Here are four simple steps that are sure to increase your creative intuition:
Listen to your gut. Literally.
It’s not news to us that your gut and your brain are inextricably linked for better or worse. The chemical messages that pass between the two has a huge effect on a variety of components of your overall wellbeing. So believe it or not, your digestive system can help improve your creative intuition. Enhance that aspect of your intuition by checking in with your gut when you have decisions to make. When you’re working on a creative project, set an intention before the interview to listen with both your mind and your gut. Notice the physical sensations in both areas and ask yourself how this decision makes you feel.
Release your resistance
Don’t call yourself crazy when you get an intuitive hunch. Often, our cognitive mind argues with intuition rather than trusting it. By doing this, you may rationalize yourself out of intuitive knowing that could completely change your creative course for the better.
Learn from your past
Recall a negative experience in your creative process from your recent past. Was there a certain project you failed to complete or something that just didn’t turn out the way you wanted? Before this thing happened, think back to whether you got any feelings that urged you to try a different path. Maybe you got a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. Maybe you had a foreshadowing dream or a vision. If so, did you pay attention to that feeling, dream or vision, or did you talk yourself out of it? Try to remember exactly how you felt. Recall as many details as possible. The more you can get in touch with the part of you that tried to warn you, the more you’ll trust it next time.
Turn to meditation
Meditation helps you quiet down and listen to what your body and mind are trying to tell you. It’s a skill that helps you brush away all of the dust and rubble that’s collected in the everyday slog of life, and get to the bottom of things that you might not even know are affecting you.
Looking for more tips on strengthening your intuition? These books are some of my favorites:
