How To Trust Your Inner Voice | Jack Canfield

Hi, I'm Jack Canfield, co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and the author of the Success Principles. And today, I have a question for you. When was the last time you had to make a big decision, and no matter what kind of research you did or who you asked for advice, you just couldn't figure it out or decide what to do? Now, if that sounds at all too familiar, keep listening. Because I'm going to share the most powerful way I know to find the answers you're looking for and get the clarity you need to make the right decisions and. And get the outcomes you want every time. Now, let me start by sharing a story with you that I often tell at my live events. It's about a man who's out walking one night and he comes upon another man down on his knees looking for something under a street lamp. Now, the man who's out walking asks the other man what he's looking for. The man on the ground says he's looking for his lost key. So the passerby offers to help, and he gets down on his knees and he searches and he search. And finally, after an hour of fruitless searching, he says, you know, we've looked everywhere for your key and we still haven't found it. Are you sure you lost it out here? And the other man replies, no, I lost it in my house. But there's more light out here underneath the street lamp. Now, like this man looking for his key, most people spend way too much time and energy looking for the answers that they seek and the wrong places. And the truth is that more often than not, the answers you're looking for are right inside you. You already have them in your possession, but you're not able to recognize them or access them. So you spend all your time looking for them outside of yourself and never find them. So when it comes to looking for answers on why you haven't created the life or the results you want, it's time to stop looking outside yourself and start paying attention to what your inner voice is. Has been trying to tell you all along. Because the thing is, you do have an inner voice. I'm talking about your intuition, your inner guidance. And we have a source of inner wisdom that tells us when we're right on track and when we're veering off course. And when you learn to tap into this source of inner wisdom and cultivate your awareness and understanding of it, you will find it so much more easy to perceive the correct choices and the decisions that will help you live the life you want. However, most people aren't tuned into their inner guidance system. They have never learned how to access their intuition or how to properly listen to it, respond to it. And one reason is because our inner voice speaks to us in different ways. Now, for some of us, it's a physical sensation that we feel. We might feel a tingle up our spine or the hairs on the back of our neck stand up. Other people hear their intuition as an actual voice inside their minds, speaking in actual words, while others have visions that appear in their mind's eye, like flashes where they suddenly see what they should be doing or paying attention to to achieve what they want. Now, still others get messages from their intuition in the form of hunches or recurring dreams or thoughts that suddenly pop into their head, or the words of a song that just keeps playing in their mind. Now, an example of this in my own life is that not too long ago I had a song that was recorded in 1970. Now that's 52 years ago by Janis Joplin. It got stuck in my head for weeks. And the song was Mercedes Benz, which goes something like this. Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches I must make amends Worked hard all my life with no help from my friends oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz? Now that. That. Those lyrics kept playing in my head for days, and I had no idea why. And then I remembered that my intuition was probably trying to tell me something, and it was worth exploring and figuring out what that was. Now, when I decided to sit quietly and contemplate why those lyrics kept repeating themselves in my head, I realized the lyric with no help from my friends was telling me that I was feeling a bit overwhelmed and I needed to ask for more support from people in order to accomplish several of the big goals that I was working on. So whenever you notice yourself hearing the same song over and over, or thinking the same thought over and over with no real reason for why that thought might be appearing over and over in your mind, I encourage you to stop and explore it and consider what your intuition might be trying to tell you. Now, for some people, it can be relatively easy to tap into your inner voice and understand what it's trying to tell you, but for others, it can be a lot more challenging. Your intuition can show up in ways that you don't expect and can resist being easily and immediately interpreted, but if you put in the time and the effort, you can strengthen your connection to it. And one of the best ways to do that is to have a daily meditation practice. And an easy meditation to begin with is the simple practice of focusing on your awareness and focusing that awareness on your breath. To start, you just sit quietly in a comfortable position for a few minutes every day, and you focus your attention on the inhalation and the exhalation of your breath. And every time you notice that your attention has wandered away from your breath, as it inevitably will, you simply acknowledge the fact and then return your attention to your breath without any judgment or any self criticism. You'll be amazed at how much more in tune you'll become with the more subtle messages from your intuition. In fact, let's just practice that now for one minute. Unless you're driving or operating some kind of equipment, just sit up straight and close your eyes. And now become aware of your breath and focus on the physical sensation of the air coming in and out of your nostrils. And just keep focusing on that sensation of inhaling and exhaling. Just keep focus on that for the next minute. If your mind wanders, bring it back to your nose. Feel a sensation, pay attention to it. Okay, go ahead and open your eyes. That's one of the simplest and yet most profound meditation techniques you can do, done for just a few moments longer every day than what we just did here. Over time, it will open your awareness to the more subtle and still inner voice of your intuition. Now, another thing you may find helpful is to spend some time sitting and listening to guided visualizations. They're intended to bring you into a deeper connection with your own inner voice. And there are a lot of guided visualizations available online and on YouTube. Or you can find ones I've recorded by going to the resources page on my website@jackhamfield.com. now, guided meditations and visualizations are easy to do because all you have to do is close your eyes and listen to the voice of the other person and just allow your mind to visualize whatever journey they take you on. And usually there's a moment where your own inner guidance will kick in and provide you with a visual image or thought that are the answers to the questions that you have. Now, another form of inner guidance can easily be accessed more kinesthetically or physically. And that's why one technique I always like to share with people in my live trainings is one that's called the sway test. And it's very easy to do whenever you want to know the answer to a question you have. You simply stand up with your feet shoulder width apart, you close your eyes, and then you first, calibrate your body by asking it to show you what a yes answer is and what a no answer is. Because you're only going to ask questions that can be answered with yes or no. I'll demonstrate for just a moment. So I would close my eyes and I would say to my body, tell me what a yes answer is. Then I would just wait. My body just immediately starts to. Then I would say, show me what a no answer is. And then it goes back. Now, I can test that a few times by saying, is my name Jack, am I a man, do I live in California, etc. Or I could ask something I know the answer is no to. And if my body doesn't respond with the right response, then I know maybe I have it calibrated correctly. But once you know it's calibrated correctly, then you can ask your body any question that can be answered with yes or no. For example, you could ask, is it a good idea for me to go out tonight? Or should I take the new job I've been offered? Or should I say yes to that date that someone wants to take me out on? Or should I buy this new car? Now, you always get an answer yes or no. Now if you ask something really important like you know, should I get that operation, do I have cancer? Or something like that, obviously I would ask you to look at a couple of different sources of data, including the sway test, to make that kind of a difficult and challenging decision. But make the sway test one of the pieces of data. Now, something else you can do to cultivate your intuition is to use positive mindset and healthy lifestyle practices to raise your vibration, your emotional vibration. Because when you're feeling healthy, positive and strong in your mind, body and spirit, it's so much easier for you to understand what your mind, body and spirit are trying to tell you. So doing things like having a daily gratitude, practice, sending love and forgiveness to people, eating healthy organic food and getting enough sleep and exercise, even doing things like using essential oils to soothe your mind and lift your spirits, all are powerful ways to raise your vibration and deepen your connection with your inner self as well as to the world around you. Now, finally, as you're learning to access and trust your guidance from the inside, your inner guidance, I encourage you to be patient with your yourself and to have fun with it. Learning how to look inside yourself for the answers you seek is an ever evolving process. It isn't something that you accomplish overnight, although the shifts you experience once you start can be immediate and life changing. But the important thing is to take that first step and enjoy the process as you discover how much deep wisdom you actually have inside you waiting to be accessed right now. All right, well, that's it for today. Thanks for watching. And now what I'd love you to do is to share one thing you're willing to do to connect more deeply with your inner voice in the comments. Or if you'd like to share a story about how your inner voice once guided you in the right direction, I'd love to hear about your experiences, and I'm sure other people would as well. And for some additional tools and videos on how to cultivate your intuition to help you achieve greater success and happiness in life, be sure to check out the Resources page on my website@jackcancerobe.com you'll find a ton of great free stuff there. So thanks again for watching, and have an amazing day.