5 Reasons Why We Struggle to Hear Our Intuition & 5 Ways to Learn to Trust Yourself

When our emotions become overwhelming, we lose our ability to make sound decisions. We struggle to listen to anyone or anything else, even though our intuition seldom guides us wrong. In this episode of On Purpose, Jay Shetty reveals five reasons why many of us struggle to be in tune with our intuitions and how this leads to trust issues & self-doubt. Key Takeaways: 01:20 1.2M had to leave the workforce due to the pandemic 02:39 Reason #1: We don’t understand the different roles of our minds and our emotions 04:43 Our brain and body coordinate to create emotions 06:27 When we feel discomfort, we come up with a label for it 09:28 Reason #2: We think we have all the facts to sort through until we get an intuitive hit on what to do 11:51 Reason #3: Our brain has inherent biases 15:45 Freewriting helps us get to our thoughts and beliefs we have trouble accessing 16:58 Reason #4: We underestimate the impact of culture on how we see the world 17:48 Reason #5: We keep weakening our intuition by ignoring it 18:33 Schedule time with yourself to be alone to listen to your mind and body Like this show? Please leave us a review here - even one sentence helps! Post a screenshot of you listening on Instagram & tag us so we can thank you personally! Achieve success in every area of your life with Jay Shetty’s Genius Community. Join over 10,000 members taking their holistic well-being to the next level today, at https://shetty.cc/OnPurposeGenius See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet,

• 0:44Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on.

• 1:29Jay Shetty?

  AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 2:16Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Vinted. Value can be found anywhere, even in the clothes sitting untouched in our closets. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer want and get more value out of them. Whether you're running out of space, moving, or simply updating your wardrobe. Listing items is a quick and simple process, and once something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And the best part, there are no seller fees, so you keep what you earn. It's a simple way to clear out your closet, be less wasteful, and maybe make some extra money along the way. And if you've been thinking about a wardrobe refresh, this can make it feel a little more worthwhile. You're not just letting go of clothes, you're getting more value from what you already have.

• 3:00Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. The joy of the spirit ever abides, but not what seems pleasant to the senses. All is well for those who choose the joy of the spirit, but they miss the goal of life who prefer the pleasant. Our intuition isn't meant to connect us to temporary pleasure. It's meant to guide us towards fulfillment of our soul and our spirit.

• 3:34Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. Today, we're talking about the five reasons we struggle to hear our intuition and five ways to learn to trust yourself. This is such a huge, huge topic, and I want to thank you all for each and every single one of you that have left a review. It makes a huge difference. We're now over 15,000 reviews. I would love for you to leave a review as well. If this podcast is serving you, helping you, supporting you right now, whether you're walking your dog, whether you're cooking, whether you're working out, whether you're editing, whether you're at the gym, whatever you're up to right now, thank you for tuning in to On Purpose. Now, As you know, we've had some phenomenal guests this year.

• 4:19Jay Shetty?

  And I hope you're going back and listening to some of the epic ones that have been out. We've got a big one next Monday. I'm excited for you. But going back to the theme, according to data from the Pew Reset Center in 2020, nearly one-fifth of all adults in the US either relocated or know someone who relocated due to the pandemic. How many of you are in that group? Raise your hand right now if you're like, hey, I'm part of that. According to the New York Times, 1.2 million parents have had to leave the workforce in the last year. As people around the world grow more concerned about the climate, we're switching all kinds of behavior from our diets to the consumer products we buy. Any way you slice it, the world is seeing big changes.

• 5:04Jay Shetty?

  And chances are, you may be considering some changes in your world. But how do you decide what course is best for you? People often ask me, Jake, how do I know the right choice to make? How do I know what's right for me? How can I learn to connect with my intuition? Today, we're talking about five reasons we struggle to hear the voice of our intuition and five ways we can learn to listen and to trust ourselves. We stop trusting ourselves when things get tough. We try and listen to others. We try and listen to the experts. And of course, we should always be learning from mentors, guides, teachers. But our intuition also has so much wisdom to share. And today, I want to share with you how you can tap in to that wisdom that we often miss out on.

• 5:48Jay Shetty?

  Now, one of the reasons we struggle to hear our intuition is that we don't understand the different roles of our minds and our emotions. We tend to either think that our decisions and actions should be based entirely on our emotions and our feelings, or entirely on logic and reason. And we don't really understand how our brains, bodies, and feelings are actually deeply connected. Right? We always say like, oh, well, my head wants this, or my heart wants this. How many of you have ever had that discussion before? So, as reported on discovery.com, a team of researchers from Finland took more than 1,000 participants from different cultures and gave them a list of 100 different feelings.

• 6:33Jay Shetty?

  Feelings like hunger and thirst, mental distress such as anxiety and depression, seeing and hearing, thinking and reasoning, and so on. In the last piece of the study, participants were given a blank map of the body and asked to colour in where in their body they experienced that feeling. You won't be surprised to learn that most people mapped feeling hunger in the stomach. But what was incredible is that most people also mapped feeling gratefulness and togetherness along with guilt and despair to the heart. Exhaustion and elation were both felt all over the body. And what was described as self-regulation was felt in the head and the hands. These findings were remarkably consistent across people and cultures.

• 7:16Jay Shetty?

  The researchers say this is strong evidence that emotions don't just live in the brain, but that the human mind is strongly embodied. As MIT neuroscientist Alan Jasanoff explains, our self isn't our brain. It includes our entire bodies. Because we view ourselves as beings who operate entirely from within, we downplay how much the external world influences our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. We also tend to see our brains as computers or information processors, when in reality, our bodies play a large part in how we experience the world. As Jasanoff explains, our brains and our bodies actually coordinate to create emotions. For instance, when we feel anxiety, we're likely to attribute it

• 8:01Jay Shetty?

  to our perceptions of external events. I feel anxious because I'm worried about losing my job or about becoming ill. In reality, we may feel anxious primarily because we're underslept or our gut health is off. When you get that advice to just listen to your gut or your heart, or to go by logic and rationality, neither is entirely accurate because for one thing, these systems are not separate from one another. Psychologist and neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett explains that one of the reasons we misunderstand our feelings so frequently is simple misconception of how our brains work. She writes in The New York Times that our brain's most important job isn't thinking. It's actually running the systems in our bodies

• 8:44Jay Shetty?

  so that we stay alive and healthy. When our brain produces feelings, they're often a result of a need to manage body processes. She says every action we undertake, from getting up in the morning to preparing the presentation for work, uses resources and our brain accounts for and takes action to control all of these resources in ways that are usually totally outside of our awareness. For example, when your morning alarm goes off, you're thinking, "Ugh, okay, I've got to get up. Maybe I'll just lay here for a few minutes." Meanwhile, your brain is focused on the energy it knows you'll need to get up and get going. So it triggers the release of cortisol, which is a stress hormone that agitates you to get going

• 9:29Jay Shetty?

  and makes energy available in the form of glucose. But as you're laying there, you're not conscious of any of this. Now, let's look at how emotions come into play with this complex system of body regulation. When we experience a chronic upset stomach, we may go see the doctor. But if we're fighting with our partner or a family member, we'll go see a psychiatrist instead. As Feldman Barrett explains, in one setting, we interpret discomfort as physical and in the other as psychological. In reality, the emotion of anxiety isn't causing a stomach ache. When we feel discomfort, depending on what's going on in our life, we come up with a label for it. This is one way our brains and bodies co-create our emotions. This is also why we can look to our body's needs to change our emotional and mental states.

• 10:14Jay Shetty?

  For example, we can use directed breathing to induce calm or to raise our energy. Here's another example. Did you ever have a problem and a parent or friend told you, "Get some sleep, things always look better in the morning"? That's one reason why. Not only does time bring perspective, but sleep actually helps to rebalance our body's account and that function can change how we view the world. Our bodies feel better, so we feel better. That's why when you're depressed, psychologists want to make sure you're getting sleep, eating well, and exercising. You want to meet your most fundamental needs because not doing so affects how you meet the world. It colors what you perceive and how you feel. When our bodies are imbalanced, our intuition is unclear.

• 10:56Jay Shetty?

  We're just doing our best to interpret our feelings, and we often come up short. I know someone who was really struggling with the adjustment to motherhood when she had her first child. It was hard for her to admit it. She was underslept, she was struggling to figure out if she was doing things right. Her husband had to go back to work right away, so she didn't have anyone to help do the washing or make food or change diapers throughout the day at least. She had no time for herself. And she and her husband were both so tired, they didn't have time or energy to care for their relationship. Within months, it felt as if her entire life had exploded. For the first time, she began to doubt whether she and her husband would make it as a couple. She wondered. Did I marry the wrong guy? Then, something happened.

• 11:40Jay Shetty?

  Her parents flew in for a 10-day visit. They changed diapers. They watched the baby so she could nap. They did laundry, they cooked, they stayed with baby so she and her husband could go out for lunch together. By the time her parents left, my friend had a new lease on life. Things were still really challenging, don't get me wrong, but she said it was like that mini recovery period switched the lens on her camera from a close-up zoom lens to a panoramic one. She realized this situation where the baby needed so much was temporary. It would get better as the baby got older. The messages her mind was giving her about her relationship weren't accurate. She was just simply exhausted. And when we're exhausted, we don't communicate effectively.

• 12:23Jay Shetty?

  Not just with others, but with ourselves. So, if you want to start tuning into your deep intuition as much as possible, try and make sure your body's basic needs are met so that the information you're getting from your brain isn't distorted by these unmet needs. Number two. The next reason we struggle with hearing our intuition is that we think we have all the facts and we can just sort through them until we get an intuitive hit on what we should do. In reality, our brains show us what we want to see or what we've told it to focus on. But they're actually taking far more information than we're aware of. It's like when you say to yourself, "I want to buy this brand of car.

• 13:06Jay Shetty?

  I want to buy this brand of phone." You now see that car all over the streets. You see it all over the ads. You see it everywhere. It doesn't mean that people didn't have it before. Your mind just knows to focus on it. We tell our brains what's important to us and what to focus on, but at any given time, we're pulling in loads more information. Check out this incredible study. Researchers took a man and put him into a brain scanner, then showed him pictures of shapes. He had no idea what he was looking at because the man was blind. Yet when the researcher showed him a series of photos of men and women making happy or sad faces and asked him to guess which emotion they were expressing, he was accurate to a degree that couldn't be explained by chance.

• 13:48Jay Shetty?

  As bestselling author Daniel Goleman writes, as the researcher studied the brain scans, they discovered a second pathway of seeing had activated in the man's brain. Instead of taking information and sending it on to the visual centers of the brain, his brain took in the information and sent it on to the amygdala, which is part of our emotional processing system. The amygdala took the signals it received and applied emotion to them. But the amygdala isn't attached to speech centers, so the brain couldn't put words to the emotions. As a result, it seemed to the man as if he was purely guessing. Yet, he was able to interpret the pictures not through sight, but by actually feeling the senses expressed by the people's faces in his own body.

• 14:32Jay Shetty?

  And here's the thing, we all have this circuitry. When you have that sense of something that you just can't articulate, it may be because your brain took in information through this route, and that can be some of the deep knowing that we refer to as our intuition. So instead of just poring over the basic facts of the matter, if we want to connect with our intuition, we need to go deeper and open ourselves to what we're feeling and sensing in ways that are harder to articulate. I'll talk about how in a minute. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need them most.

• 15:16Jay Shetty?

  You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are.

• 16:02Jay Shetty?

  But it can be challenging to balance style, budget and endless options. I was looking to create a dedicated calm space for my morning meditation and reading, but I was struggling to find pieces that felt grounding but could also stand up to daily use. I went on Wayfair and found a beautiful, solid wood accent chair and a bookshelf. Now that corner is my favourite place to anchor my day. The quality is incredible, it's built to last, and it completely shifted the energy of the room. Plus, you can shop with Wayfair Verified, where product specialists carefully vet items for quality and functionality, so you can shop with more confidence. And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase

• 16:46Jay Shetty?

  and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision-making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbour, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer,

• 17:28Jay Shetty?

  availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. The third reason we have trouble connecting with our intuition is because of our brain's inherent biases. The fluency heuristic is a type of cognitive bias where we assume that something that comes more easily to us must be right or better. If we're trying to solve a problem, the easiest solution seems like it must be the best. And sometimes it is. But because we're biased to think this way, when we come up on a solution that's complex or that will cause some friction in our lives, or when we just have trouble coming up with a solution because of the issue itself is complex. We think we're headed in the wrong direction. We're experts at seeking what's easy and we often misinterpret this as an intuitive hit that it's the right solution.

• 18:13Jay Shetty?

  This is supported by popular rhetoric that says that when we arrive at a choice of solution that's right for us, everything will magically fall in line. We struggle to hear our intuition because we think that the intuition is supposed to lead us down the path of least resistance. That's not always true. Sometimes your intuition may get you into trouble. Coming into alignment is more often a longer process and one that doesn't always feel good. In fact, it's frequently uncomfortable, especially when our inner wisdom guides us to make choices that are out of line with our group, family, workplace, or other culture. As a result, we can try to suppress this information or guidance and the fluency heuristic helps us to do that. Overcoming this bias starts with awareness.

• 18:56Jay Shetty?

  We need to understand that we're programmed to seek the easy way or to put more weight on a decision or option that seems simple. Recognizing this, we challenge ourselves on our thinking. Today, we see Martin Luther King Jr. as a hero of the civil rights movement, but it wasn't always so. He's become more appreciated since his death, unfortunately, along with his philosophies and the impact he's had on our lives today. One of King's unpopular decisions was to oppose the Vietnam War. Friends in the civil rights movement thought he should focus on policies at home and that to talk about the war would dilute the civil rights agenda, but King swore the issues is deeply connected. Incidentally, he reportedly arrived at this stance in part due to his relationship with

• 19:41Jay Shetty?

  a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, a man named Thich Nhat Hanh, who many know today for his popular teachings and books. Check out this incredible statistic. At the time of his tragic assassination, Martin Luther King had a 75% disapproval rating. Disapproval rating. That's hard to imagine. That's actually the case with so many people who we celebrate today. At one time, their policies or their actions or decisions or theories seemed questionable to large groups of people, maybe even most people, and they were heavily criticized. Mathematician and astronomer Copernicus once said, "Those things which I am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place." The theory that Copernicus was criticized for?

• 20:26Jay Shetty?

  Saying the sun and not the earth was the center of our solar system. That doesn't mean we should always seek the hard way. Sometimes our bias is towards rebellion, to doing the things that are out of step with the flow or popular opinion. And so we may be inclined to think our intuition is telling us to go against the grain. Or our bias can be towards another popular misconception, which is that change or shifting something in our lives always has to be hard. What it boils down to is that we want to be open-minded about what the right decision can look like, which is really all sorts of ways. We want to be flexible in our perceiving and thinking, and from this state, we're more likely to connect with our intuition. One of the ways we can be more open-minded is by being aware of our biases.

• 21:11Jay Shetty?

  Beyond the fluency bias, do we typically seek to just go along and ruffle as few feathers as possible? Or are we that rebel who thinks that if our decisions would be popular, it must be wrong? Or do we think that change has to be hard to be worthwhile, or that a decision has to cause friction? One of the best ways to get to the bottom of our beliefs is through journaling. Meditation can work too, but there's something about free writing that helps us to get those thoughts and beliefs that we have trouble accessing or that are outside our everyday awareness. Set aside at least 20 to 30 minutes to write about your beliefs about change. Specifically, ask yourself, "What do I believe about change?" And write down everything that comes up. It doesn't matter if it's a belief, if it's a story, or whatever it could be.

• 21:55Jay Shetty?

  If you know you're afraid of change, as so many of us are, you can start with the statement, "I fear change because..." Or "change means..." and just start writing. And stream of consciousness writing is actually one of the most powerful tools we can use to help us get in touch with our deep beliefs and connect with our intuition. As Harvard-trained medical doctor and America's first psychologist, William James, who actually coined the phrase "stream of consciousness", said, "Our thoughts and feelings and ideas are constantly streaming past us. They appear in our consciousness often only briefly and then disappear again. When we allow ourselves to become immersed in the flow of our own uncensored thoughts and ideas and write them down,

• 22:37Jay Shetty?

  we can look at them to sort our thoughts and to see our patterns." Here's reason number four. Another reason we struggle to connect with our intuition is that we underestimate the impact of culture on how we see the world. When I interviewed bestselling author Martha Beck, she said we are terrified of the truths that will take us away from the culture we belong to. And while we are sometimes aware of this, much of the time, we're not. Too often, because we're so linked to culture, we outsource our decision-making to the group, or we make decisions by consensus. How many of us, when we're making a big decision, need to include other people in the decision-making? It's usually because we don't want to take that risk ourselves. We fear failure on our own part. We are scared of how they'll judge us if they don't agree.

• 23:21Jay Shetty?

  But the truth is, we have to live with that choice. We have to live with that decision. We have to actually live with the action that we take, not them, not anyone. Reason number five. The final reason we have trouble connecting with our intuition is that we've been ignoring it for so long. Have you ever had someone you wanted to be friends with? And you reached out to them and asked them if they wanted to maybe meet for a meal? And they said they were busy? And then you forwarded them an article you thought they might be interested in, and they didn't reply? Maybe you texted them and got only a half-hearted response? After a while, feel like most of us, you'd think, "Okay, then, I guess you don't want to be friends?" And you'd give up. Our intuition is similar. It's been reaching out. It's been trying to get our attention, and we keep quietening it.

• 24:04Jay Shetty?

  We keep weakening it by not listening to it. Here's an exercise. In the past, your intuition had reached out to you, wanting to connect with you, but you ignored it. How do you re-establish that connection? How would you do it with someone you wanted to be friends with you and was making efforts that you ignored? You'd reach out to that person to re-establish contact, and then you'd follow through. You'd make plans to spend time with them, and you'd show up. This looks like making space in your life and time in your day when you're not distracted or preoccupied. Scheduling time with yourself to be alone, to actually listen to your mind and body, and see how you feel. The time you make to hear your intuition can look like meditation, where you just allow whatever comes up in your mind to appear. It can look like a stream of consciousness writing.

• 24:49Jay Shetty?

  It can look like taking a walk or going for a hike with no music or distractions. If we want our intuition to show up, we've got to invite it to show up, and then make the space to receive it. Set aside just 10 minutes a day to do one of these activities for one week and see what you start to become aware of. Do thoughts come to you? Ideas, specific body feelings, memories that might hold special meaning? If you're making efforts to meet your body's basic needs and to become aware of your own biases and how culture influences and impacts your thinking and your decisions, then when these feelings and thoughts and ideas appear, you'll be better able to distinguish the signal from the static. One of the biggest takeaways in learning to identify and listen to your own intuition

• 25:33Jay Shetty?

  is making a commitment to your cause over your discomfort. It's committing to your cause of connecting with yourself and welcoming all of the information that your brain and your body and your spirit have to share with you, even if what you learn and intuit makes you uncomfortable. There's a verse in the Upanishads, which is a Vedic text, that says, "The joy of the spirit ever abides, but not what seems pleasant to the senses. All is well for those who choose the joy of the spirit, but they miss the goal of life who prefer the pleasant." Our intuition isn't meant to connect us to temporary pleasure. It's meant to guide us towards fulfillment of our soul and our spirit.

• 26:15Jay Shetty?

  And so what we learn and how it guided may be uncomfortable at times. Just like a good friend, our intuition doesn't just tell us what we want to hear. Our intuition directs us towards perennial joy, the joy that we obtain when we live our life's purpose, which is to grow and learn and evolve.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 26:59Speaker 03

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• 27:03Speaker 02

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• 27:06Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 27:07Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.