Do any of these sound familiar to you?

•  You create an important document for presentation to others. You’re pretty sure you need to make some changes, but use it anyway, only to receive the feedback that it needs those very changes.  
• You have a significant problem at work.  You instinctively envision a solution, but don’t trust it.  Instead, you get guidance from an outside authority and end up making the problem worse.
• You receive what looks like a great job offer but your inner “danger” radar keeps going off.  You ignore those signals, take the job anyway, and find yourself unemployed several months later.

I personally have had all three and more over the years of my career. My guess is that you’ve had your share of very similar experiences – because most people do. 

What’s wrong when this happens?  Why do we do that?

We’re not following our own brilliant inner guidance systems. 

Every one of us has an intangible but accessible genius within us.  That genius is capable of guiding us correctly nearly 100% of the time.  

In fact,  it may be 100% of the time, we just don’t quite interpret the signals correctly and get something wrong.  But the guidance was sound.

Some people refer to this inner guidance as their intuition, some their higher self and some call it divine guidance.  It doesn’t really matter what you call it or even if you believe in it - it’s there and it always knows how to set our perfect course.

Why would we ignore such valuable information?  Because our minds and, for some, our insecurities, get in the way.

Most of the time, when I ignore my inner wisdom, it’s because my logical mind convinces me that I must be wrong.  Or I’m convinced that someone else knows better than I do – so I ignore my gut and follow the other person’s instructions.  Things usually go wrong for me when I do that.

The truth is, our minds are just machines – mechanical entities that move along in well-established and comfortable grooves. 

The mind doesn’t “think outside the box”.  It relies on memory and past impressions and can easily ignore – actually willfully ignore - flashes of insight and creativity. And it’s typically afraid of trusting anything that it doesn’t feel is supported with visible, tangible evidence.

That inner guidance system, on the other hand, can give you instructions that seem totally novel, random, or out of the blue. Maybe even illogical. Those instructions may not look logical at all.  But if we follow those nudges, we rarely go wrong. 

It’s pretty amazing.

I’ve used this inner guidance for everything from hiring personnel to making cross country moves with no promise of employment.  

When I follow it, I always land on my feet in a good place.  

When I don’t – I can end up flat on my backside in a mud pit.

For complete show notes, please visit masterfullibrarian.com/ep25