Can I trust my inner guidance?

On my quest to follow the wisdom of my body I’ve noticed that I have a strong habit of externalising that inner wisdom, I’ll mark my cycle down in my diary and then refer to my diary to find out whether I feel like doing something on a particular day, which, you might agree, defeats the point ever so slightly.

I’m not sure there’s really anything wrong with this approach, it feels better than scheduling whatever whenever and completely overriding my cycle, but wouldn’t it feel even better to tune in to my body in the moment and see what feels right? As my cycle becomes less predictable this approach feels more right for me and I begin to explore how many of the things in my diary could be written in pencil and decided about at the last minute.

I was completely inspired recently by a friend doing just this, waiting until she woke up that day to decide whether to carry out her plans or allow herself to rest. Fortunately for me she felt up to carrying out her plans and we had a lovely picnic, the first of the year for us both.

Granted not everything I do can be approached in this way, getting my teenage daughter to her commitments often feels set in stone and I’ll move heaven and earth to make sure I can get to client sessions or our Healing Womanhood Women’s Circle as planned but this doesn’t mean that I need to abandon flexibility entirely. Treating everything else as more flexible means that I have the energy to show up and show up well for the non negotiables.

And yet the pull to look outside, to be told what to do, even by a list that I myself have written is intense! Why is that? When I feel into the idea of doing what feels right for me day by day or even moment by moment, I’m flooded with anxiety, what’s to stop me just sitting around all day watching Doctor Who and eating chocolate?

This is a common and understandable fear response to the wildly countercultural idea of trusting myself and that’s because of the strength of my conditioning, maybe yours too? As I grew up the world around me demonstrated that I couldn’t be trusted to do anything without a complex system of bribes and punishments in place. At home and at school I learned that the most important things to do were the things that were important to other people (my homework, keeping my room tidy etc.) Because these things weren’t remotely interesting, getting them done did indeed necesitate the complex system, resulting in the belief ‘I will do nothing if I’m not forced to either by someone else or myself.’ This belief is part of what has made self employment so terrifying to me, how would I cope without a set of externally imposed demands and deadlines?

But when I look back to the hours of my childhood that weren’t governed by other people’s priorities, and I was lucky enough to have plenty of them, although there was a certain amount of lazing about, there was also a lot of learning, inquisitiveness and building of skills. Learning about horses or learning how to sew didn’t require any of the ‘motivational tools’ that schoolwork or tidying did because I loved it, my natural fascination took me there.

Although school can do a lot to destroy a natural love of learning, when I decided I wanted it back, I found that it was still there. I found it not by asking ‘what can I learn that would be useful or help my career?’ but by asking ‘what do I find fascinating?’ Some things would be a yes to both of those questions but those that only bring a positive response to the second are of no less value. Right now for me those things are narrowboats, British Sign Language and Internal Family Systems therapy. My brain can easily find uses for some of them and will try really hard to come up with some sense and logic for the others but sense and logic is not a necessary part of this, it’s all about following the wonder.

I wonder where I would be now if our culture was all about following inner guidance from childhood onwards? But even more fascinating, I wonder where it will take me as I start to make room for my inner guidance now? Care to join me on the journey?

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