Ep. 7 Intuition 101 for Small Business Owners

Hey, welcome to episode seven. Intuition 1 0 1 for small business owners. We are right in the middle of a Kiwi Christmas start of 2023, holiday break here in New Zealand. Sun is shining lots and lots of downtime and rest with the family. Couple of my family members have been out with a cold virus, not covid, thankfully.

So it’s been a little different and a little more lazy and restful than what I had planned. And. , I’ve managed to go with the downtime for most of it and really relax into it for most of it. And it really got me thinking about our intuition and how when we take that time out, our intuition can start to flow.

And it’s often this way in New Zealand, we have this beautiful downtime over summer and then we are back into a full 11 months of full on-ness in our businesses, and we don’t really take, tend to take a lot of breaks throughout the next 11 months of the year. And it is in the breaks and in the quiet time that our intuition arises.

So for this episode, I really wanted to focus on intuition because it’s up for me right now in a really wonderful, joyful, bubbly way, and I wanna talk about how we can grow more of that within ourselves in a really practical, practical way, and then also how we can foster that so it maintains or we are able to access it more readily throughout the year. Sound good? Okay, let’s go Kia ora I’m Meegan Care mindset coach and meditation teacher. This podcast is here to help you unwind self-doubt, people pleasing, imposter syndrome, and overwhelm so you can step into the confident leader you were born to be. Women. It is time to bring your purpose into the world in an impactful way without sacrificing your wellbeing.

Are you ready? Let’s begin. Intuition, what is it? We all sort of know what intuition is, but let’s make sure we’re on the same playing field around how we’re talking about this. Intuition is a type of knowing or a decision making that relies on our automatic unconscious processing of information rather than our conscious, logical analysis reasoning mind faculty.

it’s often described as a gut feeling or a sixth sense, and people access their intuition in many different ways. And through the episode, I’ll talk about how I access it and how you can encourage that within your own psyche as well. So we access intuition and that supports us in our decision making, our judgments or our predictions around, you know, where I’m headed in my business, where I’m headed in my life.

And that’s outside of that faculty of conscious reasoning. So intuitions often closely associated with creativity, insight, and innovation, and it’s thought to be a valuable resource of guidance and insight in so many areas of our life. And today we are gonna focus in on how it’s useful and important in business, in decision making and problem solving within our businesses.

So many people believe that intuition is a universal human capacity that’s rooted in the unconscious process, and I know that some people believe that intuition is external to their own psyche, that it’s something that comes from outside of them. My belief more sits within. Intuition is a subconscious process that is actually going on all the time, is really, really natural for us as humans, and it’s something that we can access and can build the muscle of intuition, much like if we wanna build the muscles of our body, we go and work those out. If we wanna build the muscles of our intuition, we have to figure out where those intuitive muscles are and work on building those as well. And it’s, it’s simple and it’s really accessible. If we think about gender differences around intuition. Women, if you’ve grown up as a a girl and a woman, you’ve probably had your intuition recognized. Emotional intelligence or emotional language is more encouraged when we are young as women, and so that gives us an easier way into accessing our intuition. However, there’s no reason why all genders can’t have an incredible access to their own natural innate intuition.

I think though, if you’ve been socialized as a girl, as a woman, you have that intuitive aspect of yourself reflected back to you in your family of origin more readily than if you were, say, raised as a boy. And so then it means that you’ve already got some awareness. You’ve already begun developing that muscle around intuition from a really young age, so you can then recognize it for what it is. Subconscious knowing, processing that gives support to your decision making and bring that into your skills as a small business owner. . So where I sit with intuition is that I do believe that intuition is a real thing. I do believe that humans have a capacity for transpersonal connection and communication.

So connection and communication beyond just our personal rational thinking mind, and that it’s actually a really natural phenomenon. It’s not actually something that’s super woowoo and out there, it’s just something that’s been hard to measure. Hard to put into words for our everyday consciousness.

So it’s become something that has, does have a lot of spiritual and woowoo kind of wrapping around it. But actually so many business owners already access a lot of intuition within their day-to-day functioning. You don’t have to believe that intuition is an out of body information download because actually we don’t know where or how intuition arises.

Obviously there’s quite a few theories around it. . There’s one school of thought where intuition could be really connected to the fact that your brain and your heart are actually anticipatory or forward seeking in nature, and that’s how intuition arises. So this is a really natural thing that happens, and it happens for me a lot as a coach.

And previously when I was a counselor, where actual words that my clients were about to say would pop up into my mind before my clients would say them, and I’m talking word for word and, and some of that was just a natural flow of conversation. And so we could say, well, I’m very empathic and I understand how the human mind works.

And so my brain was flowing along with theirs. And that’s true. But the words that they would say that was preempting, say my clients speaking those words would also happen if my client was about to change the subject, like do a complete, you know, 90 degree shift on subject and bring up something completely different.

That would also very frequently pop into my head. And so we could frame that up and talk about it in a really spiritual kind of languaging around being tuned in to the client’s energy field and all that kind of stuff. And we could also talk about it in a more mundane, everyday way in that our brains and our hearts are actually hardwired to notice what’s happening just before it happens. This will all be wired into us as humans and our survival instinct and for me, it just became very clear and very honed in because I spent so many hours talking to people and listening, being present, actually having a lot of spaciousness in my mind, in my brain, and being fairly blank in my mind as I was listening to my client’s words, because I’m fully in that present moment, that it was natural that the next thing that was going to arise in the client’s conversation would.

In my brain, and I’ve probably got a foot in both camps around that. So around the, the deeper soul connection, the intuitive kind of download, we are all connected energetically kind of thing. And then, also a foot in that idea around, well, you know, this is a natural evolutionary function that is developed for humans as a safety mechanism.

Because if we can know what is going to happen, if we can anticipate what’s about to happen, then we can keep ourselves safe. And so for me, it’s not so much who’s right and who’s wrong around intuition. I definitely believe that intuition is a measurable faculty and it’s something that we can develop and we can gain a lot of benefit from in running our business, in creating new offers, in creating ideas, in making your business a success.

Oh, there’s actually some recent research that’s been done around intuition that correlates a CEO’s use of their intuition with profitability of their business. These CEOs were navigating their decisions based on data and analytics, but then also combining that with intuition, and that was providing measurable benefits for their business and so these can be cultivated, right? Which I just think is, which I think is so exciting because intuition can be a really powerful ally for you as a business owner. It can help in your decision making processes. It can help you decide who you hire and guide you to create the best possible team for your business.

Intuition is a faculty of your creative mind and can also provide you with ideas and insights and prompts for successful offers and ideas for your business. . So I rely on intuition a lot in my business, and I also do look at the data for sure, but I’ll tend to lean into intuitive knowing about what I need to do next, or I’ll look at the data and I’ll also feel into my intuition, and I’m gonna talk about how I specifically do that. And then I’ll make a decision, like in my mind, I’ll make a decision and then I’ll let my intuition settle with that and play with that. And I’ll know in my gut, is this the right decision in this form for right now.

So I really think, you know, if you are a sensitive person, if you’re an empathic person and you’re a business owner, intuition needs to play a part in your business making decisions. However you frame that up, whether it’s more in the spiritual realm of things or in the more physical somatic realm of things doesn’t matter if you think yes. intuition is a thing, but you might think, well, I’m not intuitive, or I just don’t use my intuition.

If you and I were to talk, I would probably be able to point out ways that you are already using your intuition, so then it becomes a matter of fostering that and building that intuitive muscle so you can have more flow in your business. I actually think it’s a real game changer and can lead us to being able to have more flow, more success, and also more rest and more play in our business. Because one idea, you know, executed really well can be such a game changer for your business. But if you are only using your rational mind, then it’s very easy to get overwhelmed because there are a million different ideas for how to do something.

And so I see that often for people. Taking that next step in their business and maybe they’re making a new offer and we’re in such an online environment now. So there’s all sorts of ways of, you know, putting your offer out there in the online world and letting your audience, your customers know about your offer.

There’s a million different ways of doing that. And so that can get really overwhelming if you are trying to decide from your rational, logical mind only. But if you then include, if you still use your rational, logical thinking mind, and you are looking at the different avenues that you could take, but then you are also utilizing your intuition to make that decision.

That’s where things start getting really, really interesting. So intuition comes in many different forms. It can come as a gut feeling, a heart knowing, like you can feel it in your body. I know some people go into meditation with a question and they might receive insight during their meditation.

Another way of bringing intuition into a meditation process where you are really wanting to open up to your intuition around a decision is that you can take the decision into a meditation and then not think about it while you’re meditating and then when you come out of the meditation and nothing to do with that decision might have shown up during the meditation, but you can often come out of the meditation and be a lot clearer about the right decision for you.

And so in a really practical sense, I would see that for clients all the time because they would, when I was working hands-on and one-on-one in person because they would come in with an unmade decision and they would be overthinking it and their brain would be stressed about it. So their nervous system’s in fight or flight, and then we’d go, would go into, say, a cranial sacral therapy session, and their nervous system would calm down and they would come into a relaxed and restore response in their nervous system.

The parasympathetic nervous system would come online so much more, and we would see without us necessarily having to figure out the nuts and bolts and make a decision from a logical perspective.

So your intuition can come in many different forms. It can show up as a gut feeling, as a heart feeling, as a knowing in your body. So through that somatic awareness, it can come through in hunches. Some people who are really intuitive and they apply that in their business, they say, I just knew. I knew it was the right decision.

I can’t tell you why. I just knew that was the decision for me. That other one over there that I’d been considering, that was not the decision for me. Sometimes intuition can come in through meditation, through insight during meditation, insight through daydreaming, through journaling, even so journaling, writing, handwriting is a really good way to access the other parts of our brain and sometimes through dreams.

I’ve had quite a few dreams where actually I’ve made a decision or I’m close to making a decision, so I know it in my mind, but maybe I haven’t talked to the other person about it. And. The consequence of my decision will show up in my dream.

I really do listen to those dreams because I believe that’s my subconscious talking to me about, if you go down this path, this is the likely outcome. And so I pay attention and that has always been really helpful for me.

When we went through the whole covid and business and when I had a brick and mortar business, we had massage therapists, we had close contact practitioners, and we had to like all businesses in New Zealand through that time and around the world, we had to make fast decisions.

We had to change things quickly, and I had to rely on my intuition Through that time, because it was uncharted territory, I definitely did a lot of research and did a lot of reading, but then I would really listen to my intuition about, okay, so this next decision, it’s gonna be based on this. And that was a time where there was a lot of decisions that had to be made for businesses.

We had to change the way that we operated. We couldn’t offer services through that lockdown period and through the close contact rules that were in place and that kind of thing. So we really had to change the way our business operated. And of course, we still wanted to have a business when things opened up, again, a business that was still viable, that we could still pay our lease, that we could still be a functioning operating business through that difficult time.

And I really listened to my intuition in that time. And so because it’s a honed skill that I’ve really worked on, I was able to trust those intuitive choices that I made. And that’s such a key thing with intuition is the more you use it and then the more you reflect on. , the choices that you made based on your intuition, and you sort of assess like, well, did that decision, if I really leaned into my intuition around this, did that decision really pan out?

And because a lot of the time it does, you get to be able to really trust your intuition as you go forward, and so you’re building that muscle. I remember when I was doing my counseling training. I remember back in the day when I was doing my counseling training and one of our teachers was saying, intuition, and I don’t know where this this little proverb comes from, but intuition favors a well-stocked mind.

And for me that’s been so helpful because that is that, that beautiful marriage of reasoning, thinking, analyzing, but then also using our intuition because of course our intuition. Is always filtered through our life experience, through our trauma, through our inherited biases and prejudices. All of those things will impact how we perceive the information that comes through from our intuition. So I’m not for just getting an intuitive hit around right. Have to totally change the direction of my business because I had this dream last night that it was, I was. Closing shop, and I was going into this whole new direction. So if that came up for me in a dream, I would still look at, well, is this really a reasonable thing to do?

Does it fit in with my values? Does it fit in with my income goals? Does it fit in with my service goals? So I’m not throwing the baby out with the bath water around intuitive insight? I’m more bringing intuition into effective decision making.

What I do love about learning to use our intuition and business though, is our, our reasoning mind will take us to a decision based on logical steps, right? Step by step by. , but our intuition can kind of come out of nowhere and hit us and go, Hey, have you thought about this? Give this a try.

And so then you’re including that in your business decision making, but it can also open up doors for a lot more creativity in our business. If you learn to use intuition more skillfully in your business, it’s going to cut out a lot of the overwhelm for you because often overwhelm comes we’re thinking round and round circles trying to figure out what the best answer is. I will do that, figuring out, but then I’ll also lean into my intuitive gut nervous system sense as well. And that’s why when I make a decision, I am clear on it.

I lean into it, I’m solid with it. I’m confident in it, and most of the time when I make a decision, I take very little advice from outside of me. I might take some strategic advice for sure, but I’m not that kind of person that I go to all of my friends and my family, and I’m asking them what they think and what they think because most of those people don’t have any idea about your business.

So you understand your business way better than anybody else. Of course, we need to lean into expert advice from time to time, financial advice, that kind of thing. But you can also bring your intuitive sense into it.

I’ve also not listened to my intuition in times and I’ve so made a decision to go into collaboration with somebody, and my gut instinct was just unsettled once I made the decision and because I was so desperate to get out of where I was. I still kept pushing forward with that decision, and so I wasn’t listening to my gut instinct. And then I had some dreams about the decision that I was making and where it was going to end up, and I still didn’t really want to listen because I was so in a place of wanting to move out of where I was and to create different circumstances for myself. So I went down that path with that decision against my intuitive knowing because it looked so good on the surface and I had to go through the karma of that decision that I made and come to the end of it. And I’m only talking about karma as cause and effect here.

So I made that decision and I needed to go through that timeline of that decision that I made and it was uncomfortable. It was more difficult than I anticipated it to be. It was a bit of a haul through mud at times, and eventually I left that partnership. That collaboration, and I could see hindsight, such a wonderful thing, isn’t it?

I could see where that intuitive nudge in the beginning was, showing me where the challenges would be and that there would be more challenges than I anticipated. In any collaboration, there are gonna be challenges, right? Any people that come together, that’s just a fact.

And I don’t regret the decision that I made. I learned a lot. I learned a lot around contrast about what I didn’t want to take forward into the next business that I opened through my therapy practice. And I also learned to lean in more into my intuition and listen to those little niggles and just because I’m unhappy or I’m not satisfied where I am, and there’s this opportunity over there.

If my gut is saying, hang on a minute. There’s something here that’s gonna be really difficult for you. I’ve learned to really listen to that because it saves so much time and pain down the track.

If we listen to it Now, there might be a small disappointment because I can’t go forward with that idea or that project right now in that form, but it’s actually gonna save you a couple of years of unwinding the cause and effect of that decision that you made where you weren’t listening to your gut instinct, to your intuition.

So how can you apply intuition in your own business? How can you build your capacity for intuition? So that you can listen to it, so that you can make decisions based on it. Or like me, sometimes you’ll have that intuition and you won’t listen to it, and you’ll go merely off down a different path and you’ll learn some wonderful lessons from that decision that you made, and then you get to go again.

Right?

Okay, so how you can grow your own intuition. First and foremost, I think that meditation is a really, really good way of accessing your own intuition. You need to learn how to meditate, how to practice meditation, and from that, you gain awareness around what’s going on inside your mind, inside your nervous system, inside your body, on a felt sense level and that awareness is like the doorway to the deeper understanding of your subconscious mind. , and that’s where our intuition arises from, right? So if you are practicing meditation, then you are developing awareness around what’s going on underneath your logical thinking mind, and it’s giving you access and awareness to your intuition, to those intuitive nudges.

Journaling, free journaling is a really, really good way of accessing your intuition. You can write down the problem and then just. About the problem, and you could just free write around what would be five solutions to this problem and just free write around that. Or who would I be if I had completely overcome this problem and just free write?

What are the qualities that I would need to overcome this problem and free write in your journal, that can be a really helpful way of accessing your intuition. Intuition can come to us in our dreams for sure. I used to keep a dream journal for years and years.

I don’t bother with it anymore, but it was really helpful for me when I did keep a dream journal because you start to remember your dreams so much more clearly when you’re writing them down straight after you’ve had them.

Some people use Oracle cards to access their intuition. I know a lot of friends in business actually use these to. , help them know what qualities they need to bring into their, their week or their month. That’s not something I use for myself because mainly I find that my gut instinct and my nervous system, my somatic awareness is so strong right now that I’m not, I’m just not feeling drawn to using Oracle type cards. But some people find them really, really helpful and they are a really lovely way to open the door to access our intuition.

A really great way that you can develop intuition for yourself is if you have any intuitive sense or hit during the day or night, write it down in your journal and then look back over what you’ve written down and start to see, start to connect the dots and the threads of things connecting up because it’s in our tracking of our intuition that we start to grow our intuition.

And when you make a decision, and you’ve looked at the data and you’ve analyzed it, and you’ve made a decision from that part of your brain, then go into your intuition, go into your body and listen to your body around that decision. How do I feel about this decision? What is my inner guidance around this decision?

I’m thinking a yes. to this decision. I’m gonna go for it then listen to your body. Listen to your gut. Take some time. Just lie down. Rest, daydream. Let yourself feel. , get out of your mind and get into your body and notice the messages that are coming through from your body. And so there’s a caveat here, right?

Because anything you’re feeling and sensing is also running through the lens of our life experience, trauma that we’ve had, that kind of thing. And so that will always flavor our intuition. And so that’s why we want to include our intuition with our analysis and our logical, reasonable mind. Bring the two together in a really harmonious marriage and so we don’t wanna take our intuition at face value. until we’ve learned to really roll with it to understand the nuances of it, to test it, to measure it, cuz you can actually get really good at knowing what your intuition is telling you. And over time, once you’ve journaled and you’ve looked back and you’ve assessed it, and you’ve implemented it in your business in small ways.

Then you start to learn how to trust it, and you can really lean into it some more for those bigger decisions. I often do this in workshops with groups, and it’s such a beautiful way of accessing our subconscious mind and our intuitive creative state is that we might ask some really poignant questions around their business or where their business wants to head in the next year or at the start of our calendar year here.

And so often I’ll use this exercise where we’ll ask those questions and. Free draw, right? So you might do a meditation or a movement practice, and then you’ll just draw and free draw and you can see what themes emerge. Once you’re really in that creative state in your brain, your mind, your heart and body, then that information can come through on the paper.

And I’m no artist at all, and that’s not what it’s about, cuz it can come through in colors and shapes and symbol. and in words, when you get out of the logical thinking mind.

So in summary, intuition is a real thing. If you’re an empathic person. If you’re a sensitive person and you’re a small business owner, intuition is your best friend. Or it can be, I believe that intuition should be married with reason, analysis, logical thinking. When we bring them both together, we’ve got the best of both worlds and your intuition can be developed.

And the primary way I’ve coached people to develop their intuition is through meditation and awareness practices, journaling, building awareness around your intuition, trying it out testing it, playing with it. That’s how you build that intuitive muscle. I actually think that by leaning into our intuition, by growing intuition within ourselves and bringing that into our business, we can actually create an environment in our business where we are lowering the volume on overwhelm because we are way more confident in our decision making process, right? Cause we’ve got that marriage of the analysis and the intuition, and we are also allowing our intuitive creative selves to bring through new ideas. To bring through new connections.

You know, like sometimes your intuition will tell you to go to that event, go to that thing, go and meet that person, reach out to that person, and you have no idea why you’re doing this, but you are following that gut instinct, that intuition, you are listening to it. And then beautiful things can come from that event, that connection with the person.

So when we are leaning into and we are listening to our intuition more, when we learn how to do that, it can really open the doorway for a calmer, more impactful, more creative business that is able to bring us so much more joy and success, so bring on that intuition.

Whatever way you want to cultivate it, bring it on, bring it through. It’s so powerful for us in our business. It’s also really fantastic to have in our everyday life, but as a business owner, it is like a little sprinkling of magic that I just wouldn’t be without anymore. Okay, my friends, hope that’s been amazingly helpful and I hope this really supported you to get excited about using your intuition and your business.

I’m excited to hear how this has inspired you to use more of your intuition in your business to see how that marriage of reason and intuition partners so well together and how they can move your business forward.

And bring you greater success, joy and ease. Have an amazing, amazing week, my friend. I’ll speak to you real soon. Hey, thanks for joining me on the podcast. If you liked what you heard, tell your friends, share the episode. It all helps to get this information into the hands of other people that can use it to really unwind people pleasing, imposter syndrome, self-doubt, cuz we can do without that anymore, right?

We need to step up, step into being the leaders we were born to be.