How Intuition Actually Works: The GPS Theory of Your Next Step

Why intuition only guides you once you start moving.

Most people think intuition works like a lightning bolt. You wait for clarity, the answer appears, and then you move.

But intuition usually works the opposite way.

In this episode, I share a simple way to understand intuition: it works more like a GPS. You don’t get the full map before you begin; you get the next direction once you start moving.

We explore the duality of intuition and why both stillness and action are required. Stillness helps you hear your inner guidance. Movement helps you understand it.

If you’ve been waiting for clarity before making a decision or taking the next step, this episode offers a simple shift in how to approach intuition and self-trust.

In this episode, we explore:

• Why intuition often requires action before clarity appears
• The surprising role of stillness in hearing your inner guidance
• How small steps activate intuitive feedback and direction

At the end of the episode, I also share a few reflection questions you can sit with to help activate your intuition and reconnect with your next step.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to an intuitive life podcast. Today it's just you and me. No interview today, but I want to talk about something that I don't hear discuss very often when people talk about intuition and accessing intuition and deepening intuition and dialing up intuition. And that is the duality of intuition. Because intuition, it's a big topic, and it isn't just something you learn about, it's not just something you read about in a book or listen to on a podcast. Intuition is something that has to be practiced, it's something that has to be lived and embodied and integrated. And that is where a lot of people get stuck. They're waiting for clarity, they're waiting for the answer in capital A, capital A answer, like give me the purpose to my life. And I know this personally because I've been there too, even though I have been, I consider myself super intuitive from a very young age. I've had a very clear connection with my little voice. I now I embody intuitive practices very deeply, and yet I still get caught in this trap as well. So I'm gonna share with you, and I hope this wakes up for you what your next step could be in terms of deepening your intuitive strategy and making moves, making those moves that you've been sitting on for a long time. Let's be honest, okay? So you're you're waiting for an answer, you're waiting for the next step to arrive fully formed before you make a move. But intuition doesn't really work that way. So let's go deeper. Intuition is more like a conversation, it's alive, it's resonant, it's responsive, and it actually needs your participation. One of the things I see all the time is people asking for clarity, right? You're journaling, you're praying, you're meditating, you're asking the universe and your guides. Please, please, please, just show me the next step, show me what to do. But at the same time, likely you're standing still. Not completely still, but like you're standing still. And I'll share more about what I mean by that. But intuition is not meant to operate in a vacuum. Intuition actually needs movement. Think about the GPS in your car. If you're sitting in your driveway, you type in your destination, the GPS can only give you so much information. But the moment you start driving, suddenly it becomes interactive. Now it can say, turn left here, take the next right, exit in two miles. And if you miss a turn, it recalculates, it recalibrates, and it doesn't shame you. It doesn't tell you that you ruined the whole journey and you might as well go home, right? It just adjusts. And life works the same way. Your intuition works the same way. It often does not give you the full roadmap because all you need is the next step. And there's a quantum physics to this as well. Your next step creates a whole series of activations that were not there before you took that step. So that third step that you think you need is actually quite different based on how the first step goes, where you end up, who you meet, the synchronicities, the new events, the new possibilities that were created from nothing because you took that next step. And it's all iterative, right? So when you get to that first step, you can look ahead and say, okay, wow, now from this place, I can see these possibilities. Boom, next step available. And then from that place, again, new possibilities, new ideas, right? And that's the moment that you make that move, you get feedback from that place that you're in. Not for five steps from now, but right now. You learn something, you feel something, you embody something, you have changed. You have changed because now you're someone who took that first step. You're no longer someone who's sitting and waiting. And from that first step, something either opens or it doesn't. But either way, you now have new information, new data, new lenses to see from. You have now actually shifted your identity, a fraction of a fraction of a point where you can be someone who has taken that move, which changes your own perception of yourself, your own identity, right? And that is how your intuition actually becomes more and more clear through fractional identity shifts, and then your intuition can come from there through movement, through participation, through taking the first step without needing to see all 28 steps ahead. But, and here's the other side of this, because this is where the duality comes in. On one side, intuition requires movement, like I just explained, but on the other side, it requires stillness. You can't hear your intuition if there is constant noise. And I don't mean literal noise, although that does matter too. I mean the noise of other people's opinions, the noise of social media, the noise of constantly consuming other people's content and ideas and influence, the noise of asking everyone around you what you should do, or reading another article, watching another video, taking another course, or waiting for someone else, anyone else, to confirm and validate what you already feel. Because when all those voices are present, it becomes really difficult to hear your own. So intuition, when it's embodied and integrated, actually requires space. Space to listen, space to notice what you're feeling, space to hear the subtle nudge that's often very quiet. Because intuition is super chill, it's not gonna yell at you, right? That's fear, those are other parts of you that are trying to get your attention and keep you safe. Because intuition gives you something that is directional, and that can activate those parts of you that actually want you to stay exactly where you are. That's another conversation for coaching, like coaching you through that piece, right? Because really important intersection of your life. All those little moments of make taking the action or listening to those fear-based, safety-based, comfort zone-based parts of you, which are valid, and there's nothing wrong with them, there's no shame, there's no like wrongness at all. It's it's a part of you that you need to get really, really intimately familiar with. And again, I think about that GPS example. If you're in the car and the GPS is giving directions, but there are three people talking and telling you where to go, and the music is blasting, someone's on their phone, you're probably going to miss the direction. Not because it wasn't there, but because you actually couldn't hear it. Right? So your intuition works the same way. It doesn't shout, it nudges, it whispers, it suggests. So in order to hear it or perceive it, because sometimes you hear it, you feel it, you sense it, right? There's the five clairs, there's ways that intuition and that information comes in. We need moments of stillness. Not perfection, not silence all the time. You don't need to go on a five-day silent retreat, though that does sound interesting sometimes. But intentional, intentional, intentional pauses throughout your day. Moments where you step back from the noise long enough to reconnect with yourself. And that could be super simple. It could be just sitting down and taking a few breaths, putting a hand on your heart. It could be just actually sitting, closely, putting your phone away, putting on a timer, and just like just sitting or going for a walk without your pod, without a podcast going, without music going, just observing your environment, feeling your body, feeling your breath going in and out. Right? It's not that complicated. And that's the duality, right? You need stillness and movement. You need listening and acting, you need receiving and participating. You need both. If you only sit in stillness and wait forever for the perfect answer, even if you get it, you're not moving on it, you'll stay stuck. But if you're constantly moving and reacting without ever pausing to listen, to recalibrate, to embody, to integrate, to see and hear and feel, you'll lose the connection with your intuition too. Right? The magic happens when the two start working together. When you pause long enough to listen, when you notice the nudge, and then you move, not with certainty necessarily. Right, because I know a lot of people teach a certainty, feel the certainty, feel the certainty. Okay, great. I love that you said that. I don't feel a certainty. What I love more than certainty if you can't access it at that moment, is to lead with curiosity. Curiosity is accessible and available even when you're in fear. Like you can still be curious. Okay, interesting. Why am I feeling fear? And when you move, when you make that next move, that fraction of a move, life responds. Your intuition responds. You have new data, new information that felt good, that didn't feel good, that was exciting, that made me feel contracted, that made me feel expansive, right? New feelings begin to appear, a new sense of clarity, even a new fraction, even if it's just 2% of clarity appears, and then you pause again and you listen again and you adjust again. Right. And this is what an intuitive life actually looks like. It's not passive, it's not reckless action just to say you did something, it's responsive, it's a rhythm. It's a stillness, it's a breath, it's a movement, it's a stillness, it's a breath, it's a movement. And over time, what happens is magic, you start trusting yourself more because you realize something really, really important that you don't actually need to know the entire path, mind blown, right? You just need the next step. You need to trust yourself enough to take the next step and to trust that if you miss a turn, right? Because we all miss our turns, believe me, life will recalibrate just like the GPS in your car. You're not lost, you're just being guided one step at a time. Okay, I want to leave you before we wrap up, I want to leave you with three inquiries, questions for yourself that you can sit with. You might want to journal on them or just reflect on them or have a conversation with someone that you are exploring these kind of spiritual ideas with, right? So here's question one. Where in my life am I waiting for perfect clarity before taking the first or next step? Question number two. What small step feels true right now, even if I can't see the full path yet? And number three, question three, where might I need to create more stillness so I can actually hear, feel, and sense my own intuition. Not silence forever, but just enough space to reconnect with yourself because again, intuition isn't something outside of you, it's connected to the collective conscious outside of you, but it's you, it's yourself, it's your higher self, it's your divine connection, and it's already there. And it just needs these two things that seem opposing, but they're both required: a space to speak and move, and a willingness to make that move. So that's what I have for you today. This was a short and sweet episode, and what I want to share is this like from a from a really high-level coaching level, I would venture to guess that at some point when you were listening to this podcast, your mind tried to distract you. That part of you that really understands the truth of this, like the real divine inner deep truth of this, distracted you from hearing every word because that's what happens when you hear truth that has a potential to change your life, even in a small, tiny, fractional way. Your brain and the parts of you that are here in your life, in your soul, in your spirit, that are parts of you from the past that have been hurt or shamed or uh broken in some way. We have all these parts of us that are kind of like in the shadow and that come forth as needed, right? Like, don't do this, scroll on your phone a little more. Like, go eat that piece of cake. Like, you know, maybe not that. No, sometimes they do that too. But like, really, they're here to keep you cozy, comfy, safe. They're not bad, they're not meant to be pushed away, they're not meant to be exiled, as we say in the parts community. And the parts work, right? It's a it's a modality. So the parts work is a modality of making peace with getting to know those parts of yourself that are very young, that were developed in moments of your youth, of your childhood, of even when you were a baby. Like there's parts of you that sort of got frozen in time at that point because of something that happened. It could be something super traumatic, it could be something not that traumatic, it could be something that somebody said about you, it could be that you were singing out loud and someone told you you had a bad voice, or that little part of you is like, oh, well, I'm not singing again, right? So, whatever example you can take that example to something in your own life. So these parts of us are meant to keep us safe, but they're also meant to keep us exactly where we are, right? So if you're growing, if you're creating something, if you're launching something, if you're wanting to be creative and express yourself in a new way, something that feels risky, edgy, outside of your comfort zone, it's going to activate one of these parts. And you have to be able to learn how to integrate it, how to embrace it, how to, you know, not let it drive the car for you. Like put it in the backseat, right? It could be fear, it could be um fear of taking a risk, it could be shame around some aspect of your something that you did in the past that didn't work out well. It could be failure, it could be all these different parts of yourself, and we all have them. It's a really interesting modality. Um, so I would suggest that you re-listen to the conversation again. It's only, you know, 12-15 minutes long, I think. And if you listen again, try your hardest to either take notes or to really listen again and actually notice where your mind starts to distract you. It's a really important part of integrating your full self and bringing wholeness to who you are, right? Because I I share all this with you about intuition, not to say that you're you're not whole without it. It is a bridge, it's a pathway into a deeper connection with yourself, with the brilliance and the, you know, the courageousness and all of the stuff that you already have within you that's so beautiful and so whole. Like when I coach someone, I don't see a broken person. I see the wholeness of them, and the way I see it is like these blinders on to your own brilliance or aspects of your own brilliance that have caused you to disconnect from some aspect. That's all it is. And I'm here to help you make that connection again, to be intuitive, to trust yourself, to make those moves, to make mistakes, to learn. Like, because we're all in this together. Like I have had more seasons of like, what am I doing than I can even share? And I'm sure you have too, because that's that's where we are as a collective right now. It's like we're constantly dancing this cha-cha of two steps forward, two steps back, five steps forward, three steps back, one step forward, four steps back, right? That's what I'm hearing right now from the sort of the people in my community, the clients that I'm working with. It's like this really intense knowing and then a doubt. An intense knowing and then a doubt. And I think that is so important to understand because I think some of the most brilliant people have this and they don't talk about it enough, right? Because all we get to see are like the the most confident moments that are filmed, right? Once in a while we have an embodied leader, someone who's like, okay, I'm gonna share all that with you. Those are the people that I want to learn from because they're really they're allowing themselves to bring their wholeness to, and again, wholeness doesn't mean that you're fully, completely fixed and done, you're ready, like a whole baked chicken, right? No, it means that you understand that there are parts of you that are always going to be wanting you to not do the thing, and that's okay from safety, not because it doesn't like you, it's because it loves you dearly and wants to protect you from the cliff that it feels like you're about to jump off of, which you're not, right? It's just like a it's just a podcast episode, it's not a cliff, right? So, okay, I hope you listen to this again. I hope you've gotten something from this. Please, as always, if you like this episode, like, subscribe, share. That's how more people can listen to this and we can have an even bigger conversation. If you're interested in coaching with me, either on your messaging or intuitive self-trust practices in your life, you can always DM me on Elena underscore lipson on Instagram. There's also now a new little feature if you look at your Apple Podcast notes. It's a little blue heart where you can click and ask me a question. And I do not have any chat bots, so it's just me answering as a human. So please feel free to ask questions, inquire about coaching, um, messaging coaching, or life intuition coaching. I'm happy to share anything that you might ask. So thank you so much for being here this week. Next week, I have a really special episode on or all about money in a really cool way from this incredible founder who has an amazing app and a program built just for solo entrepreneurs. I'm really excited to share her with you, so stay tuned for the next week's episode. And um, yeah, thanks so much for being here. So much love to you, and I'll see you next time on an intuitive life.