A little while ago, I came across an article on Huffington Post titled “10 Things Highly Intuitive People Do Differently” and found it hit home, so much so that I saved it.  For many years, I have noticed a strange sort of deja vu or sense that I knew something was going to happen before it did.

Here’s the list:

1. They listen to that inner voice. The No. 1 thing that distinguishes intuitive people is that they listen to, rather than ignore, the guidance of their intuitions and gut feelings.

2. They take time for solitude.  Intuitive people are often introverted.  

3. They create.  Creativity does its best work when it functions intuitively. 

4. They practice mindfulness. Mindfulness can help you filter out mental chatter, weigh your options objectively, tune into your intuition and ultimately make a decision that you can stand behind completely.

5. They observe everything.  The first thing to do is notice — keep a little journal, and notice when odd things happen. You’ll gain a keen sense for how often coincidences, surprising connections and on-the-dot intuitions occur in your daily life — in other words, you’ll start to tap into your intuition.

6. They listen to their bodies. They heed their “gut feelings”. 

7. They connect deeply with others.  

8.  They pay attention to their dreams.  At night, when you’re dreaming, you’re receiving information from the unconscious or intuitive part of your brain.

9. They enjoy plenty of down time. We always get warnings from our heart and our intuition when they appear. But we are often too busy to notice.

10. They mindfully let go of negative emotions.  Strong emotions — particularly negative ones — can cloud our intuition. Many of us know that we feel out of sorts or “not ourselves” when we’re upset, and it may be because we’re disconnected from our intuition.

“It’s different from thinking, it’s different from logic or analysis … It’s a knowing without knowing.” Sophy Burnham

I think at least eight of these apply to me.  Eight.  And I’m working on at least one other one.

Just in the past few weeks, I have “been right” about a number of things in a sort of freaky way.  It mostly occurred at work and a lot of the “intuition” could be passed off as “experience”.  But the things that happen on a personal level are harder to explain.

For example, I work with a lot of attorneys across the country most of whom I have never met in person.  There are a few who I talk to almost daily so we have formed a business kind of friendship, others I talk to sporadically.  Twice, I have had a gut feeling that the female attorneys were pregnant from nothing more than an auto response email.  It just happened again last week.

Sometimes it becomes like a game where I “get a feeling” about something and then wait to see if it was right or not.  Sometimes I’m right and I really don’t want to be.

Sometimes I tell that inner voice to be quiet because I just don’t want it to be right.  Not this time.  Just this once, I wanted it to be wrong.  But of course it wasn’t.

So it’s a blessing and a curse.  It’s a blessing to be able to follow a gut feeling to do what just feels right.  It’s curse when the soul knows something is wrong but it takes a while for it all to play out.  There is a lot of anxiety while the voices argue in my head.  Wait, that sounded wrong.  Hmmmm….lemme try that one again.  There’s a lot of anxiety between the time you THINK something will happen and when it actually does.

Listen to that voice, it’s rarely wrong.  Hate to admit that, but it’s true.