Did Your Family Teach You About Intuition?

November 26, 2014

You might think your family didn’t teach you much about your intuition but they did.  Whether they taught you to doubt your gut feelings by telling you that you were wrong when you voiced something you sensed but couldn’t prove, or they simply were living examples of listening to their inner-voice; they taught you something.

One way I was taught to tune-in to my intuition by my family was through working with my dad on the ranch. There were always projects to do. The list was never ending with land, livestock, buildings, fences and equipment to keep in order.  Dad would often have me and my brother help him when he was working on a project. He did most of the heavy lifting and our job was to keep him in his efficiency-zone by handing him whatever tool he needed next, holding a board in place or plugging in a power tool.

While he taught us how to do things along the way and verbally asked us to hand him the next tool or piece of material he needed early on, over time we were expected to know what he needed next, to read his mind and be one step ahead of him as he worked.  This was also the way his dad, our grandfather worked.  My brother and I learned to either be savvy enough to know what was next in the project or intuit their next step.

We were experiencing non-verbal communication.  As the helpers we tuned-in to what was happening and kept track of the fast pace that activity was moving. We not only were tuned-in to whether a next tool was needed but if it was time to get dad a drink of water.

Practicing awareness of another through observation and intuitively tuning-in to foresee what they may need next was one of the languages of our family.  In the full throws of a project if we weren’t tuned-in it could mean someone got hurt or the rhythm or efficiency was broken. It also insured we didn’t get scolded for being lazy and not doing our part.

Reading or empathically feeling others emotions and translating that into what to do for them is one of the tricky areas where we can either be affirmed or taught to doubt ourselves in a family.  The nice thing about intuiting the material next steps of a ranch project is that it not as dicey of ground as intuiting someone’s emotions and knowing how to respond.

Our families subtly teach us how to use or disregard our intuition.  As we identify some of the ways this occurred in our life, we can use it to reclaim or further hone our intuitive awareness.

  • Lauren says:

    Thanks for the beautiful thoughts and cool story of life on the ranch!

  • Sandy Paul says:

    What a great example of learned intuition. It makes me think more about what I learned from my family…I got a lot of emotional intuition from my relationship with Mom, and Dad passed on his common sense ‘intuition’ to all of us. They both had a lot of that though. I’m going to need lots of intuition in my caregiving role when Rog comes home.

    • Natalie says:

      I agree that grandpa was very intuitive even though he wouldn’t admit that if asked about it he had a good gut feeling about people and business. Being intuitive as a caregiver can be difficult because its hard to allow someone to have there experience, be compassionate but not have to take on their struggle/ pain.

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