rc4dt1

So I have learned a couple lessons over the past week or two. Both instances included me having a "hunch", intuition, or first response telling me to carry out an action. And in both cases I didn't listen to that hunch and I thought, "what's the worst that could happen?".

Neither situation resulted in anything tragic or particularly destructive. However, both choices resulted in me experiencing some pain and potentially hurting the feelings of another person.

I don't think the details are necessary but I will share them if they will help paint a better picture. Really, I just am wondering how people deal with hunches, intuition, "god-senses", etc. Sometimes I discount them as me being too hard on myself. Sometimes I think it's just my brain questioning every single thing I do. So it's hard to tell exactly when I need to really stick to following the hunches or gut feelings.

How do you all determine what is the voice of your higher power and what is not? How do you deal with the screaming in your head when you want to do one thing so badly but you have the hunch telling you otherwise?

ScottFromWI

Whether or not you are basing decisions on your own thoughts or those from a higher power, I think it's a lot more important to consider the implications and how they will affect others first.

biminiblue

Learning to listen to that small (or large) still voice is the essence of emotional and spiritual health for me.

My HP wants me to consider others before myself in instances where I will not be harmed regardless which way I choose to act in the situation.

rc4dt1

Thank you both for your responses. I am very likely to be complicating this. I suppose I will give a couple of examples:

1. I'm hungry but I just ate. I should go work out because it's good for me but I want to rest and eat nachos on the couch. Hunch says, "go to the gym" even though I have been 4 days in a row. I want to lay down and watch tv.
2. Very busy morning at work. Still a lot to do and more work behind that. But I'm tired and think I need a break. I recognize that I maybe have been slacking lately, too. So I think I should just commit to focusing and working more. Hunch say, "get to work".
3. Pretty girl that I would like to talk to. Hunch says, "you are early in your sobriety". Other thought says, "you aren't a low bottom and you are a good person - there are no written rules in sobriety that says you can't talk to her". But I struggle with maybe wanting to move things forward.

Some of these decisions are nominal. Not life altering... but I find that practicing following the hunches in simple situations can lead to better awareness and decisions in more impactful scenarios.

I might as well just share that the reason this is coming up is that I met a girl that I really liked. She is friendly, mature, smart, etc. My hunch was to not ask her out - what I thought the reason was was that if I got rejected I might get resentful and be hurt. I asked her out anyway. The lesson I learned is that I am not ready - emotions started to get involved and I kind of freaked out and have pulled back. It also resulted in me missing my ex more. So the hunch was right but the reason was unpredictable.

I'm spinning a bit right now, obviously. It scares me that I am going to be in my head forever and reminds me that I loved to drink and use to escape the non-stop thinking.

That's all. I'm on step 4 and 51 days sober.

keithj

As a general rule, I ask myself 'Is it selfish or not.' Am I looking for how I can be useful to others or am I seeking to gratify some perceived need of my own.

doggonecarl

I am not sure my HP is involved with my decisions to lounge on the couch or do something productive. However, in making a decision between two things, the one that is more difficult to make is usually the right one.

Your conscience is constantly at war with your "lower" self. As someone mentioned, pay attention to motive and most times you can figure out which is which.

EndGameNYC

Life is hard. My choices are my own. They don't come from divine intervention, social norms, a list of "pros" and "cons," or a disembodied voice. The power of choice is meaningless to me unless and until I'm prepared to manage the consequences of my actions, no matter how unpredictable they may be. This is not a clichè, a slogan or a suggestion; it's the way I more fully experience, learn about and express my own humanity, my own being. This is also the only way in which I can experience true freedom, and I cannot do this while I'm drinking, am overly involved in what other people are saying or doing, or otherwise preoccupied by self-defeating attitudes or activities. I can only achieve this by putting in the work required to build my authentic self.

I cannot trust my own hunches, intuitions, or others' "tips and tricks" unless I make it my business to come to know my authentic self and, to the extent that I continue to do this, I gain trust over my own decisions and look less to others to help me find my own way. This is my life's work and not a passing phase, the result of reading self-help books, or living someone else's life. Saying "No" to alcohol, drugs, and all manner of addictions and unnecessary pain and misery in life is not just saying "Yes" to life; it's affirming a better life in all aspects of living. Our mortality either motivates us to greatness, or it diminishes us by our settling for less.

rc4dt1

Thanks... but can you tell me more about how you DO come to your decisions and good choices? You mention a lot of ways you DON'T come to your decisions but not how you DO. Sorry if I am missing your point.

Maybe a deeper explanation of how you "put in the work required to build your authentic self"...

I mean no offense by questioning your comment. I think it kind of makes sense but perhaps an unfinished thought.

Thx

dox

51 days without a drink and working on step 4. Now that's progress.

I hadn't even started on step 1 at that stage of my development.

It seems like the hunches that you refer to are what we sometimes call intuition.

The step 8 and 9 promises refer to this.

So, if you want to get better at knowing whether to act on your hunches, I humbly suggest that you get on with your step 4 (and 5, etc.).

The promises really do come true . . .

if we work for them.

My intuition is much clearer for having worked through the steps.
More importantly, I often know now when to act on intuition rather than intellect.

That's progress for you.

Dee74

I didn't trust my own intuition for a long time - after all I'd made a lot of bad decisions, mostly in connection with drugs or drinking.

Until I felt I could trust myself again, I asked a lot of people, people who's opinions I admired and respected

After a few months recovery I felt my perception shift...a lot.

I still make mistakes - for me, it's usually pride or fear that interrupts the signal...but on balance I found my gut to be usually trust worthy ever since...

I'm sure you will too rc4dt1

D

Gottalife

Great to hear you are on step 4, the first real action step where we begin to identify and remove the things blocking us from our higher power, cleaning up the past etc.

Now flick to page 84.." Vigorously we commenced this way of living AS we cleaned up the past, not after. Step ten suggest we clean up any new mistakes as we go along. So it is possible to make a mistake and put it right with step ten.

Step 11 gives us our one day at a time plan. Prayer and meditation, pausing when agitated, asking for the right thought or action etc page 86 on.

On page 87 it says that, being inexperienced, it is not probable that we will be inspired at all times." We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it."

This is how I progressed in the program. Trying to develop steps 10,11,12 as a way of life while at the same time cleaning up the past. It has meant I made plenty of mistakes and was given plenty of opportunities for growth. I was able to learn from my mistakes rather than drink over them. This is a painful process, but as Bill said pain is the touchstone of all spiritual growth. Sounds to me like you are on the right track. Have a go at life. If you get it wrong, as we all do at times, you have step 10 to fix it, and step 11 to guide you forward.

zjw

its a tough question over time i've become more in tune with whats the real deal and what is not. Not everyone is plugged in so to say to even get these intuitions or hunches. I've learned some people get em some people dont. Its best to go with em and follow through if you feel its hte real deal. Lots of times theres nothing in it for me I'm just being used as a vessel.

tomsteve

I think you answered yer questions here:
"Some of these decisions are nominal. Not life altering... but I find that practicingfollowing the hunches in simple situations can lead to better awareness and decisions in more impactful scenarios. "

practice!

Aellyce

Just saw this thread... this is a topic I could talk about for days but will keep it reasonably brief. Reading the posts here, everyone seems to have their subjective interpretation of the original question, which is the normal reaction to such a question, I think. So let me rephrase the way I understand it in my head: how do we make decisions? What are the different methods, "tools", and influences in our decision making?

First off, it would not be me if I did not mention science a bit... I actually work on decision making from a neurobiological point of view and have also been very much into cognitive psychology theories and various philosophies concerning this topic. I have also been subject in a variety of psychology and cognitive neuroscience studies addressing decision making mechanisms and influences (a few more esoteric ones as well, out of curiosity). But the OP was not asking for theories, it was asking for subjective descriptions, especially regarding intuition.

I use intuition a lot in my information processing, sometimes I feel I use it a bit too much. Being a scientist actually taught me to temper this and rely on hard facts, evidence, and documentation much more than I would be inclined. When I started my PhD program many years ago, my supervisor gave me some really hard time pushing me to use the literature more and look at factual "sensory information" more at least in my work. I think I've mastered that pretty well, so now most people actually perceive me as a very rational person who uses logic more than anything else... and that is also true, I just had to develop what was already inside me by default. So if I had to describe my decision making processes, and this is in agreement with what the psych studies I had participated in revealed about me, it's very much a combination of analytical-intuitive processing that I use most often.

Analysis is easy to define, but what is intuition, really? There are many conceptualizations about it coming from many different disciplines and angles... I like what this article says for example:
The Science of “Intuition” | Brain Pickings

"Perceptions by the unconscious mind". But what is the source of those perceptions? Good question. Science says it's the unconscious mind and memories, many spiritual systems claim it to be something external or a "power" that is internalized within us that's more than simply "us"...

But going back to my subjective experience, again, I use intuition a lot. I tend to trust mine because I've had so many many great experiences with it. I trust it especially when it comes to people (again, many good experiences). I use it all the time in my science work and it's served me very well so far (insights). But for me it's not something mysterious... often I get to quick intuitive insights, but then can analyze how I got to them, consciously, pretty well. And then I can express it. I do this here on SR also all the time.

So to answer the original question, rc4dt1, I don't feel I need to "determine" where these perceptions come from. I don't like to fragment my mind and wonder which part I trust and which part I don't. For me, it's a constant holistic, ongoing analytical-intuitive processing that's automatic. What I do evaluate, though, is the end result of all this mental processing, before I take action. Sometimes I evaluate it very logically, other times in a moral sort of way, yet other times emotionally. Usually a combo of all these things.

Decisions tend to come to me easily - why depression was so debilitating to me. I felt I had been "transported into a dimension" where I was unplugged from my well-known source of inspiration and also unable to make up my mind in many ways. It was awful to me, probably the wost component of depression (exacerbated by alcoholism) was losing my decision making ability.

Music

Aligning my actions with my HP means that I try to do the things my HP would want me to do to the best of my belief and ability. I know when I'm not doing those things when I get that hunch or intuition and go against it. I get a feeling in the pit of my stomach that I probably shouldn't do what I'm about to do, or say. When I make the correct decision, I feel good inside. When I make the wrong decision, I immediately feel guilt. I rely first on my feelings and second, on the effect and reactions of others. Most often, I can negate the second, by acting on the first.

Aellyce

Why, Carl? Can you elaborate?

I find that we often over-extend ourselves... make things harder for ourselves than they realistically need to be. I also often see that people make hard decisions to avoid experiences that they very much desire and choose an overly complicated rationalization why it may be better to avoid them. I've done that myself many times. Of course I'm not talking about choosing to drink/drug vs healthy lifestyle alternatives. I'm talking about decisions made within what's a good life already.

I often find that many of the "hard" decisions are fear-based. Again, this is not in the context of addiction.

doggonecarl

If thinking about doing something makes your gut hurt out of discomfort, for example, apologizing for something you've done (amends), or keeping a committment you'd rather skip, it is natural to want to avoid that feeling. We do that by avoiding the situation or circumstance that makes us disquieted. But the right thing isn't always the easy thing. The saying, "Go with your gut feeling," applies in my book as doing the thing that makes you uncomfortable inside, not running from it. Why listen to your "gut"? Because in your head you are talking yourself out of doing whatever it is you don't want to do.

Aellyce

Thank you. So if your reasoning is true, and I like to believe it is, it explains quite well why in most of my life I've chosen the "hard way" (discomfort in situations I was very interested in and really wanted vs comfort in something simpler but less interesting to me). What I was referring to in my comment: for me, these "intuitive" decisions often lead me to be much more willing to follow those roads of my internal nature, because I really want them. Because I'm following my heart. Vs. something that may seem superficially simpler / easier objectively. It's easier for me to follow my heart and "create" my own life than any other prescriptions. I've done so many things like that in my life. So many.

Drinking was an exception, the "way out" into a simpler solution, that eventually became more complicated than anything else I'd encountered, and not in a good way.

But now recovery, for me, feels like back home

Aellyce

I'll add one more thought. We thrive to get to know ourselves, interpret our history, and live the best life we can imagine, or not even imagine.

I think my "method" is suitable for someone (like me) who had not endured debilitating traumas early in life. I had some (who didn't?), but nothing major. I was lucky, probably. For those of us who have experienced major traumas in life, in childhood or later (and there are many on SR like that), all these considerations and methods might be different. Different sources of "higher power"

Boleo

One thing I have learned - If there is any rationalization, justification, minimization or denial going on - it ain't coming from a Higher Power. It is my ego trying to deceive me.