6 STEPS TO TAP INTO YOUR INTUITION

Follow your true purpose

For some of us, the new year can bring on a massive existential crisis. Where am I going? What am I doing? Am I wasting my life? In response, we rush to change all manner of things: our weight, our job, our fitness regime. It’s no surprise January is peak time for divorce lawyers. But instead of rushing into change, could you make this new year a time to pause and take a moment to work out what makes you tick, what makes you happy and what gives you purpose? Life coach Marie Forleo, so brilliant that she’s Oprah’s favourite, can help you do just that. Her techniques work as well for the inner stuff – your relationship with yourself – as they do for improving your other relationships, setting up a business or changing career course. Her philosophy is that by hearing and trusting your basic instinct, you will recognise what you need from life. Forleo is super-fun to watch on her Youtube channel, Marietv. An ex Nike dance athlete, she explains her life-enhancing concepts using her whole body – there’s a lot of arm waving and gesticulation. But even if you haven’t watched her yet, you may have heard of her successful global B-school – an online business course with 55,000 graduates and counting, Her key mantra – which she asked the 1,200-strong crowd at her sell-out live event in London to yell – is ‘everything is figureoutable’. It’s also the title of her new book. She adopted the phrase from her mum, a woman who, Marie says, would happily get stuck into fixing anything, from a radio to the bathroom tiling. Once, young Marie came home from school to find her on top of the house, fixing the roof.

So what do you need to figure out right now? You may, like a lot of women, have spent the past 10 or 20 years concentrating on work or children, ticking the life-stage boxes. So what’s next? The first thing you need to do, says Forleo, is get in touch with your intuition. This is something we are not taught. In fact, the opposite is true. ‘We are not trained to go inside and ask ourselves, “What do I want my life to be like?” We haven’t been shown how to go after what we want or know what we want,’ she says.

Often we’re conditioned, by society and our families, to follow a certain path – whether that’s earning a certain amount or having a job title or a family. Women in particular can learn to ignore their intuition, she says, because we’re told to be quiet, do our work and keep our heads down.

In her first big job, working on the New York Stock Exchange, Forleo says she got a very strong sense that, despite being very well paid, this was not what she was supposed to be doing. But she didn’t do anything about that feeling, because on the outside, it

‘WE HAVEN’T BEEN SHOWN HOW TO GO AFTER WHAT WE WANT’

all looked perfect. Eventually, she had what she now knows was a panic attack, the beginning of a wake-up call that led her to her career in coaching.

All of us have so much innate wisdom, so much guidance that lives in our hearts, minds and bodies, Forleo says. ‘Ask yourself: “What would be a beautiful existence for me?” Is it working less? More? Moving to a new place? Most of us can bring any of those things to life if we focus on them and make them important.’