A lot of people find this hard to believe but as a child I was very quiet and at school was always in the shadows of my forthright friends. As a shy and anxious little girl, I stood away from the spotlight. I had no confidence; no confidence in my intellectual ability and no confidence in my ability to decide what was best for me.
So, when the school announced that they were starting violin classes, and any budding Vanessa Maes would have to pass an entry test, my friends rose to the challenge and thought it would be a bit of a laugh to go along and audition. I wasn’t so sure. Something inside me told me it wasn’t a good idea; but I went too. I have no idea why. Unlike my sister, who played the Oboe and gave solo performances at school concerts, I’m not musically inclined at all; 'Three Blind Mice' on the recorder was about as much as I could manage.
In hindsight, it was probably the peer pressure from my friends, the sheep mentality that kids seem to adopt. I didn’t want to say ‘no’ and rather than listen to my gut feeling, I just went along for the audition. After all, what harm could it do?
To my utter surprise, I got through. In fact, we all did. The school must surely have been desperate to fill that class. So, off we all toddled to our first violin lesson. I’ll never forget the feeling of dread I had that morning. The class itself was not awful, but also not particularly enjoyable; the serious, bearded male teacher was more than a little scary and I didn’t find the scratching noise we produced between us to be particularly kind to the ears.
I just had to face up to it; music just wasn’t my thing. It took more than three classes before I found the courage to own up and say I didn’t want to do it. But I’m glad I did. It was the right decision to make, even if it did take me a while to realise. Of course, at that tender age, I didn’t have a sufficiently developed gut feel to help me make the right decision.
So what is this feeling that we develop as we go through life that we call ‘gut feel’ or ‘intuition’?
Intuition is a direct perception of the truth, independent of any rational process or problem solving. Being intuitive means being able to perceive; it’s the ability to sense or know something immediately without reasoning. People who possess intuition can offer a quick and ready insight into a person or situation, seemingly independent of any related experiences.
These days I’m a lot quicker to listen to that ‘gut feel’. Like the day I went off out one foggy evening on my usual trip to the local spa for my weekly swim and sauna. I got half way there and something inside me felt wrong. A sense of foreboding descended. This time I listened to my gut and turned the car round and went back home. As I drove up our driveway I saw flames leaping out from our wheelie bin which had caught fire.
Animals such as dogs, cats and horses all have a highly developed sense of intuition. They possess the ability to pick up on people’s intentions; they can find their way home over unfamiliar territory without any guidance and they can predict extreme weather conditions – often running for cover before any sign of a storm is seen by the human eye. Humans too have a sixth sense but it has become desensitised because the world in which we live in sees no place for heightened senses and demands more logical and rational explanations.
Intuition lies dormant within us all. We all have the ability to develop our powers of intuition – it just needs training and practice and can be learnt like any other skill.
Learning to listen to your intuition is incredibly important. We all need to make decisions; some will need to be logical decisions based on facts and reasoning. Others, often decisions about people, will need to be made on gut feel. So, if you’re not tuned into your intuition yet, is now the time?