How to Increase Your Intuition and Find Joy

This is a step-by-step guide to find just one JOYFUL thing to plan and do each day!

This guided exercise will help you increase your intuitive abilities as you find your personal answers, learn to trust your feelings as intuition, and there are plenty of additional benefits as well!

 

Before we dive into the exercise let’s briefly cover what joy is, and what it is not…

 

Joy is usually not: 

• Mindlessly watching tv while you ignore your to-do list or worries.
• Working out because you need to lose weight.
• Doing a thing on your checklist because you should, you worry about what will happen if you don’t get it done.
• Eating comfort food as a distraction.
• Following your routine or logical next step.

 

Finding joy is usually more like this:

• Watching tv with a glass of wine on Saturday night because it feels so good to relax after a busy week.
• Going to yoga because you love how calm and centered you feel during and after. You look forward to that feeling all day.
• It feels so good to accomplish that item on the task list, and feel good about yourself getting it done.
• Treating yourself to a new restaurant for lunch and savoring it, because the thought of treating yourself for a change brought a smile to your face and lifted up your day.
• Turning off the radio in the car and instead playing your all-time favorite songs.
• Taking inspired joyful action to change your routine by listening to your intuition.

 

Joy is when you think about something you get to do today and you get the feeling of:

• Love in your heart
• A smile on your face
• Excitement
• A burst of energy
• Stress feels lifted

 

Here’s how to find your personal joy for today:

1. Review your to-do list for today. This can be a to-do list you have in mind, this is even better if you have a real to-do list or planner. If this feels burdensome, that’s okay, you will find your joy through this process (and this list will all begin to feel easier). Making lists is a great way to clear your mind. If you feel overwhelmed with everything you have to do, making a list is necessary, always.
2. Think of one practical thing you can really do, that feels joyful at just the thought of adding it to your day. If you can’t think of something, keep going farther. There are no rules. It can be anything.  Keep reaching for ideas of something to add or change in your day until suddenly you feel a smile come over your space and spark of energy just at the thought! Here are a few examples:
   1. A different kind of workout (ask your body what would feel really good today?)
   2. Visiting a new coffee shop
   3. Treating yourself to lunch at a new restaurant
   4. Driving a different route
   5. Re-arranging your to-do list in a different order (doing the thing that feels the best first can sometimes jump-start the momentum to get more done)
   6. Canceling plans or making new ones
3. When you find just one thing that brings you JOY in your day, the entire day will flow better. Priorities feel easier, work has more enthusiasm because you have something to look forward to. You will be following your intuition, and joy helps with manifestation, so the day gets even more aligned for better outcomes!

 

You are looking for one real and practical thing you can do or change in your routine today, that instantly makes you smile, feel excited, and look forward to the day ahead.

To get the most out of this joy process and work through any blocks:

Listen to your feelings.

Your feelings will guide you, and this is the intuitive part of the exercise.

If you cannot easily find your joy, you can work in reverse first.

Ask yourself:

• What does not feel good about your day?

Be honest with yourself.

This exercise is not about what others think, what you think, what is expected, what is planned, what you have to do, what you should do, or thinking your feelings don’t matter because you have to please others first… what matters most is YOUR REAL AND TRUE FEELINGS.

If you are not finding anything joyful, you might have negative expectations that need to be released.

Your joyful answer may be something you shrug off based on past experiences.

For example, I had a negative belief that all the coffee shops in my current city were crowded, dirty, and too loud to work in.. however when I released this false belief and followed my feelings to leave home one morning, after 15 years of being in the same city, I found so many wonderful quiet coffee shops to work from!

Keep reaching for new ideas.

Joy is available! You have to keep expanding with more and more ideas to find it.

You’re like a gold miner hunting for that one golden nugget to make the day worth it!

The golden nugget is a feeling, a sudden wave of joy, excitement, and energy, over a practical and real thing you can do just for today.

You will know it when you get that sudden smile at the thought of something new!

 

The resulting thing that will bring you joy will almost always come from a place of SELF LOVE and SELF CARE.

 

The answer will ultimately be something that is beneficial for you in many ways because your intuition wants to take care of you.

It knows what you need. By checking in on your feelings and reaching for new ideas, you are finding better ways to live your day. It wants to keep you balanced.

If you’ve been alone for too long, the answer might involve a more social activity.

If you have been too social, it might be quiet time alone canceling plans.

If you are burning out on your exercise routine, it may be trying something completely different like walking a trail in the park.

If you have been too sedentary, it might be to take a small afternoon break for a simple walk in fresh air.

 

Energy is always in motion and always changing. 

 

What brings you joy on future days will likely change.

You may start making a regular routine out of the things that bring you joy.

At some point, you may lose the joy about these new habits, and that’s okay. Simply do this exercise again!

Forcing joy will not work!

Even if something has brought you joy in the past, so it makes logical sense to bring you joy now, that doesn’t mean that it always will.

You can think it will bring you joy to treat yourself to lunch at a place you think will be nice. But if you start to feel unusually stressed when making plans to go there on that day…. you might show up to the to find it crowded and sold out of your favorite dish!

Your intuition knows better than this will guide you every day if your listen.

How to use your intuition to find joy.

Here’s the real secret to using you intuition to find joy:

Your intuition will know first, and the way it communicates is through your feelings.

So if you’re driving in a certain direction, to see a person, or making a plan for the day… pay attention to how you feel first. Then go ahead with that plan and see how accurate your feelings were before it even happened!

What brings you joy might surprise you!

Your feelings are a form of intuitive intelligence. Because they are not always connected with our rational and logical mind, you might be surprised by the answers.

You might be surprised also with the divine timing that something works out for you on just this one special day!

It often doesn’t make logical sense. However when you start to listen, and you realize your feelings are their own form of intelligence that is guiding you, over time you will begin to trust it!

If you have experience with being intuitively led in making decisions, you will know just how accurate it is. And that intuition can lead you to do something out of order or unexpected – that just ends up being PERFECT. The more you do this, you will learn just how accurate it is.

Because energy is always in motion, it is important to check-in daily with how you feel about your daily routine and to-do list. Keep checking in with how you feel, and keep planning ahead looking for the joy!

 

 

Review all of your ideas for something to add joy to your day, and instantly when you find the right one, you will FEEL IT! 

A common experience, and truly personal story from recent travels

While traveling, I finally relaxed and followed my joy. As I left my hotel room one Friday morning I had no idea what I was going to do, I just did what felt really good in each moment. Of course, I had the most magical day, everything flowed, everything was in synchronicity, and every parking spot was open. I also healed a stubborn pain in my back that day as I let the stress go. It was not rational, I actually had work that I thought I needed to do… however I didn’t receive any incoming work emails or calls that day! I really did the best thing by following my joy that day!

On the following day, I wanted to experience that same joy again, and it was a Saturday so I had no work and I thought I would have another good day. I felt heavy negative emotions as soon as I drove away from the hotel and I just couldn’t shake them. What I ended up experiencing was no parking spaces, traffic jams, and stressed-out tourists everywhere I wanted to go. I kept trying to visit to my favorite destinations and each one was worse. If I had stopped thinking about what would bring joy and listened to my feelings that instead, my intuition could have easily guided me to a better day.

You can’t force a joy.

Intuition can out-perform logic and bring the best outcomes when followed! I have countless stories like this and I bet you do too!

 

What about truly busy work days, deadlines, and responsibilities? You can shift them to joy with better self talk!

You may be creating your day with an inner talk that sounds more like self-punishment than gratitude or looking for joy.

You may frequently fear-plan your day, just trying to avoid all the worst-case scenarios (that may not even happen however are imagined based on past bad experiences).

Does your self talk every sound like this?

• I should clean the house because someone might stop by and judge me.
• I should get this work done because I don’t want to have problems at work.
• I should do cardio at the gym because I am out of shape.

This kind of inner self-talk is the opposite of motivating.

Even if you get the task done, did you enjoy the process? Likely not. Was it following your intuition? Absolutely not.

Now let’s look for the joy in each experience. Using the same examples above with better self talk and focusing on the joy available, they might sound like this:

• Cleaning the house:  I would have such joy by tonight if my home was nice and clean before I go to bed! I always feel better in a clean house. And I’ll feel so much better when I wake up in a clean house tomorrow too!
• Worrying about work: I can wake up earlier, pick up my favorite coffee, and start work early in the quieter morning hours, play my favorite music while I work in the office alone, and be extra productive. It will feel so good to be ahead of schedule and maybe even take off early to do something fun tonight.
• Fitness: How would it feel good to move my body today? What kind of workout would be fun today?

 

The benefits of this intuitive exercise:

This is a simple exercise to remind you to check-in with how you really feel, break down any limiting beliefs or blocks on how your day is going, and increase the good around you.

Often when you do something that brings joy, you will feel more self-love, as you really listened to what you needed. The benefits of this practice are endless.

Happiness raises your vibration.

If you study any kind of manifestation or law of attraction, you already know that raising your vibration speeds up your manifestations, and they start arriving faster. By adding joy to your day, you are doing more to stack the odds in your favor, for even more good things to happen the day after day!

Checking in to feel for joy, is something to do every day.

As I write this, I have changed my routine and now check-in with my feelings about the best place to be productive each morning. I am smiling as a type of this!

I created this strategy for checking-in, adding something joyful to each day….. and overall I have been more productive and happier!

When I am not feeling “the joy” about my day, I do the exercise again, and new experiences show up.

 

Try the exercise outlined in this article to find what brings you a feeling of joy today and share your results in the comments!