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An excerpt from Stop Checking Your Likes 
by Susie Moore

Your intuition is the inner pressing of the wiser you. It’s the still, small voice inside giving you direction. It’s the oldest, wisest part of you. Notice how every time someone gives you vacation recos, they’ll describe the best activities based on what they did. Their intentions are good, and suggestions are wonderful if you’re feeling them! But sometimes the pressure to “do all the things” in a new city is exhausting. You end up needing a holiday from your holiday. So if you got to Rome and you don’t really feel like seeing the Vatican, the Colosseum, or that “must-visit” gelato bar...don’t! So what? If you’d rather just drink Sangiovese, shop, eat pasta, and take in the atmosphere, then do that! It’s your holiday. And it belongs to you. The same goes for choosing a career, a city, even a couch.

Think of a time when you’ve trusted your intuition, even though it seemed to make no sense at all. What happened? Think of a time when you went against your intuition, because it didn’t seem sensible to follow it. What happened?

Direct Message

Think for a second and take a deep breath. What is that knowing? That something inside? That voice?

It’s your wise AF inner guidance. And no one else can tune in to it but you. It can help you with a million things — from choosing the right career path to meeting your life partner even to saving your life. Yep. It’s that vital.

Your Inner Pilot

You can listen to advice, yes. You can talk things out with people you trust. But only you can ever ultimately know what’s best for you at any moment. The question you want to ask yourself is, In this moment, am I letting my intuition guide me? No one knows what’s inside you, the same way that you don’t know what’s inside others. Your desires, intentions, and instincts are not felt by anyone but you. You have an inner pilot ready to drive your beautifully unique life forward...you just have to use it. It’s your greatest treasure.

Living a Self-Directed Life

Can you stop second-guessing yourself  ? Even the most extraordinary among us, those we look to for guidance, have ordinary problems just like we do. Other people don’t know better, even though it can seem that way sometimes. And they certainly don’t know best when it comes to knowing what’s right for you. I’ll never forget the time I heard a well-known spiritual teacher say onstage, “I’ve written six self-help books and I’m a f*cking mess!”

This is where self-approval will save you a thousand times. When you can rely on your inner like button, you’ll be living a self-directed life. And unlike all those people on their deathbeds wishing they’d lived a life truer to themselves, you’ll reach that stage with far fewer regrets. And the sooner you can get there, the better for you. You don’t have to wait until you’re on your deathbed!

When you trust yourself, not only will you make better, aligned decisions, but you’ll have far more fun, too. Your inner guidance doesn’t just want to keep you safe. It wants you to have a rich, full, healthy, vibrant, playful life! Because the basis of a good life is joy, freedom, and personal progress. That is what the universe is always supporting. And using your brain, tradition, or societal rules alone can hinder that.

One January morning, when my regular yoga class became a mat-to-mat experience, I had to laugh a little at the universal New Year’s enthusiasm. But in this particular class, the teacher said something cool to all the newbies in the room: “If you lose your balance and fall, that’s perfect. If you don’t know the pose and have never heard Sanskrit before, that’s perfect, too. Just copy the rest of us and try your best. If you’re confused and regret coming at any time — also perfect! Just enjoy yourself. Explore your body’s limits. Play around.”

And as the class kicked off, I was surprised by something: the experienced yogis seemed to have the least fun of all. I noticed their furrowed brows, their discomfort when toppling during a standing balance, and their rushing ahead instead of flowing with the breath.

As for the newbies, one of them asked, “Hey, what’s an asana?” They were just throwing themselves in wholeheartedly, and it didn’t matter that they didn’t know the terminology. They had the most fun, and probably got the best workout, too. A couple of them even went for it with headstands — something I never even attempt after nearly ten years of going to classes! And it worked, dammit!

Again, take a breath and think of a time when that brain of yours entirely led the way. What happened?

Now take another breath and think of a time when your heart led you fully. What happened?

Reflecting on that for a moment, do you want more of those heart-driven, intuitive moments to create your life? Probably, right?

There’s nothing wrong with using your head. It’s an amazing decision-making filter that keeps you safe and helps you make sound decisions. But the brain isn’t pro-experimentation.
It’s not willing to look stupid, take a risk, or make a mistake. Our heads like routine and the perceived security it brings us. But not every decision needs to be sensible. Pure sensibleness blocks opportunity. The universe gave us a brain and a heart. We need to use both in making decisions.

So what’s the heart like as a guide? Well, it doesn’t overthink. It feels. It goes where it’s called. And who knows where that can take you? Maybe something as unexpected as a successful headstand (that would’ve taken your brain more than a decade to arrive at).

Instant Intuition

If you’re still feeling stuck, here’s a potent Instant Intuition technique that will help you make the right decision:

Sit down comfortably.
Take a few deep breaths to clear your mind and settle the body.
Close your eyes.
Visualize your first option. See yourself moving forward with this choice. Picture it happening in the present moment in vivid color. Imagine the activity, the outcome, the ripple effects.
Keep breathing, and notice how your body feels and responds.
Now visualize your second option. See yourself moving forward with this choice. Picture it happening in the present moment in vivid color. Imagine the activity, the outcome, the ripple effects.
Keep breathing, and notice how your body feels and responds.
If there’s a third and fourth option, keep going until you’ve covered them all.
Which option made your body relax? That’s the best decision for you.

See? Your body will support you in making the right choices. Your body houses around 30 to 40 trillion of the most intelligent cells on earth! Respect them!

Anything that creates a spark of curiosity within us or generates some desire that typically lies dormant is often our intuition guiding us to say yes to more. Human beings are different from all other animals. We have the gift of higher consciousness and the ability to make choices using both our instincts and our intellect. We have this wildly helpful thing called instinct, and a brain that’s smarter than any computer that exists. We can feel and think. We can understand doubt, process it, and use our intellect to reason. And when you use everything that’s available to you, you’ll never have to blame anyone else again. You realize how powerful you are in creating your life. And you won’t let yourself down.

Susie Moore is the author of Stop Checking Your Likes and What If It Does Work Out? which was named by Entrepreneur as one of the “8 Business Books Entrepreneurs Must Read to Dominate Their Industry.” A former Silicon Valley sales director turned life coach, she has been featured on The Today Show, as well as in O Magazine, Business Insider, Forbes, Time, and Marie Claire. She lives in Miami, Florida with her husband Heath and their Yorkshire Terrier, Coconut. Find out more about her work at www.Susie-Moore.com.

Excerpted from the book Stop Checking Your Likes. Copyright ©2020 by Susie Moore. Printed with permission from New World Library.

My fiance is constantly having nightmares about fighting demons and monsters. He wakes up all over the room and house. He is a sleepwalker who regularly dreams about white snakes biting him and spiders on the ceiling, but under stress, he fights all kinds of evil beings. Should I be worried? What can we do to help him? Thanks!

- Susie

Dreamchaser:

You absolutely should NOT be worried about your fiance.

There are a couple of things going on here. The first and most obvious is that he keeps a lot of stress locked up inside of him during his normal waking hours, and when he sleeps, he works through all that stress. This is actually very healthy in terms of his mental, emotional and spiritual well-being.

Another thing happening here relates to his past lives. He is not only remembering them - he is re-living them in his dreams. The "monsters" and "demons" are really memories of skirmishes from past lives when he was a warrior, knight, soldier, etc. When he gets stressed, he re-visits those lives in his dreams. As he fights and relives those battles, he releases a lot of stress.

In Asian mythology, white snakes were considered lucky. He has had a number of past lives in China and Japan, and on a soul level, he still has these associations with white snakes. It's likely that the white snakes around him in these dreams are protecting him and bringing him luck. The snakes are teaching him to use his creative powers, to explore some mysteries in life, and to travel between the two worlds (waking and sleeping), amongst other things.

The spiders are allowing him to balance his masculine and feminine energy while he is sleeping. Spiders teach us how to use our feminine energy as a creative force. Since he is such a "manly man," he doesn't allow his feminine side to come out often. The spiders are also bringing him divine inspiration; he wakes up with a lot more soul knowledge than when he went to sleep.

I imagine it is really scary to sleep next to someone who has crazy dreams, acts them out and sleepwalks. I am like your fiancÈ. I am the one who sleepwalks and acts out in my sleep. I know I freak out everyone around me. I work through a lot of stuff in my dreams, so I know your man is doing the same.

Please reassure him that he is normal and that he does not have some type of psychological issue. He is just buttoned up so tight in his waking hours that he does not allow much spiritual knowledge to enter his consciousness while awake, so Spirit teaches him when he's dreaming.

He is NOT crazy and has nothing to fear. I bet that he feels better when he wakes up in the morning after one of these dreams, or at least better than he does after nights when he doesn't seem to dream at all.

I wish you both peaceful nights.

*****

Astrea:

The word "mare" is Old English for "demon." In the old days, people believed that troubled sleep was caused by a demon who rode you like a horse while you were asleep. The terrible things you dreamed were the experiences from that ride.

Is your fiance a Libra? They seem to be plagued more than the rest of us with those kinds of night terrors.

There are lots of good remedies for this kind of thing. Here are a few:

One of the easiest ways to protect your fiance from nightmares is to have him find a shell or a stone with a hole through the center. This is a natural holy (holey?) stone. Thread a red string through the hole and hang it on your bed.

Say this together, out loud: "We lay us here to sleep. No nightmares shall plague me until they swim the waters that flow upon the earth and count all the stars that appear in the firmament!"

Another is to have your fiance place his shoes under the bed on the south side, one facing one way, one facing the other. This will keep monsters from "entering" his dreams, because the directions of the shoes confuse them. It will also cut down on the sleepwalking, because if he tries to get up, his feet won't know which direction to take.

For more protection, take three nine-yard pieces of blue yarn. Have him braid the yarn and say at each plait: "Triple headed hag, protect me from phantasmagorical harm. MARES! Ride and scare ELSEWHERE!"

Then place a twig of rosemary and seven dried chamomile flowers in a little pouch. Wrap your yarn around the top of the pouch. (It'll be a big lump when you're done). Refresh once a month, and replace the contents of the pouch.

The oldest and the stinkiest remedy (and sometimes these work best) is to take an onion and cut it in half. Release it and pick up the side that lands cut side up. Pull your bed away from the wall and walk clockwise around your bed, stopping at each corner.

Hold the cut onion over the corner with the cut side facing up. You might also wrap the bottom of the onion in Saran Wrap and let it come up the sides, so it's still stinky but doesn't drip on your bed or your floor. Then at each corner say, "Dragon North, Dragon South, Dragon East, Dragon West, Sweet Dreams on the Dragon's Breast!" When you finish, go to the center of the head of the bed and inscribe a cross with a circle around it.

I hope these easy rituals help you BOTH get more restful sleep. GOOD LUCK!