Quieting Your Mind
Take a walk. Going for regular reflective walks can be an excellent way to get out of your conscious mind and into a more intuitive, sensory state. Find a quiet, calm place to walk. Many people feel that being close to nature helps connect you to a place that’s “bigger than you,” which helps you become more attuned to the world around you and less fixated on your conscious and rational mind. As you walk, intentionally turn your attention outward. Focus on what you see, smell, taste, and touch. Try to pick up the smallest sounds you can. Pay close attention to small changes in the landscape. Try to sense the smallest changes in temperature, wind, and pressure. Keep a notebook in which you record the things you perceive. Take note of what you observe and how you react to those perceptions.
Develop a meditation practice. Part of learning to be attuned to the world around you is learning to quiet your own mind and calmly observe. Meditation trains your mind to move away from its normal freneticism and to tap into your body’s inner calm. Begin by finding a calm place where you can sit quietly. Close your eyes and begin paying attention to the sounds, smells, and physical sensations around you. Breathe deeply and regularly, focusing on breathing through your diaphragm and noticing the pause between each breath. When random thoughts pop into your mind, gently and calmly let them go. Don’t follow them. Gradually build up the length of time you spend meditating. At first, you may only practice for 5 minutes a day. Gradually build up to 10 minutes a day, then 15, then 20.
Direct your thought outward. When you’re overly focused on the running dialogue in your own head, you easily miss what’s going on with other people and things in the world around you. When you find yourself caught up in your own head, consciously turn your focus outward and notice the people, places, and things around you. Quiet your mind by telling yourself that you don’t need to think about whatever is going on in your head. Instead, decide to be quiet and serene.
Tapping into Your Intuition
Cultivate your intuition. Intuition is the term for “gut feeling”—something that you know or think likely based on instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning. When you get an instant liking or disliking for someone you just met, or have a good or bad feeling about something about to happen, it’s considered intuitive feeling. Scientists believe intuition is a form of quick information processing, and it’s a skill that can be developed with practice and attention. The ability to use intuition develops out of repeated exposure to various situations and outcomes—the more rich and complex your experiences, the more likely you are to develop unconscious, intuitive knowledge about a wide range of situations and experiences. Consequently, developing your intuition begins with exposing yourself to people, places, and things and observing them closely. Pay careful attention to your feelings in response to the things you encounter. Note how you feel and react to them—perhaps even begin keeping a journal in which you note these feelings and the circumstances that gave rise to them. The more practiced you become at observing others and your unconscious reactions to them, the more attuned you’ll be to your intuition.
Keep a dream journal. Dreams are thought to be unconscious expressions of our inner feelings, thoughts, and ideas. As such, they can contain valuable intuitive information of which your conscious mind may be unaware. Make it a habit to write down everything you can remember from your dreams immediately upon waking up. Note people, events, places, objects, and feelings. Try to make connections between the content of your dreams and ongoing feelings or situations from your conscious life. As you begin to draw connections between your conscious and unconscious experience, you’ll become more aware of and attuned to the more subtle ideas and experiences happening below the surface of your immediate consciousness.
Free write. Free writing involves sitting down with a blank sheet of paper and writing down whatever thoughts come. Free writing can be an extremely useful practice because it allows you to tap into the part of your consciousness that exists before your rational mind intercede. To free write, sit down in a quiet, distraction-free place. Take out a blank sheet of paper and begin writing whatever comes to mind, even if initially it’s just “I don’t know what to write.” Continue writing until you’ve exhausted your thoughts. If you need a bit more prompting to help you get started, you can begin by asking yourself a question such as, “What do I need an answer to?” or, “What’s been on my mind lately?” You’ll be surprised by where you can go through free writing and by the unexpected insights you’ll stumble upon.
Cultivating Your Perception
Learn to notice small things. Part of developing a sixth sense is learning how to pay close attention to your surroundings, particularly to small or minute details. The more attention you pay to your surroundings, the more aware you become of slight changes and variations, and the more attuned you become with the world around you. Enhancing your perception this way helps you to notice subtle shifts and changes in your environment and eventually to anticipate certain things before they happen. For example, imagine a street you travel frequently. Try to imagine it in as close and as much precise detail as you can. Where are the various shops located? Which traffic signs are posted? What are the parking regulations? What kind of landscaping does the street have? Write down as many details as you’re able to remember, then go visit that street and carefully fill in the blanks in your memory. Write down a detailed description of what you see. Later, test yourself to see how accurately you remembered the details you wrote down. Learn to notice and absorb this level of detail wherever you go.
Record what you see. Teach yourself to focus your attention outward rather than inward. Doing so will help you develop sensitivity to what goes on around you and will teach you to quiet your own thoughts and preoccupations when necessary. Take a notebook with you when you go places. Note what you see and sense in as much detail as possible. Make this a regular practice until you find yourself doing it automatically, with or without the notebook.
Learn to watch and listen closely. When talking with someone, train yourself to put your full attention on them. When you learn to observe someone closely and attentively, you often learn to pick up on small, nearly imperceptible cues that will indicate what the person is truly feeling or thinking. Note small variations in their tone and inflection, watch the movement of their eyes and the contraction or dilation of their pupils, pay attention to the words they choose, and notice the pauses and silences between their words.
Exercise your non-visual senses. We tend to rely on our sight to interpret the world around us, so much so that sight can come to predominate over our other senses. But if you consciously work on prioritizing senses other than sight, you can begin to perceive more subtle variations in the environment of which you were previously unaware. Try closing your eyes and using your other senses to perceive people as they walk by. Note the sound of their clothing, footfalls, and breathing. Note their smell. Note the subtle changes in the air around them as they move. Note any temperature changes that occur as they pass. See if you can detect where their attention is directed and if you can tell when their attention falls on you. As you become more sensitive to people and the energy they give off, see if you can notice the particular type of energy of each person who passes. Can you pick up on any tension or on any negative or positive energy? Try to assess the energy of rooms you walk into. Can you sense any positive or negative energy?
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