It’s all about your attitude, that’s the difference between whether you will succeed or fail. So true. However how many of us listen to our body?

As part of the coaching and sales training I do,  I talk about the fives levels of listening, as penned by Steve Covey

5 Levels of Listening:

• Empathic Listening – Listening/responding with both the heart and mind to understand the speaker’s words intent and feelings. Listen for what is not being said
• Attentive Listening – Paying attention, focusing on the speaker’s words/comparing to your own experiences.
• Selective Listening – Hearing only what interests you.
• Pretend – Giving the appearance of listening
• Ignore – No effort to listen

This relates to when we listen to others. However how often do you use these levels when listening to your body? Most of us, if we are honest with ourselves ,use selective listening, i.e. when it suits us.

When we are hungry, we eat, we listen to our hunger pans, or sometimes not. When we are thirsty, we drink, or even when we are not. When you have an important decision to make, or coming up to an important meeting, do you listen to what your body is saying to you? Part of my work with the Enneagram, studies the link between listening to your body and the mind.

The easiest way to start to listen to you body, is learning to listen to your intuition.

In the book ‘The Corporate Mystic: A guidebook for visionaries with their feet on the ground’ by Gay Hendricks & Kate Ludeman, they talk about one mystic talking about intuition relating to their hit rate at work.

“My hits were very accurate about work, but in the area of relationships I seemed to have little or no intuitive skill. As I studied this problem I came to see that I was carrying a lot more baggage with me about relationships than I was about work. At work I could look dispassionately at a situation and say ‘That’s the way it is,’ but in relationships my head was too full of expectations and programming to see clearly. “

Gay & Kate go on to say “If you want to boost your hit rate, begin by studying yourself. Noticce how your intuition communicates with you. Intuition seems to come in on three channels: word, picture and body-sense. Most of us receive better on one channel than another, so it helps to find out what your best channel is.

For example, think of a question like “Where do you want to be five years from now?” A word channel response to this question might be a sentence flasing across the mind: “ I want to be a CEO.” A picture channel response might be an image of yourself sitting in a particular office. The busy sense channel might be a warm, pleasant sensation in your abdomen that carries with ir meaning, the good feeling of success. No channel is better than any other; they all come from the same place – the intuitive capability that we all seem to be born”

To see where you level of intuition is do the following exercise.

Think of something that you can’t make up your mind about, or an important decision you have to make. Hold out your arm horizontal to the ground and think of each choice, (you need a partner for the next part). Think of choice A, imagine it, feel it, be it, now ask your partner to try and push your arm down.

Now think of choice B, imagine it, feel it , be it, again ask your partner to push your arm down. Which was easier? Which ever your body resisted the most, is the path you need to go down. Your body will naturally be strong with the choice that your truly want to go with. Your hesitation will be around some fear, confidence, or self-belief around the outcome.

By listing to our body more, we learn to trust our instincts and intuition and thus make decisions with greater confidence.

Baiju

More writing from Baiju can be found at  www.performanccoachingandtraining.co.uk/blog