As a reinventer, having reliable inner guidance that you trust is essential, not just nice to have. This is so important that I have created a category for it, called Your Compass. I call it a compass because it is literally what will guide you in your decisions along the reinventer’s path.

As a reinventer myself, and as a life coach, this is a personal hot button for me. You will find that I write frequently about it . I hope I won’t alienate you by ranting or harping on it. That isn’t my intention, but I do believe that I probably cannot place too much emphasis on it. Using your inner compass reliably is just that important as a reinventer.

My belief is that you just cannot reinvent successfully or joyfully without using your inner guidance as your primary navigation tool.

A reinvention is a coming home, to the authentic you. The only way you can know and understand the authentic you is through your inner guidance.

It’s my intention to provide you with tips and techniques to help you strengthen your reliability and trust in your inner guidance: your compass.

My first tip is simple: Make space.

Simple, but not always so easy in our busy, complicated lives.

If you want to hear the clear voice of your inner guidance, you need to create some clear space in which to hear it or sense it.

I cannot tell you how long I resisted this practice, in spite of how comfortable I am with my inner life. I always felt as if I was indulging myself or ‘wasting’ time, because I wasn’t accomplishing things with clearly identified results.

By now, I have learned that when I make space regularly to hear my inner guidance, it actually saves me time, because I am more clear about what actions will contribute to my goals and which ones will distract me from them.

I have also noticed something else. For most of my life, my inner guidance was one voice among many. Usually it was a quieter, less assertive voice than most of the chorus in my head. Because I often didn’t ‘make clear space’ for it, it competed with all of the other voices: those of society, my culture, my family, my friends, and the ‘experts’, as well as many others.

Whenever I was faced with making a decision, I was essentially conducting a group session in my head, comprised of many perspectives, most of them not very relevant or true to me.

I wish I could tell you that I am always able to hear my inner guidance clearly, and that I am free from the well-intended advice of others, always charting my own true course. I’m not. Maybe we never can be that, fully.

However, I think I have reordered my priorities. The most important voice to me is my inner guidance. Hands down. No contest.

Whenever I temporarily forget that, I feel bad or things get hard. This is my signal to create some space to hear my authentic voice, to tune into my compass.

What is clear space, and how do you create it?

Here’s a menu to get you started:
• Meditation
• Guided visualization
• Walking, especially in nature
• Journaling
• Drawing
• Collage

I’m sure that you will think of other possibilities. In future posts I’ll explore some tips on these practices, how to make them fun and enriching.

If it has been a while since you have regularly ‘listened’ to your inner guidance, your first order of business will probably be to start to distinguish your authentic voice from all of the rest of them in your head.

For me, there is a sense of ‘rightness’ about my inner guidance. An idea or insight has a ‘that’s it’ quality to it, and a sense of peace replaces the debate or conflict that was there before.

I would recommend that you start small when you begin creating clear space to tune into your inner guidance. Start with 10 or 15 minutes. It is much more important to do it consistently rather than for a lengthy time, at least at first. You’ll be more likely to do it and have fun with it.

And don’t worry if you don’t ‘hear’ anything at first. Just enjoy the quiet and allow yourself to relax. It will come with time. It’s like any relationship: as you devote attention to it, it will grow naturally.

Now I’m in the habit of creating clear space to tune into my inner guidance every day, not because I am so smart or so wise, but because I have learned the kind of trouble I can get into when I don’t! And, conversely, how much easier my life can be when I do. It’s like going with the flow.

But it took me a while to get there. Sometimes I’m a slow learner, and I like action, so it wasn’t the most natural thing for me initially.

START HERE:

Action: Take 10 minutes a few times a week, pick a ‘making clear space’ practice from the menu above, or another one of your choosing, and just do it. Without an agenda or an outcome attached. Just intend to clear some space for your inner guidance to emerge, and be ok with whatever happens.

Insight: What’s a ‘listening’ practice that you would enjoy, just for it’s own sake?

Filed under: Your Compass, Tools on March 6th, 2007