One of the fab features of our cozy bungalow is a utility room that sits just off the kitchen. It’s tiny and odd, but I love that it houses the laundry machines plus a few shelves for cleaning supplies, TP, and really good jars worth saving.
It also has one tallish cabinet for the vacuum cleaner and other broomy tools…and this, my intuitive friends, is the focus of our attention today.
Years ago, I organized this cabinet so that each cleaning gizmo had its own home. The layout was marvelous, even stunning, and I knew it never needed to change.
It only had one, teensy weensy issue: the vacuum cleaner prevented the cabinet door from fully closing. This bugged me…a lot…for years…but because my layout was so very cool, I bravely decided to live with this minor infraction and kept the cabinet tidy (i.e., policed it relentlessly).
One day while I was wrestling the TP shelf for three more inches of space, my hubs brought in the vacuum. After placing it in its special spot, he became perplexed by the non-closing door and studied the situation with intent.
Just before I could mention my years of bravery, he did something strange: he gave that vacuum cleaner a quarter turn and shut the cabinet door.
ALL. THE. WAY.
What?!
Then he simply went about his day as I stood gaping.
Fast forward ten years and my reaction to that quarter turn remains palpable:
- the utter shock at the simple fix
- my strong attachment to my prized layout
- how that attachment prevented me from seeing other possibilities
- never finding those three inches
Gah!
Funny the things that stick in your mind, but it reminded me of this …
The biggest obstacle to developing your intuition is the belief that things live in a fixed state.
But they don’t. Even if we hope for it sometimes. And that means we get to learn and change and grow.
It’s the main reason I take an experiential or “studio approach” to intuitive development. I’ve learned (usually the hard way) that to truly understand how something works, including your intuition, you have to see how an idea acts in real, interactive situations. That idea will do nothing just noodling around in your head…except more noodling.
A studio is a low-stakes, creative adventure. It’s already a given that you’re going to accidentally break your crayons or suddenly poke a hole in the wall because that’s what creativity is all about – experimenting to discover something else, something new.
In a studio you’re expected to get messy and that gives you permission to coax your intuitive abilities into the open from the place you’ve been keeping them safe. They can finally come out to play!
And this is true no matter if you’re a beginner or have been at this for a long while because…
Nothing helps you break out of a fixed state like actually putting your ideas into action.
That old phrase “argue for your limitations and you’ll never have a cabinet door that shuts properly” stands true time and again. When you’re playing around in a studio, you get to break up those limitations and see what emerges instead.
So, whether you want to activate your intuitive skills or simply keep them active, take your intuition to some studio tables and let ’em fly. You never know when a quarter turn will spark a whole different view.
It may even add a few inches to your TP shelf…I’ll let you know.
:: photo by No Revisions on Unsplash
by Heart Light Digital