How to Reconnect With Yourself and Your Intuition

Living your purpose requires reconnecting with yourself and your intuition.

We’re constantly bombarded with external expectations, growing to-do lists, things we think we “should” be doing, and pressure to conform to what society expects of us, so it’s easy to lose sight of ourselves in the process.

Losing sight of ourselves leads to a lack of fulfillment, depression, overwhelm, and stress. None of which supports you in building a life around your purpose.

While it sounds simple, it’s not always easy.

Depending on how long you’ve ventured down the wrong path, put others’ needs before your own, or lost yourself in a mess of obligations and to-dos, your truest desires are likely deeply buried. When I first started my journey to build a life and business I love, I constantly talked about how I’d “lost myself.” But what I’ve learned is we never really lose ourselves; we just disconnect from our truth. Our most fully expressed self is always there, and we have to do the work to uncover it.

Let’s look at ten ways you can reconnect with yourself and your intuition:

1) Make Space for Stillness

To reconnect with yourself and your intuition, you have to get still and silent. One reason you likely disconnected from yourself in the first place is getting lost in your external life and all the pressures that come with it.

Start by creating space in your day to get still and go inside.

Whether it’s five minutes in the afternoon while you’re waiting to pick up the kids from school or waking up ten minutes earlier in the morning, create space in your schedule. You can simply close your eyes and focus on your breath during this time. When your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the present moment and be in your body. Just breathe and see what comes up for you.

2) Keep a Journal

Julia Cameron is well known for the concept of morning pages, and they’re something I highly recommend as part of your reconnection practice.

If you can find 15 – 30 minutes a day (first thing in the morning is best, but anytime is better than nothing at all) to sit down and write, do it.

Buy yourself a notebook and get a pen you love. The goal with morning pages is to write at least three pages longhand without stopping. Writing longhand slows you down and creates the time and space for things to surface. Just write without thinking or passing judgment on what comes out. This is your place to unload your thoughts, overwhelm, worries, and fears. When we make this a consistent practice, amazing breakthroughs begin to happen.

3) Take Yourself on Solo Dates

Another reason we tend to lose sight of ourselves is that we’re spending too much time with other people. Even if you’re an extrovert and being around others gives you energy, it’s essential to create space to just be with yourself.

It’s also crucial for you to get to know yourself again.

At least once a week, take yourself out on a date. Avoid any distractions such as a movie, watching television, or playing on your phone during this time. Be present with yourself and what you’re doing. I suggest going to dinner alone and then taking yourself somewhere that will inspire you, like an art museum, thrift store shopping, or a lecture on something that interests you. Use this time to feed your soul and really get to know yourself and how you feel about things.

4) Speak Your Truth

Start paying attention to where you’re not speaking up or owning your truth.

One of the fastest ways to reconnect with yourself is to begin honoring your truth in every situation. If you don’t like something at work, speak up and take action to change it. If you’re not happy with something in your relationship, speak up and work to create a deeper connection or exit the container. If you want to eat somewhere other than where you’re going, share your opinion and desires.

Most importantly, be truthful with yourself about your life.

Where are you unhappy or feeling disconnected? Where do you want to make changes? Where are you doing things because you think you should and not because you want to? Where are you lying to yourself about what you want?

5) Know and Cater to Your Desires

Our desires are a direct line to our truth and who we really are at our core. For far too many people, desires get ignored, hidden, or pushed aside for obligations that seem more important. The more you focus on what you desire and do the work to get it, the happier and more connected to yourself you’ll begin to feel.

Without desire, there can’t be joy, pleasure, and growth.

Our desires lead us to things, people, experiences, and opportunities we may never come across otherwise. If you desire to dance, go dancing. If you desire to paint, take a painting workshop. If you want to eat dinner on your fancy china even though you’re alone, do it. Whatever your desire, honor and take action around it. It will lead you to amazing things and, most importantly, back to yourself.

6) Listen to Your Intuition

Often when we feel lost, we believe we’ve lost our intuition completely. It’s not true; we’ve just forgotten how to listen. When things feel challenging and overwhelming, our mind goes into overdrive and takes over completely.

But here’s the thing, intuition lives in the body, not the mind.

So if you’re constantly in your head thinking about everything, you’re not going to hear your intuition. Or you’ll hear it, but your mental chatter will quickly drown it out. Checking in with your intuition is a matter of checking in with your body and energy. What do you feel when a big decision or opportunity is presented to you? Not what you think you feel or think you should feel. What do you physically feel? Openness, expansion, energy, and excitement usually indicate a yes. Hesitation, restriction, tightness, tension, and a closed-off feeling usually indicate a no. Take the time to learn how your body says yes and no in all the ways it does.

7) Trust Your Intuition

It’s not enough to learn to listen to your intuition; you have to trust and act on it. This is often the most challenging part, as our intuition will usually guide us right into uncomfortable situations when we’re feeling lost or unhappy in life.

But getting uncomfortable is part of the growth path.

More importantly, if you don’t listen to your intuition, it will start to eat at you over time. Start listening to your intuition on more minor decisions like which restaurant to eat at or which movie to see. As you learn how your intuition guides you, expand that trust and action to more significant decisions. By the time you get to big decisions like deciding to leave a job or relationship, you’ll have a solid connection with your intuition and will have an easier time taking action on it.

8) Let Go of Unhealthy Relationships

If you’ve had the same friends since elementary school, spent a lot of time around your family, or have relationships built when you were a different person, it can be hard to step into your truth fully.

Other people develop expectations for who we should be, how we should act, and what our lives should look like—especially long-time friends and family.

Take an honest look at your relationships and which ones are no longer serving you. When you’re ready, let them go. If it’s family, take some space so you have the room to breathe and grow into who you’re meant to be. Don’t let others’ expectations influence who you are in this life. Their discomfort comes from their insecurities, not whether your choices are actually right or wrong.

9) Try Something Different

Breaking out of your routine is a great way to rediscover yourself and learn what you like and don’t like. Follow your whims and desires and try something new. Take a class, read a different genre of books, have dinner in a new part of town, hang out with a new group of people, wear a completely different style of outfit, and push your comfort zone a bit. You may find that your old style no longer suits you, or you’ve been reading certain books because you think you should. Sometimes, we can only realize something no longer works for us is to try something new. Allow yourself to explore what you like and don’t like and, more importantly, why.

10) Stop Hiding Out

Believe it or not, many people in this world feel like they don’t belong. I was surprised when I first realized it because I always felt like the oddball.

We’re all unique, weird, amazing, and beautiful individuals.

If you want to reconnect with yourself and live with depth of connection, stop hiding out. You have to put yourself out into the world, quirks and all if you want to find people who love and accept you for who you are. Speak your truth, show yourself to others, and allow them to really see you. You’ll alienate people, but that’s the point. By pushing away the wrong people, you make space for the right people to come into your life. And with the right people around, you’ll quickly flourish into the amazing person you’re meant to be.

What will you start with today?

You don’t have to do everything on this list, but choose one to three things that resonate for you and start incorporating them into your daily life. Intuition is such a powerful tool for creating what we desire. Use it!