Are You Ruled By Your To-Do List or Your Intuition?

One of my friends is a deeply intuitive, gifted coach. This week she shared on Facebook that after resisting ‘the list’ for a while, when the energy was right, she did everything on that very big list in 2 hours. As I thought about this, I started to laugh…because this is exactly what I do.

I resist the list, not wanting to do it, procrastinating like mad, beating myself up for not doing it, telling myself a magnificently negative story about all the ways I suck and the reasons I should just crack on and do whatever it is I’m resisting.

The List largely doesn’t get done in this energy and mindset.

Whatever is done is hard work and s l o w.

Then there comes a time when I feel the ‘pull’ energy to do whatever is on The List, and I get it done in short order, with ease and joy.

Why wouldn’t I do that all the time?

Why wouldn’t you?

(Pause for a collective facepalm moment)

What is the seductive power of The List?

What is it about Doing even when we don’t want to Do that is so irresistible?

What is it about us that we always want to be ‘finished’ or ‘making progress’ or ‘moving forward’?

What if it was ok to be where you are?

What if you could trust yourself?

What if instead of assuming you’re lazy or defective in some way, you had faith in the lack of energy around a task…and just waited for the energy to be right?

This article is a perfect example – I didn’t know what I was going to write today, so I didn’t sit down to write. And then a glimmer of an idea appeared. I had other things to do. More important things. But the energy was here, in these words, right now. So I trusted it…and the article came. The other (more important) things will be done in a minute. When the energy is right for them to be done.

This way, there is no resistance (other than resisting the ‘I should do x first’…which is blown out of the water by a simple gut check that says ‘no, you’re doing what you need to be in this moment’). There is ease. There is joy. There is peace and calm and serenity. I am not distracted by the nagging of a task that wants to be done now, I’m doing what I need to do…not what The List tells me I need to do, but what I feel the need to do.

So you haven’t started/made progress on/finished your book? So you have a toodle do list a mile long? So you are ‘way behind’ in your project?

What if that was ok?

What if you trusted yourself?

What if you allowed yourself to be where you are with that?

What if you let the energy dictate whether you did or didn’t do something?

You might be wondering if you can actually do this…I mean, won’t things just never be done? In my experience, when you trust the energy, more gets done and more easily. Because all that energy you spent procrastinating and resisting is freed up for doing stuff. All the time you spend berating yourself for not doing the thing you don’t want to do now is freed up for doing what you do want to do.

When I think “I don’t feel like it”, I think of my teenage self, pouting about being forced to go to school, do homework, revise, write essays…when I just didn’t want to. That’s when my intuition override began. When people who knew better than me (ahem) told me to just crack on with it anyway – it didn’t matter that I didn’t feel like it, I just had to do it.

Hmm. I guess they didn’t know better then. And I only knew that I didn’t feel like it, I didn’t know that I could honour that.

I know better now.

So do you.

So, what if you trusted yourself? What if you trusted that “I don’t feel like it” isn’t teenage rebellion but intuitive wisdom? Just…what if?

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