Finding Your Inner Guidance…Advice for Men

Men Can Use Inner Guidance to Make Decisions More Aligned with Their Highest Life Path

Men have traditionally been taught to be logical and rely on hard facts, data or “rules” to make important decisions. However, understanding how Inner Guidance works and tapping into this resource can make a tremendous difference for men in living a life that is aligned with their true life purpose.

The concept of Inner Guidance comes from the work of Dr. Martha Horton who wrote the book, “The Seashell People.” In this article I will describe the concept of Inner Guidance, expand on the meaning of it, and describe how I use it. Inner Guidance is the voice of your Higher Self.  Another way to put this is that it is the voice of the Divine in you. Inner Guidance is a very similar concept to “the still, small voice within,” that many spiritual traditions refer to. There are several ways to tap into this guidance. The first is to ask Inner Guidance a question:

The question should be one that can be answered with a “yes,” or a “no.” For example, you can ask, “is it correct for me to go on this trip? For those of you that remember the ‘80s you might think of the Magic 8 Ball; we shake the ball and get a “yes,” “no,” “ask again later,” otherwise known as “wait,” or we receive the answer to “get more information,” otherwise known as “footwork.” Ask the question and then you will receive an answer. The answer may come right away in the form of a clear voice, or it may come in a different form and at a different time.

Timing of when to say something may be an issue as well, and that is when we receive the answer to “wait,” or “ask again later.” I find that I use Inner Guidance quite a bit in deciding when to bring something up to a client or in my personal life, sometimes the answer that I receive is the “wait,” and I ask again a little bit later and then receive a “yes.” Getting the proper timing correct can make a huge difference in whether or not what you say is heard, received by the listener, and understood.

Inner Guidance can be thought of as a form of muscle testing.

I think of asking Inner Guidance as a form of muscle testing; you are testing to see if what you want to know is “life affirming,” or “life negating.” Does what you want to do add to your life force or take away from it? In muscle testing your arm either remains strong, which equates to “life affirming,” or it goes weak, which signals that what you are testing is, “life negating.” In using Inner Guidance the, “yes” signals life affirming and the “no,” life negating.

Inner Guidance is not about “feeling good.”

Dr. Horton says that, “peace is the prize,” in using Inner Guidance. What she means is that when you have discerned what the answer is and you make the correct decision, you feel a sense of Inner Peace. This sense of peace may feel good, but using Inner Guidance is different than basing your decisions on what feels good. In fact, what your Inner Guidance may be telling you to do may be difficult, cause anxiety and stress, and not really feel good at all in the moment, but it is still the correct thing to do.

A little example from my life comes to mind of when an action did not feel good, yet it was still the correct choice:  when I was a young teen, I encountered a couple of men who were making sport out of their dog chasing after a mother duck and her little ducklings. The men had the dog, a large lab, chase the duck into the water and right before he would get the ducks, they would call him back. They kept doing this over and over again, immensely enjoying themselves.

I felt sick in the pit of my stomach watching the duck and her babies being terrorized. I knew I had to do something, yet I was also very afraid of saying something to the men. My sense of not being at peace with the situation won over my fear and I walked up to the men and asked them to stop letting their dog harass the ducks.

To my relief the men told me that they would, and called their dog back. I had followed my Inner Guidance and was rewarded with a sense of peace! So Inner Guidance can call upon you to make decisions that are very uncomfortable and don’t feel good at all to begin with. However, if you don’t follow your Inner Guidance you will know because something will keep gnawing at you letting you know that things are off. You will not feel at peace. Men who have not learned to follow their Inner Guidance may turn to various distractions and addictions to drown out this feeling of discomfort.

Practice Inner guidance on a daily basis.

Inner Guidance works best when it is practiced on a daily basis. Use Inner Guidance for every decision you make to understand how you receive the message. For example, ask, “is it correct for me to have this piece of cake,” “is it correct for me to go to the movies with Susie on Sunday?” Practice, practice, practice in order to get better at discerning this voice from the others you may hear, such as the voice of your ego, society, or a nagging parent. I personally receive the answer in the area of my third eye, the space just between and slightly above my eyebrows. And I “see” a “yes,” or a “no,” or a “wait.”

Inner Guidance is also a form of Intuition.

Inner Guidance may also come to you when you are not asking a specific question. This way of using Inner Guidance is closest to what has been termed, “intuition.” I have learned to ignore this little voice at my own peril. One time I heard the Voice when going on a hike. I was told to “bring raincoats.” The forecast called for sunny skies, so I decided to ignore the Voice. It turned out that an unexpected rain and snow storm caught us by surprise and we were all freezing and cold, wishing we had had the proper gear!

Unhealed trauma makes it difficult to trust your Inner Guidance.

When you have had traumas, big and small, or adverse childhood experiences that got you stuck in your development as a child or adolescent, it is very difficult to discern the voice of your Inner Guidance. The voice is still there, but because you were not supported as a child in hearing it and following it, it just gets pushed away into the jumble of many voices that you may hear. An example of how your voice was not validated is if you said to your dad, “I’m cold!” and he told you “no, you aren’t, it is perfectly warm out.” The message you received was: you were wrong, your inner knowing does not matter, you do not have a good sense of what is going on in your life. This disconnect between what your father said and what your experience actually was creates a lack of trust in your Inner Guidance. When many such messages are heard the child no longer trusts himself.

You may beat yourself up later about not following your Inner Guidance, but it is very difficult to follow that voice, when you did not receive an upbringing where you were heard and validated. If you never felt you were worthy or “good enough,” how can you trust a voice that is coming from within you? Instead you turned to sources outside of yourself to figure out the answers. You may have developed “rules of conduct,” for yourself to help you navigate life. You may have just copied what other people did. You may have followed a religious code, or the rules of a group you belonged to, but you were disconnected from the only guidance that truly matters – your Inner Guidance.

In using “Inner Guidance,” I have realized that it does not follow specific religious doctrine, or any laws put down by man. There may be an instance when it is correct to do something in one situation, and another case where the same answer does not apply. That is why it is imperative to ask and tune in to each situation individually. We do not know all that our Higher Self has in store for us, but the closer we follow the guidance the more magical our path will be!

Healing the traumas and “stuck places,” will help you reclaim your Inner Guidance and the path it unlocks to living a life or true purpose and meaning. Please don’t hesitate to contact me to see how I can help you with this process, Dr. Eva, 303-242-7824,dreva@drevamalanowski.com.