Trusting your intuition might be one of the hardest things you’ll ever do, especially when everyone around you is telling you to be practical.
Recently, I learned this lesson the hard way when I asked AI what I should do with my life.
Seriously!
I was going back and forth on a big decision and wasn’t sure what my next step should be. Maybe you’ve been there too, stuck in that foggy place where you’re trying to figure out what to do next and struggling a little on what your next step should be.
So, I did what felt natural. I told the AI what was going on and just asked it what I should do.
When Advice Sounds Smart But Feels Wrong
The AI spit out this big, long answer. And honestly? It was kind of nice. I’d been going back and forth on this decision a lot and wasn’t sure if the steps I was taking were right. It felt good to have someone (thing) say, “Here’s what you should do and here’s why you should do it and this is the next step you should take.”
I started reading through it, and it all sounded very logical. The AI told me to stop doing what I was doing. Basically, to stop going toward this dream that I had and instead, to get practical.
Here’s the thing: when it said that, it sounded wise and responsible. It was the kind of advice that most people would probably say I should follow.
The AI said I should focus on something more sensible, fall back on the kind of work that I used to do, in a very technical, structured, and corporate way that I’ve never loved, but that technically I can survive on.
And then came the line that really stuck with me. The AI said: “Right now you’re choosing artistic integrity over financial stability, and you can’t eat artistic integrity.”
Ha! That one made me laugh.
The Trap of Trusting Your Intuition vs. Practical Advice
Yet part of me knew that the AI was right. You can’t eat artistic integrity. But there was another part of me that disagreed. And it was kind of funny, because I felt like two people in one.
One person was saying, “Oh yes, this sounds practical, this sounds right, and this is probably what I should do. This is responsible, good advice.”
But meanwhile there was another side of me that was kind of screaming inside. It felt as if I followed this AI suggestion, I would be erasing that other part of myself.
That’s the trap of advice that sounds reasonable.
Why Trusting Your Intuition Feels Scary
Here’s what I realized in that moment: the danger was not just that AI thought it knew what was best for me. It was that I secretly wanted it to.
I wanted it to know what was best for me, to tell me what to do so that I could then go do it and be out of this place of indecision. Because if it was right, I could stop struggling. I could stop worrying. I could stop having to go through this difficult transition.
When we’re in places of indecision, we’re looking for someone else to take the responsibility of choosing one way or another away from us so that we don’t feel the burden of it.
I realized then that I wasn’t really looking for truth. I was looking for relief.
Unfortunately, relief and alignment are not the same thing. I knew that if I traded one for the other, everything about me would go dim, and my inner light would go out.
The Future That Made Me Want to Quit
When we’re trying to see what the next step is in our future, we can’t see the whole picture. Perhaps we can see only glimpses of it.
But when I looked at the possible future that AI was laying out for me, I could see that very clearly. And my whole sense of self just drooped into the chair.
The thing that really told me this would be a mistake was this feeling of, “I don’t want to live that life. If that has to be my life, I don’t want to live it. I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be there.”
It was a scary time because I thought at that moment that maybe what AI was telling me was the truth that I had been avoiding. And maybe it was time to face reality and be practical.
And that felt like I had put this huge heavy coat on when it was like 80 degrees outside.
Why Trusting Your Intuition Means Rejecting the “Temporary” Fix
I sat with all that for a while, thinking maybe I could do this for a short time. It wouldn’t have to be forever, I told myself.
But then something inside me started to push back, like a quiet protest.
I realized that if I lived that practical life, I’d be cutting myself off from the inner current that has carried me through every other chapter in my life to this day. I also knew that the idea that I could do what AI suggested for only a short time was probably a lie.
Once we get into doing the practical thing, often it changes many colors in our lives.
You take a job that’s not right for you just because you’ve got to earn some money for a while. Suddenly your energy, focus, and attention are all going to that other job, leaving very little at the end of the day to pay attention to the inner current that’s inside of you or to the direction you really wanted to go.
We can also get lazy during these times, because we’re in this other place now. All the things are basically taken care of. Suddenly, the urgency to make a change isn’t so huge anymore because things are going along “all right.”
When we settle for the safer choice or the more practical choice or the more reasonable choice that seems to make sense on paper or in the AI program, it’s very possible that it won’t be temporary at all. And even if it is, it may have a negative effect on us.
Whatever we’re working, it’s also working on us. Whatever environment we surround ourselves with, whatever we focus on, or whatever we bring our attention to, it affects us. It works on us.
We can’t imagine that we can go into some situation that we’re settling for, when it’s not really what we want, and that somehow that’s going to get us where we want to go. Often all it does is take us further away.
What Happens When You Start Trusting Your Intuition
I didn’t take the AI’s advice. I didn’t take the practical path, and I’m so grateful that I didn’t.
Because what I’m building now because of the choice I made is work that feels alive to me. It brings me to life and feels connected to that inner current that I have.
It’s not always easy, and it’s not always stable to make decisions that follow where our intuition is leading. But it is real. If we want to live authentically true to ourselves, if we want our lives to unfold to our highest benefit, then we’ve got to follow this inner voice even when it seems impractical.
Trusting Your Intuition: The Two Paths
If you’re standing in this kind of place right now where you’ve got a path that looks safe, reasonable, and practical, but you’ve got this other path that’s speaking to you and it feels uncertain but alive, let’s talk about the difference between these two. Once you can tell them apart, you’ll be able to tell exactly which one is calling to you.
The Practical Path looks clear, and it promises a lot of things that we want: security, predictability, and possibly approval from others. It’s the one that makes sense when we list out our pros and cons. When we’re tired of taking risks, especially, it’s often the one that makes sense.
The Inner Current Path, the one that rises from our inner selves, usually doesn’t make a lot of sense. It’s quieter, messier, and harder to explain. It doesn’t seem smart. It just feels right and exciting, and it motivates us.
The practical path will get us somewhere. But the question is, is it going to take us where we want to go? Usually not.
It also costs something. It gives us stability and predictability and approval, but it can cost us our vitality and creativity. We’ll move forward, but we could find ourselves shrinking as we go, becoming less than we could have become had we been willing to take risks.
The inner current path does the opposite. It rarely looks impressive on paper, especially at first. But when you move toward it, something inside you expands. When I follow the inner current, things open up, and I feel more awake.
The outcome isn’t guaranteed. It could be that going in this direction results in nothing but some fun experimentation.
But this is the difference between these two paths: the practical path will satisfy logic, but the inner path will often restore life. To me, that’s pretty huge, and it makes it clear which choice is the best one.
Why We Keep Ignoring Our Intuition
So then the question becomes, “If it feels that clear and we can feel which path we want to go on, why do we keep ignoring it? Why do we keep choosing the logical path, or why do we keep asking for advice, Googling for answers, or checking with that AI to see what it thinks?”
The truth is that trusting your intuition sounds simple, but it’s one of the hardest things to do.
When we’re stuck, one of the fastest ways we seek relief is to ask for advice. In fact, psychologists have found that when people feel anxious, they’re far more likely to ask for and to follow advice than those who feel calm.
The moment we reach outside of ourselves, we quiet that storm of indecision that’s swirling around in our heads, at least for a little while. And we kind of hand over the burden to that other person who’s giving us the advice.
Often the advice we get sounds great, especially if we ask people that we admire or that we think know their stuff. Fear goes away a little. We know that everything is not okay way down deep inside, but we push that away. We say, “I’ll just take this step for now.”
But this is why it’s dangerous to rely on someone else’s advice. You can follow advice that sounds perfect and still end up feeling lifeless inside. Logic can solve a problem, but it can’t restore meaning. It can’t bring us purpose.
The Cultural Pressure Against Trusting Your Intuition
There’s another layer to this too, why we tend to ask for advice. We’ve actually been trained to do so.
Harvard researchers found that people who ask for advice are perceived as more competent than those who make their own calls. So this isn’t just emotional; it’s cultural. If you ask someone for advice, especially if that’s someone you know is older and supposedly wiser than you, then you look like you’re more competent.
We’ve built a world that rewards conformity and calls it wisdom.
And now with AI, that pull is even stronger because the machine sounds calm and certain. It has been trained on every bit of information there is. It seems like it’s endlessly reasonable. It’s kind of like anxiety’s dream come true. I hear some of my friends telling me that they’re using AI as their therapist, and I can kind of see why because it seems so logical, straightforward, and practical.
But psychologists warn about “automation bias,” which is the instinct to trust what a machine says simply because it sounds confident. We forget that AI can’t feel the cost of the choices we make.
So when we’re stuck, anxious, uncertain, and desperate for clarity, it makes perfect sense to reach for advice. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t do that. But what I’ve learned is that asking for advice is often like pushing a pause button on fear. It quiets you for a moment, but it doesn’t move you forward. Or if it does, it often moves you in the wrong direction.
Should You Stop Asking for Advice Altogether?
So if advice can pull us off course, does that mean we should stop asking for it altogether?
There’s nothing wrong with asking for advice and weighing your options. There’s nothing wrong with using AI to brainstorm some of the possibilities you’re thinking about because that can open doors in your brain, and it can give you perspective and even remind you of things that you already know.
But the real question is, “How do we know if we should follow this advice? How can we tell when it’s the truth or when it’s just fear wearing a mask?”
3 Ways to Test Advice Against Your Intuition
Here are three ways I’ve learned to tell the difference.
1. Notice How Trusting Your Intuition Feels in Your Body
When you get advice, notice not only how it sounds, but how it feels. Try not to judge whether it’s good or bad. Just feel how it sits on you. Take a breath. Pay attention to what happens inside your body as you take in this advice.
If it’s right for you, typically you will feel a softening. You might even sense a little relief, or you might detect a bit of clarity popping up in your mind.
If it’s not right, your body’s going to tell you that too, because you’re going to feel smaller, heavier, and tired, or maybe even hollowed out or a little dead.
Here’s a simple test you can try: when you get the advice, imagine actually doing what the advice suggests. That’s what I did. When AI laid it all out for me, I imagined doing what it was suggesting. That’s when I felt the person screaming inside of me and then the heaviness and the fact that this would be just a dead-end life for me.
If the advice gives you a spark of energy, then it’s probably aligned. If you imagine doing this and you feel energized, that’s a good signal. If you feel your energy drain, that’s your sign that it’s probably not your advice to follow.
2. Look for Energy, Not Certainty, When Trusting Your Intuition
When we ask for advice, often we’re looking for certainty. We just want relief from this indecision. But try to resist looking for certainty and look for energy instead.
When someone offers a plan to you that sounds neat and logical and you want to grab it because it feels like it’ll solve everything for you, think twice. Because the next steps in your life, particularly if you’re facing a life transition, rarely come with certainty.
I look back on all the times in my life when I went through transitions, and I don’t remember there ever being a time of certainty. There was never anything that said, go this direction, and everything will be awesome. There was always a risk it wouldn’t work out.
But I always had energy. When I was going in the direction my inner self wanted to go, there was always energy crackling. I could feel it. It was like this joy and motivation.
When advice is right for you, it stirs something awake inside you, and you want to take the next step. Even if you don’t know where it will lead, you’ll want to take it.
If the advice is wrong, you’ll go numb and start analyzing and researching. You might stall out or do anything you can to avoid starting because you can sense this isn’t the right step for you.
3. Does This Honor Your Inner Voice or Silence It?
The last test you can put advice through is to ask yourself: “Does this honor my inner current or silence it?” Or you might say, “Does this honor my inner voice or my inner self or my intuition? Or does it silence it?”
Every big decision that we make in life tests our loyalty to that inner voice. When you get advice that honors that inner self, you might feel closer to yourself. You might feel stronger, more confident, clearer-headed, and connected.
If the advice doesn’t honor your intuition or your inner self, you’re going to feel like you’re shrinking into someone else’s version of who you should be or into some sensible life that isn’t one that you want to live.
Your Investigation: Start Trusting Your Intuition This Week
When someone offers you advice, whether it’s AI or something else, try not to rush to decide if it’s good or bad. Just try it on. See what it feels like and ask yourself if you feel more alive or less.
Do you feel expanded or do you feel like you’re shrinking? Do you feel more open and lighter or do you feel heavier?
Those tiny sensations are your inner self speaking to you. If you listen long enough, it will lead you in the direction you want to go.
The next story of your life doesn’t start with perfect advice. It starts when you remember what your own voice is recommending and decide to trust it again.