Is it Intuition or Instinct? How to Recognize and Trust Your Inner Knowing.

In this episode of "Leaving the Church to Find God," Melissa Whittington explores the powerful distinction between intuition and programmed beliefs. Learn how to identify limiting beliefs, quiet the mind, and tune into your true inner voice. Melissa shares practical journaling prompts, reflective questions, and personal insights to help you navigate your spiritual journey with confidence. Trust your intuition and start living authentically.

Here you can find show notes, links and the journaling prompts that are mentioned in this episode. 

Transcript

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(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Aloha, God Pod. Welcome back to Leaving the Church to Find God. I am so happy to have you here today. We are diving into a topic that I get so many questions about. Like, I can't tell you how many people ask me, how do I tell the difference between my intuition and like my program beliefs? How do I know if it's just my mind or if it's real intuition? And I'm going to break it all down for you like I always do. I'm going to make it really understandable what's the difference between the two and I'm going to leave you with some tools on how you can tell the difference in the moment and how you can continue to further develop your intuition so that it just becomes like second nature to you. So thank you so much for being here and let's dive in. Okay, so I want you to think about a time when you felt your inner knowing guiding you. Maybe it was a decision that just felt right and you couldn't explain why. Maybe it was a person that you met and you just like for no reason you just felt really a strong aversion to that person. That's your intuition at work. I always say if it goes into your head, it's probably not your intuition. If it came from a string of thoughts, it's not your intuition. When you have intuition, it's something you feel. It's like an inner knowing that there's no question about. So I am no stranger to talking about intuition and the importance of being soul-led and in our choices embodied, mindful. All of those things are one and the same. They work together in union and developing your intuition is such a big important part of living authentically. So how do you tell the difference? Well, we'll start with intuition. What exactly is it? Intuition, it's your inner knowing. It's the gut feeling that guides us towards what feels right without needing a logical explanation. It's an internal compass that helps us navigate our lives leading us towards our true path. I love Dr. Tara Swart. I've been listening to a lot of her stuff on YouTube and other places and she had a really cool medical description, which was that everything that happens, every memory, every learning that it goes from our brain and gets pushed into our spinal column, like it goes down through the spinal fluid and gets pushed down into our spinal column. So every memory, everything we've ever learned, everything we've ever known is in there. It's in our body already and we can access that by being in touch with that. But I'm going to take it a step further and show that it is guided. It's connected by every life that we've lived, everything that we've been, everything that we've known, not just what we've experienced in this lifetime. Program beliefs can be tricky because they often feel like truth, especially if they've been reinforced over time. Like we were talking about before with neural pathways, when it's been buried and buried into our brain and it becomes part of our subconscious, then that's often what speaks up. But when you become really sensitive to it, there's something that speaks before that. I know I'm personally, I'm a sacral generator in human design, which means that I have a very strong sacral response to things and it knows the answer, right? So I literally, and you may have noticed this in yourself. If you do notice this in yourself, this may be true for you as well. But a lot of times when things come up, my body automatically vocalizes it to me. It'll be like a mm-mm or a uh-huh or a hmm. And I've learned that the hmm usually means that I need more information or give a little time, or it's a no that maybe I have some internal resistance to. Then the uh-uh is a clear hell no. And the uh-huh, it means there's a part of me that knows that yes, that's a yes for me. And this happened my whole life. And I didn't even realize that that was happening. Then I would go into my head and like work through it, you know, psychologically and like analyze it and, you know, compare it to my beliefs and my expectations and perceptions and all of this stuff. But now that I've really tuned into that, I hear that and I just trust it. Even if it doesn't make sense to me, I know that my body is giving me a very clear, and it makes me laugh, how long it was there. And I hadn't really noticed in a way, you know, like it was there, but I just hadn't really been cognizant of it and how clear it is. Like I'll hear myself all the time. Like someone said something and I'll be like, I don't want to do that before I even think about it. And now I've noticed that when I do that to just stop there, to not think about it, that the truth has already presented itself. But even if you're not a sacral generator, right, even if you don't have that vocalization, your body's going to talk to you. But the thing is with program beliefs, you know, your body will talk to you as well. Your gut will talk to you as well. If it has seen a threat or if it recognizes a pattern that has previously been a threat, then it's going to release chemicals. It's going to let you know, you know, give you that danger, danger, Will Robinson, that is going to try to back you off of it, but that can be detrimental as well. So, you know, that it's a program belief because it creates a, it can create like a sense of obligation, a fear, guilt. It doesn't feel good. It feels contracting in the body. Right. That's how, you know, like it's a program belief. If, if you make a choice and it doesn't feel expansive, it doesn't bring you joy. For example, like you may have been taught that success requires sacrifice or that you must always put others before yourself. Those beliefs can be so ingrained that they influence your decisions without you even realizing it. So I'm going to ask you this question and I want you to just tune into your body and see what, what, what's the answer that comes through first. Do you have any beliefs that feel more like obligations than truths? What came through for you just then? Like if there were some, if there was some information that came through when I asked that question, that there's answers in there for you. Follow that feeling. Right. It's important to recognize these, these obligations because they might be holding you back from living your most authentic, joyful life. Right. So it's, it's, it's so important to understand the difference between your intuition and these program beliefs. So how do you tell that difference? Again, um, intuition is gentle. It's an interknowing, it's an inner knowing, it's a quiet voice and it nudges you in like a certain direction. I always talk about, I call it the nudge. When I feel a nudge, I followed the nudge. Right. And it is, again, it's very gentle. And I know like the Bible refers to this still small voice and that's what it feels like. It's very still, you know, it's not volatile in any way. It's not dependent on anything. It's just very still and quiet. And it's a very gentle nudge and it feels expansive. It feels true. It feels like it's running through your veins as truth. So in contrast, like program beliefs are often loud and persistent. It's almost like a script that's playing over and over in your mind. Again, intuition feels expansive. It's liberating. And while program beliefs tend to feel restrictive or fear-based, when you're following your intuition, you often feel the sense of peace and confidence. But when you're active from a program belief, you might feel some anxiety, some guilt. You may feel some pressure. And those are very quick, easy differences to check into when you are making a choice or when you have a thought, how does it feel in your body? Does it feel expansive or does it feel contracting? And when I first started like really trusting and leaning on my intuition, that was how I started was by asking myself, does this feel expansive or does it feel contracting? And if it feels expansive, then it's a yes. If it feels contracting, then it's a no. And now that I've been following that for quite some time, it's become even more clear and I get very clear and direct answers. It's also opened up my channels to where I'm getting more communication from my guides, from my loved ones who are in my corner, even if they're not like still here in the physical and from my own, my own inner knowing. So if you're asking yourself like, why don't I just, why isn't it easier than that? And, you know, I'm not, there's no blame in here. It's just something that we all go through and it's because we've suppressed it. We ignored it. We ignored it and ignored it and ignored it. And every time we ignored it, it got quieter and it took a little bit of a step back. Not as a punishment because we were putting something else like these beliefs in between us and our inner knowing, right? So the more you ignore it, the quieter it gets, but that also works our favor. And the more you listen to it, the louder it gets. Louder, not in like yelling at you, but louder isn't just more clear and obvious, right? You can feel more and more confident in that. The more you lean on it and the more you trust it. And you may want to start with something small. You know, if that feels uncomfortable with you, like start with some small things and trust that yes, something that doesn't feel very high stakes to you. Like, do I want to go to dinner with this person? Or do I want to go to this social event? Or do I want to go to the grocery store now or later? Like feel, you know, that intuition and lean on it and let it be your answer. And the more you do that, the more clear and the more you're going to develop that communication and relationship and nurture that relationship so that it can flourish and become more prevalent and easy to access, right? So one of the ways that I have learned, Dr. Tara Swartz, she talks about this as well, but is that you can learn this through journaling. And I'm going to be honest. I love journaling, but I hate to like write things by hand. My hand cramps up. I don't know what that's about. It's always been that way. But so I'll type it out. I know they say there's more powerful. It's more powerful to see things in your own handwriting, whatever. I don't care. Just do what you got to do, right? And also ADHD over here. I am not journaling every day. I'm not going to do anything consistently. When you make it consistent, it makes it impossible. So I'm just going to be real here. But the more you can journal on these things like, okay, today I was going to go to this thing and I, my intuition was telling me no. So I listened and then this happened. I had this opportunity come up and my intuition was saying, yeah, so I took it. And then this happened. You can start like logging these things and then you can go back and look at it and see, are there patterns here? Are there patterns that belong to beliefs that I have? Are there patterns that are leading me to beautiful and joyful experiences? You can look back at these things and see, you know, recognize the patterns with some time. If you're great at journaling, good for you. This will be even easier for you to do, right? But also you can take some time to write about your beliefs, where they come from, how they've shaped your life. Are they truly serving you? Ask yourself, is this belief mine or did I inherit it from someone else? Writing about these beliefs and this intuition, it can really help to bring this stuff to light. And the more you understand your limiting beliefs, for one, the more you can work through them. But also it helps you to understand when your intuition is talking, if it sounds like that limiting belief, then you know that that's not your intuition, right? So knowing these beliefs, letting these beliefs come to the surface is how we work with them. You always want to work with yourself. You're not working against any part of yourself. All the parts are welcome, right? There's no bad parts. We just have to learn how to work with them so that they benefit us and not hold us back. So when you're faced with a decision, try asking yourself a few reflective questions about it. Does this choice feel light or heavy? Am I making this decision out of fear or love? Is this thought repetitive and anxiety inducing or does it bring me peace? These questions can help you get clear on whether you're being guided by intuition or a program belief. So one of my favorite examples of this was moving to Maui. When I was 25, I think I was 25. So one example I love to use about this is moving to Maui. When I was 25, of course, you're like, yes, we all want to move to Maui, right? But this was some years ago. I've been here for 18 years now. Yes, I'm 43, save you the math. But when I was 25, I was happy with my life. I was of service to people that I loved. I was of service to my community. I was working very successfully as a massage therapist. I owned my home. All the things that look like success, right? I had great friends. I had regular like massage trades with my bestie at the time. I just had like such a great thing going. But then there was this moment when I was cleaning my house one day. And I was listening to Jack Johnson, but I really just think that that brought in the energy, like the Hawaii energy, right? But I was cleaning my house and I just had this idea, this thought of like, I want to move to Hawaii. Like, I feel, I don't know. There was no why behind it. It was just, I want to move to Hawaii. And later that day, my friend came over, we were doing a massage trade and I was telling him, I was like, I don't know what it is, but something just makes me want to move to Hawaii. And he's like, well, why don't you? And I was like, oh, I love my life here. I've got a good life. Like why would I? And he was like, Melissa, you have a good life because you've created this life and you can create that anywhere you are. And when he said that, it was like a permission slip, right? It just clicked something inside of me that was like, and then I just said it right then. I was like, I'm going to move to Hawaii. And when I tell you the next 10 months were like a blur, I was moved away. No thoughts about it. I was moving to Hawaii and I didn't know how I didn't, I've never been here. I didn't know a soul here. I didn't even know anybody who had been to Hawaii except like one chiropractor I had worked for once upon a time. And it came full circle because I remember he had a picture of him and his wife in our office with the parrots on their shoulders on front street. And every time I passed that man with the parrots on front street, you know, rest in peace front street. Luckily the gentleman with the parrots survived the fires and so did the parrots. But every time I would pass him, I would think of that and just have this like full circle moment. And it just always brought me so much joy, but the intuition in that, like, I didn't know why I didn't want to be away from everybody. I know I'm from a very enmeshed family where we don't go anywhere. We stay together. They still lay on the guilt about me living 6,000 miles away. They still haven't given up on me moving back. If you're listening, I love you all. I'm not coming back to Georgia except to visit. I'm not gonna say never because universe has a really fun sense of humor, but I don't see myself moving back to Georgia unless it's to visit. But so it was just like a knowing and what's amazing and what has always been a shining example for me is that I didn't question it and everything just fell into place. I sold my place. I sold everything. I moved in with my grandparents for several months because it was really important to me. Like they were both aging. My grandmother was suffering from Alzheimer's and needed a lot of care. So it was really important to me that I like gave my contribution. I gave my contribution in bulk, right? I just went and solid did everything I could to clean up, to help them in every way that I knew how and to spend time with them because I knew that I would miss them. I've always been very close to my mom, papa, and I knew that leaving would be really hard. It was really hard to leave everyone, right? Well, I wasn't really leaving anyone. I was going to where I was being called, but also there was some, you know, moving away from people that I really loved, but it all just fell into place. Like I can tell you like bam, bam, bam. And in the process, I discovered this amazing cellular rejuvenation therapy that I use still today. And it's like saved me from long COVID. We'll get more into that later, but I got connected with this amazing technology. I became the rep for the state of Hawaii. I moved here. I was making really good money. It just all fell into place. So like easily, so much so that like about two weeks before I was supposed to leave, like I already had the plane ticket and everything. About two weeks before I was supposed to leave, like I was at a friend's house and Google earth had just like been a thing, right? We were on Google earth and I was like, Oh, well let's look at Hawaii. Y'all, y'all may think this too, that Hawaii is close to like California and Alaska. It's not, it's not at all. Cause on a map and on the globe, that's kind of how it looks, right? But when I watched the little Google earth go and go and go and go and go over all this ocean and then go to this tiny little string of islands, I was like, holy crap, what am I doing? I'm moving across the earth. Like what is going on? And I, but it was too late to turn back at that point, right? The decision had been made, but that has always been such a good example for me because had I thought about it, I wouldn't have come. I would have thought of all the reasons why it wouldn't have worked. I would have thought of all the reasons why it was wrong for my family while I couldn't leave my grandparents and their older years. And they lived my grandfather for another 10 years after my grandfather for another nine years after I would have stayed for that. You know, like I was concerned about missing my nieces and nephew growing up and my little brother, who was very close to growing up. I may not have been there for all the birthdays, but I haven't missed anything. I know them all very well. I'm a part of their lives. They know me. They love me. We're all good. But all of those fears would have come up and would have stopped me, especially if I had seen it on Google earth and known how far away I was going. Holy moly. But it turned out to be the best choice that I've ever made. And it was just this knowing. And then I looked back and I remembered like when I was in my early twenties, I almost joined the air force. Like I took the ASVAB and the whole thing. And then I decided I didn't want to join the air force because I don't like people telling me what to do. Maybe this isn't the best fit for me, but I have wanted to join the air force so that I could live in Hawaii. And I had totally forgotten about that. And I found out many years later, many, many years later that my mom and my aunt had also planned to move to Hawaii. And they both ended up getting married at very young ages instead and built their lives and their families in Georgia. And then when my grandmother had passed, my grandfather gave me her ashes and a part of her ashes. And he was like, I want you to take this with you because she always wanted to go to Hawaii and we never could get there, but she always wanted to go to Hawaii. So then I realized, oh, this goes so much deeper than me. This is generational. This is something that needs to be healed in our lineage. This is, there's something there for us. But I didn't know that until years later. And my life here has led me to be who I am. My experiences here, which have not been all sunshine and rainbows. Trust me, there is a lot of sunshine and rainbows, both literally and figuratively, but it took a lot of growth, a lot of learning, a lot of breaking through limited beliefs, a lot of healing guilt and shame and indoctrination. It took a lot, a lot of naivety. You know, I came from this very small community of people that I knew and trusted and was very sheltered from the real world. And when I got over here where nobody was like church people and all of that stuff, and people were just doing whatever they wanted, it was like a huge wake up call for me. And I didn't know who I could trust and who I couldn't trust. And it was a lot. It was a lot of learning. And it was the best decision that I ever made ever. I have no regrets on it. But that choice was a knowing. It was just like a yes. And when I said yes to it, I didn't have to, I mean, I did stuff, but I don't even remember what I did because I was just showing up for what was in my face. And it was leading me exactly where I was supposed to be. It was such an amazing experience. It just, I can't explain how quickly it all just fell into place and come together. And 10 months sounds like a lot, but it wasn't because there was a lot to do and spend time with people and such. It wasn't a lot at all. And it was needed and it all worked out exactly how it was meant to. So do you have experience like that? Okay. Maybe it's not I picked up and moved across the world, but do you have an experience in your own life where you followed intuition? Like there was just a knowing and you didn't know why, but there was a knowing and you said yes to it. If so, like, how did that make you feel? And when have you followed a program belief only to realize that that wasn't right for you? And how did that make you feel? Like, these are things that we can reflect on to learn to discern between the two. Again, like your intuition isn't hiding from you. It's right there waiting for you to meet it. And when you, the more you show up for it, the more that communication develops, the more it flourishes. So start thinking about that in your own life. Like when you just said yes, because of a gut feeling and it was expansive and joyful and wonderful. And when you said yes, and it felt contracting and didn't lead to great things and you're like, oh, but I trusted my gut and it didn't work the way it was supposed to, you know, compare those two. That's a great reference for you to learn, like what your intuition sounds like. And while your intuition is there, it hasn't gone anywhere. Like learning to build that trust with yourself. It's a journey. It's okay if you're going to make mistakes. It's okay that you're going to be learning along the way. Just remember that this is about progress. It's not about perfection. And every time you listen to your intuition, it's building that muscle. It's getting stronger. So don't, you know, allow yourself to get discouraged. Again, journaling will help with this because you can see like when it worked and where your progress is, and you can see when it didn't, and you can learn from that. But just be gentle with yourself as you navigate this process, right? Breaking free from programmed beliefs, it can take time. It's important to practice self-compassion, celebrate your progress, no matter how small, and know that you're on the right path with it. So I'm going to give you another quick example. And this one's a little more subtle. Like the Maui one was big and explosive, but this one was more subtle. Like I love ceramics. I love working with clay. It's something that I did in high school. I was naturally very skilled at it to the point where my teacher would buy things or commission me to sculpt things because she loved to glaze, but wasn't great at sculpting. So she would commission me to sculpt things that she could glaze and like have in her home and pay me in high school. And that was such a big deal to me at the time, but I love ceramics. I love working with clay in all of the forms. And I've always wanted to go back to it, but you know, you've got to be able to like have a kiln where you can fire this stuff. And you fire a lot in a kiln at once. You don't just run the whole thing for like a couple of pieces. It's just a whole big thing. It's not easy. It's not like painting. It's not an easy thing to just get into. And there have been classes at the Hui on Maui. We have this art Hui, which is amazing. Hui, it's a co-op, but it's been here for ages and they have ceramics. It's always either been too expensive or didn't work with my schedule. It's just never worked out. And then recently I have a friend, she's been posting her ceramics for a while and she's doing them at the college. And I did not go to college. I went to massage school and went to the school of life. That's for dang sure. But I didn't go to college and I have not had a desire to, because with my neurodivergent brain, like going back into math classes, some math classes I nail and some are not at all. And just different things like that just did not feel appealing to me. But recently she posted something of her doing ceramics and she's been posting these things for years. But when she did, I was like, I want to go there and do that. And so I asked her about it. I was like, how do you do that? And she was like, well, you just register, you know, for classes. And I was like, okay. And so I did, I applied for FAFSA. I registered at the college. It was a 100% acceptance rate, but I got accepted. And the craziest thing, I don't know if this was from a parallel reality or what, or if it was a dream that I just believed, but I have had this belief in my mind that I secretly started college and went for two days and then forgot and didn't go back because I forgot about it. And I believed this. I believed this as though it was a real thing that had happened to me. And when I was going to register for these classes that showed up, it was like, oh no, they're going to find out about this thing that happened. And then I was like, wait a second. I can go through the whole timeline of my life and that never happened. And I have this memory. I know what the classroom looked like. I know the people in the classroom. I have this very clear memory of this thing happening. And I realized that that had been keeping me from doing this, this belief that I was going to have all this shame about not being able to go to college for more than two days without forgetting, which now just makes me laugh because it seems so silly, but it was so deep in me, this belief from a memory. That's not even mine. Like I it's, it's not a real thing that happened, but this time when I felt it, I was like, yeah, I want to do that. So I registered, I got signed up doing it yesterday. I'm talking to the administrator. I'm signing up for classes, all these amazing art classes. I'm so excited. I get to learn these new skills and add them to what I'm already doing. And I'm just really, really thrilled about it. And while we're signing up and I realized like, this is actually happening and it's not going to be torture. I'm going to really enjoy it. I get to do all these classes that are really, really excited about it, about, and it's paid for like, this is amazing. And I started to like tear up and just feel emotional. And, and that was this response in me. And that's how, you know, that this is the right thing. And I've been on the fence about it. Like, should I just go do it at the Hui or should I, you know, this is a big obligation. What if I need to travel this fall or whatever, but I trusted that initial knowing and, you know, nothing to lose when I hadn't signed up. And now here we are. And there was just this, these tears started coming to my eyes, tears of gratitude that I had for myself for doing this, for making this happen. And it feels so good and joyful. And I got off the computer and just cried happy tears. It was just this relief in this expansiveness. Right. So that's how I know it's the right thing. It's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing right now. And I trust the timing and I trust the schedule and I trust all of it to work out perfectly in my favor. And it's opening up other things to me. Like I'm taking a videography class, which is going to help me be better at this. Right. And help me do more of what I've been wanting to do on YouTube and with my vlog and stuff. So I'm learning all these other skills. Like I'm taking ukulele, which is going to help me because I've tried ukulele and hula, and I just need more discipline. I need more repetitiveness in order to keep it going. So having these classes, I'm going to get in there and I'm going to get really great at ukulele, which is great because I have these little songs and things that I'd like to create, but I need to be able to play them for myself. It's mostly comedy, but, you know, that just adds these skills that I needed and didn't put it together that I could go to college and get these skills and it not cost me an arm and a leg or whatever. I'm actually going to have money left over, which is going to help me because I really can use it right now. So.