How do you tell the difference between intuition, fear, hope and other feelings (read on, please) :) ?

Question

How do you know how much of what you feel about a situation, a person, a place, anything, is intuition, or anything else, when you are emotionaly involved, in some way?

I'm NOT asking for advice, this is a general question. I'm just curious about how YOU (not me :) ) know the difference.

Thank you for your answers! :)

Have a wonderful night/day! :)

Answer 1

Experience and practice...Most of the time I struggle to tell the difference, except when it comes to the feeling of love. Real love bowls me over, fills me, moves me so strongly that it is unmistakable.
I am trying to teach myself to take more notice of my intuition. I've ignored it so many times, thinking what I felt deep down was my imagination. Ignoring it ended with me ending up trouble I could have avoided had I listened to myself. So that's something I'm working on.
Hope....usually I can tell when feelings of hope are influencing how I feel or how I see a situation. The lines blur occasionally but usually, I just know the difference between what is, and what I hope will be. Once again, I think this is just experience.
As for fear...that's hard. One of my friends is going through a bad patch in a relationship. She was very afraid that her partner was cheating on her. Her fear grew to such a point that it was all she could think about. It consumed her so much that she began to believe her fears were facts without any proof. It was incredibly destructive to her relationship.
I think distinguishing between what you fear and reality is very hard. Thats why people get paranoid or have severe phobias. One has to try to be rational and analytical when it comes to fears. Talking to a neutral third party is helpful and not letting you imagination run away with you is vital. One has to try not to let the lines between what reality and unproven suspicions/fears get blurred. But it is very hard.
Sorry if this is a little vague, but it's a very in depth and perplexing question.
Good day/night to you too! :)

Answer 2

There are 3 ways to go about this, all of which are valid, but not all of which your maths teacher may accept as valid, so hehe... Anyways, they are as follows: * H=higher number, L= lower number I will do examples for the difference between 2 and 4 1) most common - H / L - 1 4 / 2 - 1 = 1 = 100% 2) less common - 1 - (L / H) 1 - (2/4) = 0.5 = 50% 3) even less common, but preferred method while calculating elasticity models in economics (H - L) / [0.5(L + H)] (4 - 2) / [0.5(2 + 4)] = 0.67 = 67%

Answer 3

I first had to learn the difference between intuition & feelings. Feelings come from the ego & are situational & often wrong. Intitution comes from the Spirit, are never wrong, & strangely matter of fact. Intution is devoid of all feeling except the only real one, & that is love. I have had the ego take what info I have gotten in intution & react to it with fear, but it is merely the egos reaction to intution, it knows everything I know & will always attempt to frighten me with fear. As a general but true rule, if what you feel is negative it is not intution, it may be your reaction to your intution but not it. The learning comes with practice. A tool I have used for many years is to practice being an observer. I take a step back in my head. When I do this it feels more centered, as if I am looking out from inside. The emotional responses I have are then strandely muted, I am more centered & have a heightened clarity. Great question & thank you.

Answer 4

There are numerous times when I can't tell the difference at all, between say intuition and an illogical reality - a dillusion.

There are times when my desires obscure the reality of the situation too.

So if I can, I ask someone that I trust. Otherwise, I ignore it for a while just in case I can get a different perspective.

This is hardly satisfactory, in any social sense I know, but it is one way of dealing with those emotions.

There are many factors that create a bias in a person's judgement of the facts before them. It can be important in certain circumstances to recognise that bias and in other circumstances you cna do just as well to ignore them. "It depends" on the circumstances.... that's my only "it depends" for this week!

Answer 5

The older you are the more experiance you will have of what the normal states of being are. First step is to seperate the logical argument or perspective, all that is left is probably emotion, instinct or intuition. So try and seperate those apart also, emotion should be easy as that is a case of causality, instinct and intuition might be a bit harder so perhaps pick definitions to seperate them and work with that.

Answer 6

Im not sure how you label your feelings matters all that much, compared to how you explore them.

When you call a situation to mind, it probably evokes a number of emotions all at the same time. It can be useful to try and separate them down, and it can also be useful to ask yourself how you plan to act on the situation and

"What is the best that can happen"
"What is the worst that can happen"
"What do I think will happen"

and

"How much does it matter what happens"

the same method works very well for fear

"What am I most afraid of" etc etc

changes the focus from Am I afraid (very hard to answer)
to What am I afraid of (usually very easy)

with intuition you can go for

Why do I think this might be so (hard to answer) to
Is there something in my past which makes me think
Is there something in the way he acts that makes me feel

Go from intangibles to tangibles.

Works for me anyway!

Answer 7

I could say it's intuition when I get this unexplainable sensation that something else, rather than what is just seen may be happening;..or that I could sense something quite strangely connected to my feeling at the moment would soon take place.
Fear could be an extract from intuition,..feeling something is going to happen but not exactly knowing what that thing is or what implications to myself would it cause.
Hope could be the positive alter effect from intuition,..praying that my worse fears could be wrong, and that somehow, my anticipated incident would go the other way.

Answer 8

I try to go with my gut feeling which I believe is instinct. Whether it's influenced by fear, hope or something else, I don't know. But as far as I can tell, when I listen to my gut feeling, things work out better than when I do not.

Answer 9

With age....

If one can not learn something every day - then they are way smarter than anybody on this planet.

I'm 50 - And can say that I learn something new every day.

Especially when one interacts with others.

Old Dawg

Answer 10

...by stopping long enough to climb up on a hill and looking at it all from a distance...then sitting there and enjoying the view for awhile to "drink" it all in...by the time you come back down off the hill, you have a fresh perspective and renewed strength