Don't JUST do what comes naturally - Joyful Genius Coaching

Why you can’t JUST do what comes naturally …

Do what comes naturally?

While this seems on the face of it to be great advice, there’s a lot more to it than that. I was listening to the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on Virgin Radio this week, and Chris shared a beautiful tip – wisdom is what happens in the gap between stimulus and response.

That inspired me to think about this subject for this week’s post.

Respond not React

Chris, like me, talks a lot about the difference between reacting to the things that come up in our lives, and responding to them. Taking the time to choose our response makes an enormous difference to our experience of life. And to the outcomes we achieve.

There are two forms of doing what comes naturally. One comes from instinct, the other from intuition. Those are very different things!

Re-Act from Instinct

Instinct comes from the so-called “lizard brain”, the amygdala. That’s a part of the brain right at the top of the spine, that’s responsible for keeping you safe. Back in the days when your ancestors were hunting mammoths and trying to avoid getting eaten by sabre-toothed tigers, the amygdala was very important.

But in today’s safer world, the “do what comes naturally” that comes from instinct can often lead you astray. It will tend to make you do whatever you did last time that didn’t get you killed. And that’s OK, it’s a strategy that’s worked for humans for millenia – re-act in a safe way. But it doesn’t exactly encourage growth or new achievement.

It’s a great way to be safe. And it’s also a great way to stay (as Dain Heer from Access Consciousness puts it) normal, average, real, and the same as everybody else. There’s a reason people talk about “base instinct” – it’s you re-acting in your human-ness, not in your Genius.

Respond from Intuition

Intuition, on the other hand, comes from your ‘higher self’. You might even say it comes from a higher place. Whether you call that Spirit, Grace, the Unified Field, Genius, even God, it’s a connection to a place of inspiration.

Intuition takes you away from the humdrum of the everyday world of safety and fitting in. It leads you towards spiritual expansion and personal fulfillment. in short, it helps you to be all you can be in the world.

See this post from 2017 for more on the distinction between instinct and intuition

And the one thing that will help you to respond to situations from that place of growth and potential is: time.

Rest and Ponder

Take a little time to take a breath and be mindful in what you do whenever something happens in your life. Don’t jump straight into action. Because that will almost certainly be a RE-action. Just doing the same old thing you’ve always done. Which means you’ll get the same outcomes.

Instead, rest for a moment. Give yourself time to ponder a while. Allow intuition to come to you. And follow the prompt of that higher inspiration, not the provocation of the lizard brain.

Rest – take a deliberate breath. Ponder – allow new possibilities to flow from intuition. And then you can take action that’s aligned with who you truly are.