the joy of intuitive living

letting go of overthinking to discover the truest self

“Damn, did I really just challenge a big company executive?”, I reflected post-call. The realization of presenting an argument opposite to his perspective left me both stunned and empowered. From where did this newfound courage emerge?

Growing up in a traditional Christian family in Ukraine, I internalized many of their teachings and, for much of my life, saw myself as a shy girl full of self-doubts. I believed that my primary goal in life was to find a husband so that I could fix myself. “Ambition and women don’t go well together”, I was often reminded at home.

Yet, here I am in my mid-twenties, crafting public date me docs, talking to strangers, and presenting neuroscience theories to all-male audiences. These actions surprise me and yet feel so natural. How and when did this change come about? 

War at home = belief system reimagined

The past two years turned my world into chaos. On a typical gloomy London morning, I awoke to the news signaling Russia’s invasion of my home country. Here I was, covered in a blanket of panic and anxiety from constant exposure to the reality of bombings, deaths, and survival fights. 

Me biking to yet another protest. Forever grateful to my friends who supported me in those times.

As a result, I shut down. Emotional numbness became my shield, protecting me from the continual stress and allowing me to support my family. 

To heal, I turned to daily meditation, breathwork, and exercise. Meditation started lifting my anxiety away as I worked towards acceptance of my impermanence and the proximity of death. My mind was gradually healing over a span of many months.

One day, I woke up noting that my heartbeat settled in peace. I felt the joy of birds singing outside my window and excitement for the day to come. 

“No more numbness?”, I asked myself after being presented with a colorful bouquet of emotions and aliveness. Rediscovering a world of color was rejuvenating. The sheer sensation of feeling alive under the safe sky was electrifying. 

Living intuitively

 a human is as deep as an ocean,
yet most of us spend our lives
knowing only the surface

when we decide to dive deep
within ourselves, we set in motion
the miracle of personal evolution
Y. Pueblo

With newfound inner peace, I had to rethink many of my core beliefs. One was the importance of listening to oneself and one’s intuition. 

I never was an intuitive person. In fact, I learned to discard intuition at college. I fell in love with numbers as I was working towards my Computer Science degree. The field was preaching that “what gets measured, gets managed” and intuition was far from being anything measurable.

But still, inspired to make a change in my life, I started practicing intuitive living.

At first, listening to my intuition felt uncomfortable. My overthinking self would always step in and ruminate: "What if the VP fires me?¹ "What if strangers find me uninteresting?" "What if the NYT links to a database about me in one of their articles?² "What if...?"

But with time intuition grew into me and I started catching rumination. I would notice a thought early on, examine it, and if it is harmful - let go of it. 

As I observed, I realized my thoughts were dominated by fear. The weight of others' expectations, the cultural conditioning I had grown up with, and even things beyond my control like capitalism and death, all enticed such fear in me that served as a massive fence blocking access to my intuition, my beliefs, and my simple being.

The joy of intuitive living   

Living intuitively means dancing in the present, setting aside the overthinking mind.

These days I trust my gut feeling. I trust intuition and its summation of all experiential knowledge that my conscious self hasn't processed yet. Intuition cannot be described in words, numbers, or scribbles. I just feel it.

Living intuitively liberates me from suppressing my expression via self-doubt and self-questioning. It liberates me from cultural conditioning and deceitful conclusions drawn by society.

There are numerous examples of the fruits my intuition bore for me. For years, I have been suppressing my attraction towards the same gender because of worries about what others would think. But intuition was whispering: “If you don’t allow yourself to feel, you’re procrastinating truth.” So when I finally listened to myself and accepted bisexual self-discovery, I felt at home. I felt myself.

Ultimately, trusting my intuition helps me unfold my truest self. It helps me unlearn all the cultural conditioning and expectations set on me and free myself from the jail of someone’s expectations of who I should be.

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The Google VP's voice was still ringing in my ears as I sat back in my office chair. I pictured my teenage self, agonizing about the smallest conversations. 'Damn you changed a lot, kid,' I thought as a smile spread across my face.

1. Spoiler: he did not.

2. Spoiler: it happened: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/02/style/date-me-docs.html