How to Develop Your Intuition

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How I Went From No Intuition to “No Way!” Intuition

For decades I had no sense of my intuition at all. But over the years, as a result of working to better understand myself and how I function, I developed a very strong and reliable intuition. I’d like to share with you the steps I took to become who I am today: a strong intuitive with a clear sense of what’s uniquely right and wrong for myself. I am confident in the decisions I make. In fact, no advice–even from people I admire–is as good as my own inner knowing. But I wasn’t always like this. In fact, I was a Wrong-Way Wright for much of my life. I evolved from no intuition to “No way!” intuition. If you’re ready for clarity, insight, and Divine guidance, here’s how to develop your intuition.

Pre-Raphaelite painting of a woman in a blue, classically draped gown, sitting on the crescent moon. Clouds are behind her and mountains and a lake below. Ropes secure the gown to her body, and she seems to be slightly tangled in them. The moon is an ancient symbol of intuition, and the tangled ropes can indicate our blocks to connecting with our intuition. In this article, How To Develop Your Intuition, I'll show you the six steps I used to untangle my intuition so I could have clarity, insight, and Divine guidance. — Evelyn de Morgan, “Luna,” 1885.

A Psi Kick in the Pants

When I worked with my spiritual teacher, he said (correctly, I’ll admit) that I was “psi negative.” He told me about a study done to test psychic abilities or “psi” levels. The researchers tested people’s ability to correctly call something with a 50-50 chance of accuracy–like a coin toss. Most people would make a correct guess 50% of the time, as expected. And some would get it right much more often! They had that mysterious psychic quality that pushed their accuracy beyond the levels of chance. The researchers labeled these test subjects “psi positive.”

Curiously, there was also a group that tended to guess wrong more than 50% of the time. Why didn’t these people guess right at least half the time? It’s almost like they were psychically predicting what wouldn’t happen instead of what would happen. The researchers called this “psi negative.”

This was me for most of my life. Put me at a T in a road I’d never driven before and suggest that one way would take me straight home and one way would end up in a snarl of confusion and despair–I would turn the wrong way every time. For a while I chalked it up to my innate love of adventure. But on the other hand, tuning into the right answer would have made life a lot more easy and pleasurable. Discovering the “psi negative” label for my Wrong-Way Wright tendencies helped bring awareness to how I functioned. This was the first step to embracing my innate intuition.

I struggled with this for many years. Even once I realized that I was psi negative, it was a challenge to sort out my conflicting feelings so I could make better choices.

Mean Lady

During that time, I noticed something interesting. The thing I wanted was always to the side. Now, that might sound odd, but I mean it in a literal way. If I was searching a grocery store shelf for a certain type of cereal, at the point that I got a really strong sense that I couldn’t find it, it ended up being right there–but slightly off to the right of where I was looking.

I started to notice this consistently. It seems to me that for a typical person, the “there it is!” spark coincides with looking right at what they want. (I mean, that’s pretty much the definition of finding something, right?) But no, not for me. I started to pay attention to this quirk.

Once, years ago, I was in the tea aisle at my favorite health food store, scanning the shelves for the tea I wanted. I focused on looking at everything carefully while simultaneously being aware of checking to the side of where my eyes tended to rest. Just then, a woman pushing her cart down the main aisle came into view. She had a little boy in the cart. He saw me and started shouting, “Mean lady! Mean lady!” I really hope I looked like someone he didn’t like!

But in actuality, I think that my mental gymnastics showed in my energy (which children are great at seeing). My aura probably did look like someone who was mean–or maybe frustrated and distressed. If I turn into Mean Lady every time I go to the grocery store, you can see why I eventually ended up relying entirely on various grocery delivery services!

Join me for How to Develop Your Intuition 6-week course starting May 20, 2026. Details at the end of this post.

My Involution to Intuition

The following six steps are the most important things that helped me develop my intuition. I believe these will help you to develop your intuition as well!

The Clairs: The Different Styles and Gifts of Intuition

I never related to the word “psychic.” When I joined the big psychic fair circuit around 2002 in Fort Collins, I had to create signage for my booth. I remembered seeing other people’s signs that usually said “Psychic Reader” or “Intuitive Readings.” I definitely wasn’t psychic, so I figured I must be intuitive, and made my sign accordingly!

What helped me develop my intuition was to stop thinking of myself as “psychic” or “not psychic.” Instead, I learned the different styles of intuitive work–some people refer to these as psychic gifts. These styles are called the “clairs” and include the best known clairs:

clairvoyance (clear seeing, like seeing visions) and
clairaudience (clear hearing, like hearing words or phrases)

They also embrace spiritual versions of the other senses, including

clairalience (clear smell)
clairgustance (clear taste)
clairtangence (clear touch)

But the clairs can extend beyond these subtle expressions of physical senses. For instance, claircognizance (clear knowing) and empathy (feeling another’s physical or emotional experience as your own) are two of my innate gifts. They work beautifully for me. Nevertheless, they don’t produce the exciting and flashy experience of seeing visions and hearing voices–the things we commonly associate with being “psychic.”

The good news is that the more I worked on developing my natural abilities, the more the other gifts started to show up for me.

In the How To Develop Your Intuition class you’ll discover what your natural gifts are and how to develop your strengths.

Divination: Tools for Decision Making and Self-Awareness

Did you know that the average adult makes thirty-five thousand decisions each day? No wonder most of us suffer from decision fatigue. And that’s just day-to-day stuff, sometimes as simple as whether to have cereal or yogurt for breakfast. What happens when we have to make those big decisions, like those regarding career, family, or how to reach our goals? Or more to the point, how do we even know what our goals are?

The thing that always gave me the answers I needed, pointed out the things I hadn’t thought of, and reminded me to be true to myself was divination. My teacher taught me a variety of forms of divination, including I Ching, runes, tarot, scrying, pendulum, and much more.

In this class, I’ll introduce you to some of my favorites. Making decisions is about to get easy!

Meditation: Tuning Into Yourself and Your Inner Motivations

The next thing I started doing was meditation. What was most interesting to me was how many different styles of meditation there were! I experimented with writing my own guided meditations, practiced a variety of chants, learned breathing meditations, and also simply enjoyed sitting quietly with no other goal than to give my brain a break.

I started tuning into myself and my own needs while tuning out the voices and expectations of others. In The Tarot: A Key to the Wisdom of the Ages, Paul Foster Case calls meditation “mental angling.” He says, “when we stop thinking, Truth unveils herself to us.” This applies both to your own inner truth that can be so elusive to your logic. It can also apply to deep spiritual truths that can never be learned, only realized.

In the Intuition class, we’ll practice several forms of meditation so you can find one that works for you!

Spirit Guides: Connecting with Spiritual Contacts

Guides, angels, power animals, ancestors: every spiritual system introduces some kind of non-corporeal being who shares guidance, insight, and wisdom. Having this invisible friend provides a great deal of comfort and confidence when we know there is somebody who consistently supports us and gives us good advice.

My first experience with a spirit guide didn’t go so great, but eventually I came to understand how this guide communicated with me and how to understand them. It was a comfort to know I had this being on my side.

Since then, I’ve worked with other forms of guides, each time developing a warm, intimate connection with them. It is amazing to talk to someone who always knows you better than you know yourself!

For this class, I’ll offer a guided visualization to meet your spirit guide. We’ll also explore alternate ways to connect with spiritual guidance.

Energy Work: Clearing and Strengthening Your Channel for Spirit

Energy work was part of my original spiritual training in the early 90s. My teacher taught us to tune into, see, and move energy. He also gave us tools to build, concentrate, and direct energy for magical work and rituals.

Years later, a friend excitedly told me about the Reiki class she had just taken and invited me over to receive a session. She set up a lawn chair–the kind that stretches out flat–in her living room and had me lie on it. All of a sudden I felt an incredible rush of energy. “I just drew the Reiki symbols in your aura,” she said rather tentatively. Believe me, I felt it! I signed up for the next class my friend’s teacher offered.

A lot of times we come to energy work because of its power. But experienced practitioners appreciate spiritual energy for the gentle, quiet ease it brings to life. Being able to tune your awareness to this cosmic connection whenever you need clarity or comfort is a beautiful thing. But, like many of the techniques listed above, being aware of the subtle realms makes those realms available to you for wisdom and guidance.

In this class, I’ll teach different energy systems and ways to clear, balance, and strengthen the flow of spiritual energy.

Verification: Test Your Intuition to Gain Confidence

This technique is slightly ironic. Once you’re in the flow of spiritual energy, can get your answers, find your reasons, and have the guidance of Spirit, it hardly seems necessary to then put it to the test! When you know, you know.

But at the beginning, we naturally feel tentative, uncertain, and worried about making a mistake or doing it wrong. Not to worry! Other psychics before you have had the same concerns and they developed systems for sizing up their psychism and verifying the veracity of guides.

In this class, I’ll teach you several techniques from quick gut checks to more complex ways to keep your head when you’re out of your mind–or at least out of your waking consciousness. We’ll learn when and how to banish and protect, as well as when and why that can be laughingly ironic.

Psychic Success

Recognizing my intuitive abilities changed my life. And because it was such a struggle for me, I know and understand the frustrations that keep us on the wrong track and prevent us from easily stepping into a more intuitive life. And I can help you understand your intuition, how to access it, and what it can open up for you!

By the way, the last time I was looking for something on grocery shelves and couldn’t find it, I kept looking to the side like I used to do. And the shop keeper kept saying, you’re looking right at it! And guess what–I was! It was right in front of me, not off to the side. I had finally found my focus.