Well blogosphere giant Steve Pavlina has written an article on How to be a Man and Hunter Nutall has given us How to be a Woman (which is interesting, as he is a man!)
So I thought I may as well jump on the bandwagon, and now present you with:
How to be a Man and a Woman Both At The Same Time
If you are going to live forever you need to have your male and female energies working well together. So…
1. Get the urge
Learn to recognise your intuitive promptings. Intuition is your first impulse. It is a feeling of just simply wanting to do something. It is a quiet voice that just “knows”. For the purpose of this post, I’m saying intuition is the female energy that is in us all.
Intuition is not emotional reactions. With practice you can tell whether you are being motivated by intuition or by anger, fear, jealousy, hurt and so on.
Intuition is not “good ideas”. Such as ideas you arrived at by some logical process, or ideas someone else is browbeating you with, or goals you set yourself some time ago that may not be best for you now. These ideas feel a bit flat and stale.
One way of learning to identify intuition is to think of things in your life that worked out well, and recollect how you felt when you made the decision to go in that direction. You were following your intuition then. It could be something you bought (clothing/computer/car/house/whatever), a relationship you started, an organization you joined, a class you went to, a phone call you made, a restaurant you went to, the route you took driving home, a nap you had, or a walk in the park.
2. Do it
When you think you are getting an intuitive prompt to do something, do it. If it’s something that’s at hand, like going for a walk around the block, then do it right then. If it’s a longer term thing like going on a holiday, then start planning it. For the purpose of this post, I’m saying taking action is the male energy that is in us all.
Most of us struggle at some point with knowing whether to follow through with the things we want to do. You can trust your intuition—it will take you to an expanded place. But you need to be able to identify it amongst the other voices calling out. If you act on what you think is your intuition, and you observe how you felt at the time and notice how things work out, over time you can educate yourself as to what your intuition feels like.
Doing what the intuition says can also mean not doing something. If you don’t feel like fulfilling some obligation, it can be a challenge to follow through. I suggest you start small with taking these sorts of risks, and educate yourself as described in the paragraph above—practise on the small things before you chuck your job in. When you know it is your intuition telling you to take a big risk, you will just know what to do, and it won’t even feel like a big risk (just a little one, maybe).
3. Know it’s OK
Your intuition is your built-in guidance system. If you follow it you can never go wrong, and you will be lead in the path of greatest fulfillment for you.
I like Shakti Gawain’s description of how the intuition and action (female and male) principles work in a healthy person… the female guides the male and the male supports the female by doing what she wants. (These are different from people’s masculine and feminine qualities—a man’s inner female may guide him to go hot-rod racing, and a woman’s inner male may carry out the actions of baking a cake, for example.)
Shakti also points out that as men develop an inner female who guides their inner male, they become outwardly more masculine, and as women develop an inner male who supports their inner female, they become outwardly more feminine.
Some people throw up their hands in horror at the idea of everyone doing exactly what they want. They think everyone would be selfish, and the dishes would not get done. You need to know that you are an ethical person, and the things that you truly, really want will benefit EVERYONE.
Most of the ideas in this post have come from Shakti Gawain’s book ‘Living in the Light’, which I’ve listed on the ‘Recommended’ page—thanks Shakti.
Would love to hear what you think! – Robin
Robin,
Isn’t it amazing that when it comes down to personal development, it does not matter what race, color, ethnicity, or gender matters. Principles of purpose driven life remain callous towards the identity. It only matters to live with purpose, gratitude, faith, perseverance and magnanimity to make difference in this world.
Great post.
Shilpan
this was an interesting read and i wholeheartly agree with this point:
Your intuition is your built-in guidance system. If you follow it you can never go wrong, and you will be lead in the path of greatest fulfillment for you.
i think we kind of know, some times, which direction we should go in when making decisions. intuition is a little different, to me, than following your heart…which can be untrustworthy.
Well, as I said over at Hunter’s, I think the most interesting people are the ones who are not afraid to be both. Strong women, sensitive men – those are my best friends. Thank you for an interesting thought!
Dear robin, this is a reasonable post. I enjoyed especially , “the female guides the male and the male supports the female by doing what she wants.”
Well this sort of behaviour I do often observe.
Do it and Know it’s ok. I actually live by these words and I have noticed that when I do live on these two phrases things actually work out. What I don’t understand sometimes is that I sometimes fail to recognize the signals.
@Shilpan – thanks for your thoughtful comment – that is very true
@Natural – yes, if by following your heart you mean emotional reactions, that’s not intuition. It can be really tricky identifying intuition. – thanks for your comment!
@Vered – and thanks to you Vered for your interesting comment!
@rainer – ha ha – it conjures up an interesting image, doesn’t it?! Thanks.
@Chris – yes, I think identifying the signals is the trickiest bit – but practice makes perfect! Thanks for your comment.
And I want to thank Hunter Nutall for writing another post on the topic, and expanding it further, and mentioning this post here. I don’t know how to put a link in the comments field – but it’s on his blog now. And I’m new to WordPress so I didn’t have the trackbacks working – sigh – I’ve got them working now. :=)
Acknowleging, listening to and acting on our intuition is key to our personal happiness and success.
Life is about balancing male and female, doing and being. It is in incorporating both energies that Life is born.
This is gold:
“One way of learning to identify intuition is to think of things in your life that worked out well, and recollect how you felt when you made the decision to go in that direction. You were following your intuition then.”
Regarding this:
“Some people throw up their hands in horror at the idea of everyone doing exactly what they want.”
Poor self-confidence is the root of this behavior. Fragile souls tend to project their fears and anxieties onto others in an effort to defend and to maintain their emotional cutoff.
And sure, leaving comments on other people’s blogs is a nice way to grow your blog 🙂
@Mark – thanks Mark for sharing your insights
@norea – yes I think that’s spot-on – thanks for your contribution!
@Herrera – well give me a compliment and I’ll follow you anywhere! And thanks for adding your insights – the “hands with horror” sentiment is rather prevalent, I’m afraid (I think).
I really liked the intuition bit – something I need to work on 😉
Btw, putting links in comments is easy – simply put the link URl, and it will turn to a link in comments. You can also use the code below (which is the HTML code for a link):
<a href=”PUT YOUR URL HERE”>LINK TEXT</a>
In the code above, put the URL where it is mentioned. Link text means what word you want the link to be with, for example, here’s a link to TechZilo (my blog) would be done with the code
<a href=”http://techzilo.com/”>TechZilo</a>
Hope that helps. I know how hard it can be to master WordPress, so ask me any doubt if you want – just shoot me an email.
And oh, in the code I gave above, copy the code I gave, and you have to change one thing because WordPress has messed with the code a bit. The double quotes given above are not right, so replace the double quotes by typing them yourselves.
Thanks Sumesh – really appreciate it
Hey Robin,
I agree with everything you wrote, though I am not quite following you on how developing your intuitiveness leads to being both a man and a woman at the same time. 😉
I do agree with the basic premise that you can possess develop qualities that are traditionally considered as either masculine or feminine. Earlier in my life, I was a pretty extreme INFP — introvert, intuitive, feeling and perceiving. Funny enough, all of them are on the “feminine” side. But over the years I did change, and now I’m an INFJ — but with everything except “I” close to in the middle. It wasn’t an entirely conscious choice to develop qualities I was lacking, but I think being a husband and father and taking on the traditional masculine role in those dominant relationships had an effect on me.
Personality type is a fascinating subject to me, I’d like to explore more on my blog in the future, too.
ari
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