I think we all have that.  We all have that intuition, it’s whether or not you can hear it and recognize those intuitive hits, or gut feelings, as some people like to call them.  One of the things that I like to do and that I find a very practical meditation for people who are new to meditation or thinking, “How can I figure out the next best step for me to take using meditation practices,” is a concept called eating your decision.

This is something I do all the time.  It’s something that a teacher taught me and that his teacher taught him.  What you do is you sit in mediation, mediation, and you eat the first idea or path that you’re thinking been taking, and you visualize how it goes down.

You’re visualizing what is the texture of it.  If that decision was a food, what would it be? When it’s going down and your body’s starting to digest it, what does it feel like? You actually go through the process of eating this decision.

Then you eat decision No.  2, and you see how that feels.  It’s amazing.  I’ve done this with people who don’t meditate at all and it’s amazing how quickly they can be like, “Oh my god, I know – “ it’s literally the gut feeling because your food’s broken down in the gut and it’s a visualization for figuring out what the best gut decision to make is.

People always come back to me and say, “Oh my god, that made my life so much easier and really helped me to know what that gut or what that intuition was trying to tell me to do.” That’s a cool one that I like to give people to do it.

Jaime:    I’ve never heard that before, and that would help me so much.  Well, that’s the thing, can you give us an example too Because I’m now going to try this.  I think it’s really important.  I’ve been really trying to tap in.

I meditate quite often.  I do guided meditations every night, but guided meditations really aren’t enough for me, or at least I don’t think they are, but that sounds amazing.  Give me an idea so I can get a little bit more detail when I actually do it.

Natalie:    Okay, so I just did this with one of my clients on one of our retreats.  She was trying to figure out a certain business partnership that he has an opportunity to do right now.  She was very much on the fence about it and I had her eat the decision.

“Okay, your business moving forward without this partner.  You’re gonna keep on doing it by yourself the way that you’re doing it right now.  Eat that decision.  How does it feel? If you could describe it as a fruit or as a vegetable, what would it be?”

It’s amazing how your mind will immediately go to something.  She was like, “Ah, it feels like a pear, but it’s really prickly.” “Okay, swallow that.  How does it go down?” “Well, it’s literally ripping my throat out as it’s going down.  It feels very suffocating.  I feel like I can’t breathe properly, I feel like I can no longer communicate the way that I wanna be communicating.” “Okay.”

This was one of the key things behind her decision, was how she was gonna be able to put her brand out into the world and communicate that, so it’s like she’s feeling it in that part of the body that she’s really wanting to tune into as she builds her business and her brand, and she’s a speaker and all that.

Okay, she goes through that, and then I say, “Okay, thinking about taking this path in your business, working with this person, how does that make you feel,” and she’s like, “Oh, it feels like sweet cherries on a summer day, totally going down well.”

It’s amazing how people can quickly come up with that visual when you guide them through it, and I find, even for me, there’s things that will come up during that process and during that meditation, and I’m just like, “How did I even think of that? How did that come to mind?” It’s giving yourself the space to do that.

My amazing friend,Vickie Maris, author, entrepreneur, musician, llama and bunny keeper, wool spinner, beach body coach, course developer, story teller, mean guacamole maker and so much more, recently shared an interview of Natalie MacNeil on Jaime Tardy’s website  Eventual Millionaire. 

The transcript quote above explains the concept of eating your decisions. Natalie describes the paradox of thoughtful “gut -reaction” to help guide life decisions through a few examples. The process aims to expose what we feel as we think about changing or affecting a given circumstance, to be present in our heart, mind and body as we process future possibilities.

I imagine writing to be like chewing a warm crusty piece of whole grain bread with butter. The process of tearing off and eating bread is  messy with crumbs all over, work to chew, work to swallow and work to digest. It is not an easy process but one I can’t do without. Cooking, for me, is like a bowl of warm soupy curry or dal, comforting, complex, spicy, sweet and best of all, perfect for dipping my crusty, flaky bread!

Sometimes we know something is difficult to swallow and make the decision to eat it anyway.

Wishing you thoughtful decision eating,

Hungryphil