Written by: Veronica Lillo-Roith, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
The skills you didn't know you needed to masterfully navigate a real-time world.
Increasingly complex situations are exacerbating the rate of change, leaving us with less time to think, and less time to process what's going on around and within us. Conventional wisdom and the accepted way of doing things doesn’t hold true anymore.
It is imperative that we learn to navigate (and resolve) the many contradictions and ambiguities in our personal and business lives. One of the tensions many are experiencing is the need to keep old businesses & processes up and running, and at the same time be creative and innovative, and explore new possibilities, regardless of how challenging and demanding the times are.
This capability has been defined as ambidexterity (also known as the ability to use both left and right hands with the same mastery).
An ambidextrous organization, therefore, is one that is capable of exploiting its existing competencies while simultaneously exploring new opportunities (London Business School).
This definition is bi-dimensional; it includes only our left-right brain capabilities. However, as human beings, we have a lot more potential. Sticking to only a bi-dimensional perspective is going to result in us continuing to “leave money on the table,” overlooking opportunities, playing small, and being overwhelmed at both the leadership and organizational levels.
If we truly want to expand our navigating capabilities – releasing energy for the things that matter, making good decisions in foggy contexts, being creative and innovative – we need to open up to a multi-dimensional perspective that includes more than just our brains. We need to start exploring and cultivating our innate abilities to sense, know and feel beyond logic and intellect.
Expanded states of awareness
The concept of an expanded state of awareness is not seen as eccentric anymore. You are probably familiar with concepts such as meditation, visualization, mindfulness, flow, living a higher version of life and of who you are. For many people, these no longer sound strange and are examples of methods that can help you expand your state of awareness. And so are Intuition and psychic abilities. Sounds woo-woo? Keep reading!
Expanded awareness abilities can be learned and cultivated. As a matter of fact, you are probably already using expanded states of awareness such as intuition or psychic abilities, but you are doing it unconsciously.
We are all psychic and intuitive beings.
That is our true nature. We have all had the experience of knowing or sensing things that we could not prove.
Just think about standing in a grocery store, knowing that someone is behind, staring at you. Or going to dinner at your friend’s place, and the moment you walk in, you know they have had an argument, even though they’re smiling and being as kind and open as always. Or singing a song and turning on the radio, only to hear the song you were singing.
However, we have been raised in an environment that reveres data, facts and logic as the only reliable and trustworthy source of wisdom and understanding. And this has had a disconnecting effect on our innate ability to sense beyond our five senses, which restricts our perception – and hence restricts our decisions and actions.
Imagine that, for generations, we have been trained to walk on only one leg, and we’ve become masters at running and walking through life and business on only one leg. Now, imagine for a moment what a difference it would make to suddenly being able to walk on two legs. What difference would it make in terms of balance, speed, confidence and ease?
We need both spirit and logic to deal with the current break-neck speed of change, and to avoid being overwhelmed by the uncertainty of an unpredictable future. Many are suffering from a severe lack of meaning, and are hence resigning their jobs, as currently seen in the big resignation movement. And many of these people have not just resigned from their jobs, many have resigned themselves as well.
We now need to connect with our inner guidance and beyond-logic-wisdom to lead, to create businesses and spaces that contribute to solving the current global challenges; spaces where people are happy to work, where people can bring their unique gifts to the table. We need this connection to create successful and meaningful businesses.
But we also need to connect to our expanded awareness abilities, to connect the dots, to make sense of what is happening.
We need to be spirit-connected and psychic-savvy to navigate this world in real-time and to create an expansive life and future – for ourselves and those around us.
How do we cultivate an expanded awareness, and make it a conscious competence that we can intentionally use to help ourselves and others?
First, we need to be clear about our language. We cannot perceive what we cannot name.
This is the main purpose of this article – to help you to use language to clarify a range of abilities that you have – even if you are not yet aware of them.
And in a larger context, I feel called to help raise consciousness about our spiritual nature, and to guide and teach purpose-driven leaders to use expanded states of awareness for the highest good for themselves and others.
Intuition vs psychic ability
Many people talk about intuition. Fewer people talk about psychic abilities. However, both are relevant if we want to expand our awareness. What is the difference?
Intuition is something that comes to you – a gut feeling, a rather vague sensation, image or awareness.
Psychic ability (or conscious altered states of awareness) is when you tune into this ability to get the information you’re seeking.
Let’s make it clearer with a couple of examples.
Imagine you’ve gone out for dinner with a friend, and you know that she’s going to order the barbecue chicken, although you’ve never known her to order that dish.
Psychic ability, in contrast, is when, before even getting to the restaurant, you see with your inner eye your friend holding the menu and telling the waiter that she would like to order the BBQ chicken.
Another example of intuition would be speaking to someone and feeling the need to ask a specific question, which turns out to be the question that this person needed most to clarify their point. Psychic ability, in the same situation, would be deliberately tuning into that person’s energy field to sense and understand what that person is experiencing, so that you can help for the highest good.
Or imagine you must make a choice, and suddenly you feel more confident in knowing what is the best decision to make – this is intuition. Psychic ability is intentionally connecting with a larger field to get more information – and you make a decision based on the information this provides.
Intuition is something that comes to you, whereas psychic ability enables you to consciously tune into larger energetic wisdom to get the information that you’re looking for. This includes asking your spiritual guides for advice.
How do expanded awareness or psychic abilities show up?
Psychic abilities can show up in different ways. You may literally know something (claircognizance), you may feel something (clairsentience), you can see something (clairvoyance), you can hear something (clairaudience), or you can receive the messages in combination.
How to tap and grow your expanded awareness
Training your intuitive, psychic muscle requires your trust.
We are all able to train and fine-tune these abilities. It is like muscle training, however, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of and be willing to do:
You must believe that intuition and psychic abilities exist. This is most important. It is not going to work if you try to be intuitive but use external data and information to prove your intuition or psychic abilities. Training your intuitive, psychic muscle requires your trust. It requires that you let go of external data and facts (for a while). These are great tools to complement psychic abilities, but if you want to learn to swim, you’ll have to let go of the side of the swimming pool, and trust that you’ve “got this” – and swim.
Inner work; work on widening your horizon (un-bias yourself as much as possible). The accuracy of your psychic abilities, and your ability to tap into them, is always going to correlate to your ability to open your horizon and be less judgmental of yourself and others. Approach it with an attitude of curiosity, willingness to learn, and being okay with not being right. A “loving explorer for the highest good” mindset is the best soil for your psychic abilities to grow.
Calm your mind. A running, hassled mind is not going to be able to receive subtle information. You will need white space and quiet time. Daily meditation is like oxygen to psychic abilities; similar to doing grounding exercises and doing things you truly love.
Exercise it. Make it playful and fun. Don’t beat yourself up if it doesn’t work at first. Write down your experiences.
Try these exercises
Take an object that belongs to someone, without knowing anything about it, and by sensing it, try to get as much information as possible. Say it out loud. Don’t overthink it.
Tune yourself into someone else’s energy, and mirror what you are getting back. Be unattached to being right. See it as an offering. Be open. Don’t think you need to be right. You don’t.
Go for it with an attitude of curiosity, willingness to learn and being okay with not being right. A “loving explorer for the highest good” mindset is the best soil for your psychic abilities to grow.
Veronica Lillo-Roith, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Verónica Lillo-Roith is a sought-after leadership advisor, teacher, and intuitive coach with more than 15 years' experience designing and implementing strategy in the areas of technology, leadership, and transformational coaching. Psychic by birth, she’s a multi-faceted woman who has an innate talent to connect the knowledge in our heads with the wisdom in our souls and beyond. For most of her career, she neglected her intuitive abilities for fear of judgment, leading her to feel miserable in spite of her success. Verónica embarked on a journey to discover and embrace her true, whole self in order to create aligned impact and success. She has since dedicated her life to teaching purpose-driven leaders to enhance their brilliance with expanded awareness, to masterfully lead in a real-time world. Verónica loves creating innovative, deeply customized immersive experiences in which she employs technology, coaching, and expanded awareness for her clients, including corporations, foundations, and individuals. She lives in Germany close to Nuremberg. Her native tongue is Spanish and she speaks and works in three languages (English, German, and Spanish). She is a mother to two wonderful daughters aged 13 and 5.
