Stevie Puckett

Tag: intuition

  • Intuitive Messages

    What follows is an excerpt from my book Bliss Or Bust: Uplifting Thoughts.

    There are many ways your intuition can get a message to you. You will start to pick them up once you’ve learned to quiet the mental chatter. 

    You might notice a certain song gets stuck in your head out of nowhere or when listening to music you might notice some words suddenly get highlighted. Or, you might notice images that seem to be brought into focus. 

    Someone who speaks to you could say certain words that bridge a connection for you, or you might just feel a tingle in your body that lets you know an idea is resonating. 

    Very importantly, notice the words you say to others. Those words are often meant for you too, especially if you find opportunity to say the same things over again to different people in the same day. Others are a mirror reflecting us back to ourselves.

    Look for these types of signs and don’t be afraid to say to yourself, “I note the emphasis on blah right now. What does it mean?” Often your intuition will supply the answer through something else noticed or felt. By asking, you will begin to develop a vocabulary with your intuition. 

  • What Intuition Is

    What follows is an excerpt from my book Bliss Or Bust: Uplifting Thoughts.

    Think of intuition as a bridge or gateway between the physical self and the spiritual self. It delivers sudden and complete ideas in the form of intuitive flashes. Intuition can also bring subtle ideas gently presented, often through symbols and metaphors or sights and sounds noticed repeatedly. With intuition connections are made.

    Being able to tune into intuition gives a competitive advantage and makes life more enjoyable. Learning to trust intuition gives clarity and helps you recognize inspired action and perfect timing. Trusting your own intuition can help you sort through feelings and thoughts leading to an overall gain in clarity that will serve you well.

  • Our Unschool Story

    We switched to homeschooling for the second time in 2015 and have been going strong since then.

    We made the first pass at homeschooling with a public charter school in Las Vegas called Odyssey Charter School in 2012 when our son was in second grade. They had what I believed to be an innovative program for the time. The students worked through tasks on the computer each week, then on a particular time and day each week, the teacher came to the student’s house and spent an hour seeing the portfolio of work for the week and having a conversation. There was lots of flexibility in how to get the topics covered. There were choices. The kids received high-quality one-on-one time with a teacher, and there wasn’t any grading or testing pressure, at least not for a second-grader. Probably in higher grade levels, that was a different story, now that I think about it, but I don’t know for sure.

    Soon after, we moved to Virginia for my husband’s career. We enrolled both kids in public school when we settled there as our daughter was kindergarten age by that point. They both went to public school for several years, but I didn’t like what I saw much at all. There was hardly any free play for the kids, but there was lots of rule-following required for hours on end. I knew I wouldn’t want to do it anyway, and I was a great student as a young one, super cooperative and hard-working, but I lived for sports, phys ed, and games.

    One day in the fall of his sixth-grade year, our son was in before school with a couple of other kids to get caught up on a math test that they didn’t finish in class. That morning the math teacher/football coach slammed his flat hand on a desk loudly to shock my son into more alertness and responsiveness. Later, my son told me about it, saying he didn’t understand why the teacher “freaked out.” He felt surprised but not scared necessarily. Mostly he said he was confused. I told him the teacher was probably trying to motivate him. I had a feeling I understood why the teacher did it. Our son never looked like he was listening, but he was always right when asked to answer, so you couldn’t embarrass him or otherwise prove he wasn’t listening. He wouldn’t volunteer answers or compete to answer or try to show off, and he didn’t care to cooperate to please a teacher (which was always my primary strategy). It was frustrating, no doubt, but that didn’t excuse the teacher’s behavior to me. He and his dad weren’t too concerned about it. They didn’t like it but figured it was just how things go sometimes.

    Because the incident with the math teacher was the last straw for me, and because I had been researching other options for a while, I asked them if they’d like to try homeschooling again. I told my son we would try a different way of homeschooling this time because he was concerned since he didn’t like it much last time. I told him and his dad what I researched about interest-based learning, aka unschooling, and how I thought it was cutting-edge because we could customize the kid’s education by following his interests. He would learn deeply, not just to pass a test, and every topic would be connected and make more sense on a practical level. My son was hesitant because he had some friends he didn’t want to miss, but after sleeping on it, he decided to finish the last two days of that school week then not come back on Monday. That would give him time to be sure and to get his friends’ phone numbers so he could keep in touch. We all decided to give homeschooling another shot but with a different approach than last time.

    Our daughter was in second grade at that time. She WOULD compete to give the correct answers, and she VOLUNTEERED to help. Still, she cried after school sometimes. Often it was because the teacher didn’t call on her. She was crying and mad the last time it happened since she was the ONLY ONE who raised her hand to help. The teacher still picked someone who didn’t even want to do the job, then proceeded to nag until the kid finished the job. Our daughter was perplexed. She said she was being left out on purpose. I explained the teacher probably wanted to make sure all the jobs get spread around, so everyone got a chance to do something to help, but she couldn’t appreciate that. She said the teacher should call out directly who was to do it instead of asking for volunteers. Our daughter had a great point. I couldn’t agree more.

    During the two days our son was using to finish the week, we realized that we wanted to make the same offer of homeschooling to our daughter. She was doing very well in school, just flowing through it most days: gifted and talented, lots of friends, and she enjoyed all the schooly things. We figured she wouldn’t even consider it. As hubs and I talked, I realized I would have one in school and one doing homeschool to manage daily, and that would be a pain. I also knew, though, that if that was what was best for each kid, I would gladly do it because I knew, being the oldest of three girls, that it made sense that each kid might need something different to thrive.

    The funny thing is, even with our daughter’s sometimes frustration with the classroom setting and not getting to do as much as she wanted to, I was shocked at how quickly she enthusiastically said yes to homeschooling. No doubts, no hesitation, she was on board. I began to wonder if maybe we shouldn’t have offered it to her when she answered so quickly in the affirmative, but then I felt a punch in the gut at that thought because the intuitive response hit me…just because she managed to do well in school didn’t mean it was the best thing for her.

    I realized then that it seemed pretty likely the setting was doing more damage to her than our son. I knew that because she responded as I did to school (only she is much more intelligent, I was just someone with delusions of grandeur who was willing to work), and it took me approximately twenty years after finishing school to learn who I was instead of who I thought someone else wanted me to be. My desire for her was at that very moment (and still is today) that she knows precisely who she is ASAFP.

    So from there, it was November 2015, we set off in a different direction for our kids’ education. We were excited about it, and all these years later, I can tell you, the journey has been priceless and enlightening. We are still in the midst of it, but we are starting to see the light.

  • Ride Along

    It looks like you have caught the wind and are soaring so effortlessly. Sure, there are bad things that could happen, but I don’t think so. It seems you are doing that thing you said you would do, and you are ready and willing. It’s cool to see.

    I could never do what you do. It is easy to support you, though. I’m happy to be along for the ride.

  • Canoes and Mindset

    When I lived in California in the late 1990s, I attended business networking events to promote my career counseling practice. I sat in at many networking luncheons and had many lovely conversations with new people. We all nearly always left inspired, and I enjoyed it very much.

    One time as conversations simmered down and we prepared to part ways, someone said to me, “Have you heard of Esther Hicks?” I said that I hadn’t met her yet, and I asked more about her and why they brought her up. The person responded with what Esther and Jerry Hicks were all about and stated that I sounded like Esther when I talked about positive mental attitudes, inspiration, and hope. That seemed like a nice thing to say, but when the person explained what Esther did in her public speaking appearances, I freaked out and didn’t give it another thought.

    But then Esther Hicks was brought up to me again and again over six months. That was my cue to pay more attention. Once something comes into my life more than a couple of times, I take that as a cue to check into it further. I consider that a type of intuitive guidance.

    So I looked Esther Hicks up and gave her a fair shot. Once I got beyond the strangeness of what Esther did on stage, I took to listening in periodically over the years. In retrospect, I probably got all I needed to hear the first time I heard her speak.

    The first idea that I heard from Esther is about being in your canoe, letting go of the paddles, and just laying back and resting in your canoe as you float downstream. The underlying idea is to trust the river to take you to experiences you will enjoy. That image resonated with me. I was tired of striving, and I knew floating happily down the river thanks to tubing the Illinois during my childhood.

    I instantly felt substantial relief in my body, my intuition pinged, and I knew this idea was what I needed. To this day, I still do a mini-meditation where I picture and feel myself floating downstream whenever I’m grounded and aware enough to realize that I’ve been trying too hard.

    For me, trying too hard is a surefire way to self-sabotage. My dad and coaches used to tell me that as a teen. They encouraged me to feel the play unfolding because, I know now, they appreciated the brilliance they saw from me when I just flowed with it and didn’t overthink or try too hard. When I was at my best, I was an intuitive athlete. Little did I know that my angels were trying to teach me something fundamental even way back then.

    When I heard about letting your canoe go downstream rather than fighting the current to head upstream all those years later, it clicked into place.

    As Esther said, “There’s nothing that you want upstream.” To me, that means that upstream, there is only more paddling and struggle. I don’t want to struggle. I want to flow.

    I have been welcoming much more joy in my life as I’ve remembered to let go of the oars, and this I appreciate.