If you have noticed these 9 signs, it could mean you're intuitive

I don’t think intuition is a magical power. I think it’s pattern recognition that moves faster than language.

The brain compresses years of tiny observations into a nudge, a pull, a whisper in your gut.

If that resonates, here are nine signs you might be more intuitive than you realized—plus a resource that’s helped me sharpen mine in real life.

Let’s dive in.

1. You notice patterns other people miss

You’re the person who clocks the subtle “echo” across different situations.

The new colleague’s tone matches the way a previous boss spoke right before deadlines slipped. The restaurant that changes its menu font twice in a month? You flag that as a cost-cutting tell before the reviews turn south.

Psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer calls intuition “unconscious intelligence.” You’re not guessing. You’re drawing on a compressed archive of micro-lessons your conscious mind didn’t bother to narrate.

2. You feel the room before you hear the words

Have you ever stepped into a meeting and sensed tension before anyone spoke? Your body seems to get there first—shoulders tighten, breath shortens, eyes scan faces.

This isn’t woo; it’s data. Facial micro-expressions, posture shifts, turn-taking patterns, even how quickly people respond to each other—your nervous system reads it all. If you often pick up the mood before the agenda, that’s a strong intuitive marker.

Personally, I’ve learned to trust the “hum” in a room. When the vibe is off, I slow my speech and ask one open question. Nine times out of ten, what surfaces explains that first gut signal.

3. You get a “no” or “yes” before you can justify it

Intuition often arrives as a direction, not a dissertation. You feel drawn to a choice—or repelled by it—while your prefrontal cortex scrambles to assemble reasons.

Herbert Simon, the Nobel laureate, described expert intuition this way: the situation cues up a stored pattern and “the information provides the answer.” In other words, the “why” exists, but it’s buried in experience until you go looking.

If you regularly feel clarity before commentary, your inner pattern-matcher is working as designed.

4. You keep receipts on your hunches

Intuitive people don’t just “feel.” They verify. You jot down a quick line in Notes—reach out to Maya before Friday; feels timely—and then track what happens.

Keeping a “hunch log” changes decision-making. Note the nudge, the action you took (or didn’t), and the result.

Over time, patterns emerge: maybe your morning instincts are cleaner than your late-night ones, or your people-related hunches outperform your timing hunches. That feedback loop is how intuition gets sharper.

5. You are comfortable with silence and solitude

Counterintuitive truth: intuition loves quiet. If you crave short pockets of silence—on walks, in the shower, stereo off on the drive home—it’s not antisocial, it’s maintenance.

In stillness, your brain can surface the signal from all that noisy input.

When I skip these quiet breaks, my decisions get choppy. When I take them, the next step often arrives fully formed, like a file I didn’t realize had finished downloading.

6. You notice “small oddities” and treat them as clues

A single out-of-place detail can light you up. The contractor who dodges specifics twice. The app that asks for an unusual permission. The emails that suddenly… stop.

Intuitive folks give weight to anomalies. We don’t panic; we poke. Often that tiny weirdness is the thread that unravels the larger picture. If your spidey sense wakes up at small inconsistencies, that’s not paranoia—it’s perceptiveness.

7. You sense your body’s signals and actually listen

Your gut is a dashboard, not a decoration. Tight jaw? Restless legs? A flutter in the solar plexus when someone makes a promise? Those are informational pings.

I learned this the hard way. Years ago, I ignored a persistent heaviness while negotiating a partnership. The numbers looked good, the pitch was slick—but every call left me drained.

Three months later, I was disentangling from a mess I could’ve avoided. Now, when my body broadcasts a message, I don’t argue. I ask, What are you trying to tell me?

Recently—while juggling a few personal and professional transitions—I revisited something I’ve mentioned before: Rudá Iandê’s new book, “Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life”.

His insights reinforced what this sign is all about.

One line in particular landed for me: “Our emotions are not some kind of extraneous or unnecessary appendage to our lives, but rather an integral part of who we are and how we make sense of the world around us.”

The book inspired me to treat my sensations as real-time intelligence—not noise—and to make one small, body-led adjustment each day. That single shift has made my intuition cleaner and my choices kinder.

8. You connect dots across domains

Intuition travels well. A lesson from a travel mishap in Lisbon helps you navigate a product launch.

A story about migratory birds nudges you toward a better content cadence. You find metaphors everywhere—and they don’t feel like fluff; they feel like working models.

That’s a hallmark of intuition: it builds bridges between seemingly unrelated islands.

If you often say, “This reminds me of…” and then use that analogy to make a smarter move, your intuition has range.

9. You act—and then audit

Being intuitive doesn’t mean being impulsive. The difference is the audit. You move on the nudge, then you circle back to evaluate.

Did the call I made based on that uneasy feeling save us time? Did my early conviction about this idea hold up once we had data?

This rhythm—sense, step, study—keeps intuition from drifting into superstition. It also builds credibility with skeptics because you’re not hiding behind vibes; you’re shipping results and running reviews.

How to strengthen what you already have

If you see yourself in a handful of these, good. You don’t need to overhaul your personality. You need a few protocols.

• Create conditions for signal. Ten minutes of quiet daily beats an occasional hour. Walk without earbuds a couple times a week. Let your brain crunch in the background.

• Write it down. Track hunches, actions, outcomes. No drama, just data. Patterns love paper.

• Check your inputs. Intuition is only as good as what you feed it. Read widely, meet people outside your bubble, and rotate your sources. Valid intuitions grow in environments that give you regular, reliable feedback.

• Pair with reason. Let intuition propose and analysis dispose. If the hunch is strong but the spreadsheet balks, ask what variable you’re missing rather than forcing a fit.

• Practice micro-decisions. Treat small choices as reps. Which email should you answer first? Which headline feels right? Tiny bets build calibration.

• Lean into embodied wisdom. This is where Rudá Iandê’s work keeps helping me. I’ve just read his new book and, again, it nudged me to question my own programming and listen to my body before I outsource decisions to noise. If you want a grounded companion for this kind of work—practical, a bit irreverent, and refreshingly human—I recommend checking out “Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life” by Rudá Iandê. The book inspired me to simplify my routines and treat emotions as messengers rather than enemies. If that resonates, it might be a valuable guide for you, too.

A quick word on ethics

Intuition reads the room; it shouldn’t run the room. If your gut tells you something about a person, act with care. Seek consent, verify facts, and avoid using your read of someone’s inner world as leverage. The goal is better choices, not better manipulation.

What to do when you’re wrong

You will be. Everyone is. Intuition doesn’t promise perfection; it offers probabilities. When your nudge misfires, resist the urge to swear off your instincts. Go back to the tape. What did you miss? What signal did you over-weight? The lesson is how your intuition learns.

The bottom line

If you recognize these signs—quick pattern spotting, pre-verbal clarity, comfort with quiet, respect for anomalies, embodied listening, cross-domain connecting, and a bias for acting then auditing—you’re probably more intuitive than you realized.

Not mystical. Just skilled.

And like any skill, it gets better the more you use it with attention, humility, and a decent notebook.

If you’d like a companion for that journey, I’ll point you once more to Rudá Iandê’s “Laughing in the Face of Chaos: A Politically Incorrect Shamanic Guide for Modern Life”—I’ve mentioned it before because it keeps giving me practical ways to turn inner signals into wiser moves.