Everyone has intuition, a “wise inner guiding system,” according to Lynn A. Robinson, M.Ed., an international expert on intuition, and author of six books on the topic, including her latest book Divine Intuition: Your Inner Guide to Purpose, Peace and Prosperity.

And everyone can develop their intuition and use it to navigate their daily lives, make fulfilling decisions and discover and realize their dreams.

That’s because “when we pay attention to our intuition, it points us in the right direction.” Intuition “provides an additional level of information that does not come from the analytical, logical, and rational side of the brain,” Robinson writes in Divine Intuition. She describes intuition as “a way of knowing, of sensing the truth without explanations.”

Intuition can take many forms. According to Robinson, it might be an image, feeling or physical sensation, like goose bumps. Or it might arrive in a dream. Also, “Some people say they just know the answer.”

I carry a few different business cards in my purse. Because I never know what conversation I will have with a stranger at any given time.

A month ago I fetched cream for my coffee at a café in South Bend, Indiana. Naturally my family didn’t know a soul in the joint. However, by the time I returned to my table, I knew some incredibly intimate (not to mention interesting) details about the daughter of the man next to me who was reaching for a napkin: his daughter is bipolar; she was anorexic as a teenage ballerina; and she’s on some of the same meds as I am.

I ended up giving him a business card with everything but my email scratched out.

I didn’t want to have the conversation of what I do for living.

It doesn’t have anything to do with who I am.

And that’s why I get so annoyed that we have to start all of our conversations with that question.

Vulnerability is scary. But it’s also a powerful and authentic way to live. According to author Brené Brown, Ph.D, LMSW, in her latest book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent and Lead, “Vulnerability is the core, the heart, the center, of meaningful human experiences.”

She defines vulnerability as “uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.” Think about the vulnerability it takes to love someone – whether it’s your parents, siblings, spouse or close friends. Love is filled with uncertainties and risks. As Brown notes, the person you love might or might not love you back. They might be in your life for a long time or they might not. They might be terrifically loyal or they might stab you in the back.

Think about the vulnerability it takes to share your ideas with the world, not knowing how your work will be perceived. You might be appreciated, laughed at or downright skewered.

Vulnerability is hard. But what can make it even harder — needlessly so — are the inaccurate assumptions we hold about it.

Brown shatters the following three myths in Daring Greatly.

Whenever I see a cocky musical sensation laugh hysterically at the performance or audition of a desperate wanna-be pop singer on “American Idol” or any of its tacky knockoffs, I want to take the mic cord and wrap it around the celeb’s body like 235 times because I know what it feels like to be that girl going after a dream that seems to get farther away with each piece of painful feedback.

“Success is 99 percent perspiration and one percent talent,” my business-savvy father told me back when I was unloading Thin Mints as a Brownie Girl Scout. “The only thing that separates the winners from the losers is perseverance.”

Dr. Seuss was rejected 43 times before his first story was published; a skinny 5’11″ Michael Jordan was cut from his varsity basketball team; Colonel Sanders drove from restaurant to restaurant with his pressure cooker and famous recipe of 11 herbs and spices before he made history with KFC; and didn’t some opinioned jerk tell Katie Couric in her early days that she didn’t have a face for TV?

Have you ever been chased by someone in your dreams? Been naked in public? Flown like a bird around a city? Or just felt utterly lost in a maze-like building?

Psychologist and dream researcher Patricia Garfield asserts that these examples are part of 12 basic dreams that all of us dream, regardless of who we are, what we do or where we live.

These “universal dreams,” as Garfield calls them, are far from a dream dictionary packed with generic terms from A to Z. On her website, Garfield writes: “Like a hearty stew that is rich with local produce, the universal dreams differ among different peoples, but they are all nourishing variants of the same wholesome meal. They are as old as humanity and as widespread as our globe. Possibly further.”

In her book The Universal Dream Key: The 12 Most Common Dream Themes Around the World, Garfield explains that dreams differ based on four factors.

“The biggest myth about dreams is that they are frivolous manifestations reflecting basic occurrences of our daily experiences,” said Chicago psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber.

But dreams are actually an important part of self-discovery. (More on that later.) Below are a few fascinating facts and findings about dreams.

1. People with disabilities dream as though they don’t have them.

The following is an excerpt from a person who participated in a dream study:

“I was supposed to and wanted to sing in the choir. I see a stage on which some singers, male and female, are standing… I am asked if I want to sing with them. ‘Me?’ I ask, ‘I don’t know if I am good enough.’ And already I am standing on the stage with the choir. In the front row, I see my mother, she is smiling at me… It is a nice feeling to be on stage and able to chant.”

What’s particularly curious about this dream is that the dreamer was born deaf and doesn’t speak. Recently, two studies published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition have found that people with disabilities still dream as though their impairments don’t exist.

In case you missed it, June 6th, 2011 marked the 50th anniversary of Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung’s passing. Jung, born July 26, 1875, is one of the most compelling figures in psychology.

Many people are familiar with Jung for his famous friendship and eventual split from Sigmund Freud, who considered their relationship at first to be one of father and son. Jung strongly disagreed with Freud’s sole emphasis on sex and other parts of his theories, and their relationship soon deteriorated. However, the two pioneers did agree on one thing: an individual must analyze his mind’s inner workings, including his dreams and fantasies.

Jung founded analytical psychology, which emphasizes the importance of exploring both conscious and unconscious processes. According to one of his theories, all humans share a collective unconscious. Unlike the personal unconscious, which is made up of each individual’s personal memories and personality, the collective unconscious holds the experiences of our ancestors. Proof of this can be seen, according to Jung, in mythology, which shares similar themes across cultures.

Below are four other tidbits you might not know about the man behind some of the most fascinating and controversial theories.