The seemingly good job you turn down, because you sense something's amiss, the person you don't trust despite her pleasant smile, the medical test you insist on because you just know that something's wrong. These flashes of instinct are what scientist calls intuition, an essential knowledge that arises independently of rational thought.
Intuition seems to turn up out of nowhere, but that doesn't mean that it's magically plucked from the sky. In fact, most experts agree that it is a product of life lessons, and that much of it is tucked beyond our consciousness. Intuitive wisdom is born of experience; often it represents learned expertise that's instantly accessible. For example, a chess master can look at a board and intuitively know the right move. But most of this knowledge is not articulated or directly thought.
Of course, not all hunches can be explained by experience: the mother who senses her child is in danger, or the decision you make to take a different route home that ends up avoiding huge traffic jam, for instance. Some researchers slide such incidents into the category of coincidence, while others shrug them off as inexplicable.
Most experts agree, however, that your inner voice possesses the potential to enrich your life. When combined with careful factual analysis, it can help you make better decisions. The following gives you insight into your own intuitive powers, proposing ways to channel them into sound choices and offering ways to avoid the pitfalls of relying on gut feelings alone.
Review your decision-making style.
Before you can use your gut to guide you, you must recognize its signals. For example when you meet someone for the first time, do you feel a fluttering in your stomach? When you are puzzling over a decision, do you hear an inner voice or see images in a dream? The way we receive intuitive messages is as individual as our fingerprints. Let's say for instance, that one of your job duties is hiring people. What factors do you consider? The way a person looks, or a list of skills, personality?
Finally, take stock of your past decision. Which judgments proved to be right or wrong, and why? Which factors misguided or confirmed them? By evaluating how you face decisions, you will avoid repeating mistakes and be more apt to choose wisely in the future. The review process in work situations or relationships augments the knowledge that eventually informs our intuition. It's a matter of testing your intuition; listening to it, following it, and then seeing what the results are, if the results are good, follow it again.
Don't over analyze.
Yes, there's a need for reason, but don't let facts snuff out feelings. Intuitive reactions are subtle, complex, and easily overruled by analytical rigor. Let your initial perceptions develop without trying to explain why you feel the way you do.
People who depend on instincts alone made more reliable predictions of their relationship's future than those who over thought their feelings. It can be difficult to get to the bottom of gut feelings and know where they come from. Trying to dissect them is like trying to analyze how we perform a skill we're really good at, like dancing or serving a tennis ball. It can make things worse for one thing; individual points rarely make up the whole story.
As the 18th-century philosopher Immanuel Kant put it, we can never even by the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.
