Fear Not Your Intuition

We tend to second guess our intuition. In business we are encouraged to suspend our intuition in deference to the empirical, to the data. Intuition, it is suggested, is just a feeling - subjective, biased, devoid of reason, not to be trusted. Only rows and columns will do. Sit silent, stifle your immediate understanding, and wait for the data. It will give the answer. Data is always objective (and always presented without bias). <<< insert winking emoji >>>

But intuition is not the absence of data nor is it the absence of reason. Intuition is simply a word that describes our ability to understand something instantaneously based on a lifetime of experience and knowledge. It is our brain processing a problem through the patterns we have accumulated, and distilled. Though each experience is unique, they tend to sort themselves into a handful of helpful patterns. Life is like that and our brains take notice… and store them away for use on another day.

Some refer to intuition as a gut feeling. It is an apt metaphor. Though we know conclusions do not originate from our abdomen, the gut analogy offers an important insight. The word gut refers to something deep, visceral, emotional - a feeling. But what is important to remember is that the triggered emotion is preceded by and based on real and reasoned insight. It is so quickly processed that we suspect it never happened. But these conclusions have been filtered through our many experiences, assigned to a pattern, and tested again by the facts at hand. All produced and filtered by our remarkable minds and punctuated by a feeling in our proverbial gut.

Intuition is a remarkable God-given capacity. It is worthy of reflection not rejection. The more I allow it freedom and influence, the better I am at using and testing it. It is not always right, but it is not always wrong.