“You must train your intuition – you must trust the small voice inside you which tells you exactly what to say, what to decide.” – Ingrid Bergman
The last time you had to make a decision – big or small, professional or personal – how did you do it?
Did you weigh the pros and cons, carefully measuring all of the elements and factors?
Did you play out a scenario of each possible option in your mind, to see what it might look or feel like?
Did you have a "gut" sense of the direction to take – some visceral sense of what was truly "right" for you?
Or some combination of these (or other) ways?
There's no right or wrong way to make a decision: the best methods or tools required often depend on the situation or context.
For many of us, while we can feel we've had an intuitive "hit" – a nagging gut sense – about the direction to take, we might have learned to ignore our intuition or gut – to marginalize it or not take it seriously.
New research from neuroscience and other fields is beginning to
demonstrate that there is more to having a "gut sense" than we've previously thought.
Scientific studies aside, information from our intuition is not better or worse than information we get from other sources – our intellect or our emotions, for example.
Information from our intuition, just like information from our smarts or emotions is neither good or bad – it's just information. How we interpret it is how we make meaning of that information.
But the good news is that intuition can be trained, honed, known more fully as a trusted and valuable information source through attention and practice.
If you'd like to learn how to trust your gut more, try this:
1) Think of a time in your life when you just "knew" what to do, either personally or professionally. How did you "know"? Where did that knowing come from? Did you have a sensation in your body (eg., heart or gut; tightening or tingling; constriction or release)?
2) Remember a time when you walked into a meeting or gathering, and before someone said anything you instantly knew that something big or important had just happened: how did you know? What sensations or cues did you pick up on?
3) From these two examples, how do you find and trust own intuition?
In the Comments below, I'd love to hear from you on this topic of intuition! Tell me:
- How do you tap into your intuition?
- How does intuition help you make decisions as a leader?
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Before specializing as a professional coach in 2004, I spent more than a decade in leadership, management and program development for state and local government and non-profit organizations. Now I get to help leaders and teams have more clarity and ability to stand up for what's important in their work and in their organizations. Working with me, leaders and teams find more meaning and purpose, feel happier and more confident, navigate change and conflict, and work together better.
I think this is such an important topic for leaders. How you feel about something will usually give you alot of what you need to know. I think we over-think things too often and as a result end of making a lot of choices that “look” right but aren’t right.
All information is good information when weighing and measuring. Training yourself to be aware or listen to your “gut” can make a big difference between long, tortuous decisions that you regret.
I like to spend some moments before falling asleep telling myself about the issue and then putting it in a “box”. Part of my monologue with myself is that in the morning I will unlock the box and the solution/decision will be in there.
So true, Natasha! I find that people’s source of intuition varies (feelings or body sensations are common) but that it’s never wrong, although our interpretation can be!
Thanks for the great suggestion, Heidi! Leave the work to the unconscious and let it work it out while you sleep! Brilliant!
This was great for me. I think I’ve slowly learned to trust myself and my intuition over time… like you said, I’ve seen it show up time after time.
My process is to observe my initial response, weigh the pros and cons, then return to the initial reaction. As I gather more information I can better assess if my initial response is the best to follow.
Thanks for a wonderful post! Emily
Emily, glad you found the post useful, and thanks for sharing your experience! The more we practice finding and listening to our intuition, the more “data” we can gather about its usefulness!