Intuition – Your Compass For Doing The Right Thing
Tanmay Vora
Intuition is that silent voice from the heart that tells you what you should be doing. It is an inner voice, not so loud and clear. Our mind speaks louder than the heart – which is why we often ignore our gut feeling, intuition or whatever else we may call it.
A few years back, as an amateur project manager, I was managing a project in its critical stage. At one point during the project, I “felt” (only for a moment) that I should inform the client about the impending problems. But the mind had a different agenda. Mind quickly said that I should not speak it up – else client may back fire and create more problems. Mind took over the heart and I kept working through the current challenges. Later that week, when I went to my senior colleague for guidance, he asked me to inform client about the impending problems.
“I did feel once that I should inform the client”, I said.
“You should have listened to your gut feeling.”, my colleague advised.
I knew I had made a mistake by ignoring my gut feeling. Our intuition is our compass and sometimes, simply following your intuition is the best thing you can do.
Our mind is “trained” to do things in a prescribed way and follow the rules. Intuition follows no rules, it just tells you the right thing. If we always follow our mind, we get stuck in too much of analysis, too much of reliance on our past decisions, too much of rules. Following your intuition then is the only way to be remarkable, to be different and to be right!
Bottomline: In our quest for progress, we rush through our decisions. We work in a haste. Listening to your gut feeling demands that you slow down, cut through the noise of your mind and listen your inner compass. And then follow it!
Tanay,
Learning to trust one’s “gut” is a vital life skill. A very wise mentor once told me, “Over the years, whenever I’ve ignored that little voice in my head urging caution, I’ve always lived to regret it.”
.-= Jennifer V. Miller´s last blog ..We’re Renovating! =-.
Jennifer – Thanks for sharing that valuable insight from your mentor. After writing the piece, I also came across this brilliant post from Seth Godin where he states that trusting and acting on your instincts is the only way to do something “unsound”.
We are surrounded by so much of noise that we are not able to listen to our instincts. Only if we could get to that, we would be much better off!
Tanmay, Good Post! Yes We always have two thoughts or perspective for the any situation no matter if its business, work, life and we choose one thought, we can term these thoughts under the category of intuition or gut feeling and the other thought from mind. As you have rightly said, we should not rush on decisions, we will always have multiple decisions going on in mind and we need to sit back and think in all aspects and make a decision. Thanks
@kapilpoojari
@Kapil – Thanks for sharing your views on thinking about different perspectives before arriving at a decision. The problem however is that because we rely too much on our past experiences and what worked then – we often ignore our inner voice. You must read Seth Godin’s old piece on “Intuition versus Analysis”
Thanks again,
Tanmay
Nice one…Intuition is a kind of belief/forecast which comes from bottom of your heart mainly in critical time. Also, to some extent it’s beyond the logic/calculation – therefore its difficult to trust on that. But if you listen to your intuition anytime and if you feel that you should follow that – then just do it without thinking on other option(s).
Very common proverb we encounter many times in Gujarati:
“ભક્તિ એ શ્રદ્ધાનો વિષય છે નહી કે સમજણનો”
Intuition is something similar!
Chandrakant – Many thanks for going back to our roots (Gujarati) and drawing out a parallel. Like devotion, intuition also comes from the heart – it is silent and short-lived. The key is to hold on to what your intuition tells you – and then doing it.
I remember a saying, “The heart has its own reasons which reasons (mind) don’t understand”.
Thanks!
Tanmay