8 : The Intuitive Leap
I’ve just returned from a 2 day conference called The Rural Entrepreneur. Where I live and work is definitely rural – and by the definition of an entrepreneur as “someone who is willing to assume the responsibility, risk and rewards of starting and operating a business” I suppose I am also an entrepreneur. But my main reason for going was that, much as I love being surrounded by sheep and birds and trees and mountains and rivers and total peace, I thought it would be fun to get a shot of the sort of high voltage energy that entrepreneurs radiate (on good days!). And it was.
I particularly wanted to tell you about one small business called Information PLUS set up a few years ago by Les Cowan, an ex social worker who worked with children and young people. Les develops what he calls ‘Social Learning Software’; multimedia software products mainly for use with young people and dealing with issues such as drug taking, offending behaviour, coming to terms with past events, building healthy relationships, adoption and contraception. It’s used by teachers, social workers, psychologists, careers advisors, youth justice workers, foster carers, health promotion advisors, parents and carers – and I know that many of the readers of these email articles fall into at least one of those categories.
Am I on commission? No! But what really inspired me when Les was telling me his story was how it incorporated many of the themes of these articles.
Values : Being a social worker is usually a values-based career decision. There’s a desire to make a difference, to serve in some way.
Fulfilment : For various reasons Les was no longer finding his job fulfilling and was not prepared to stay in it under those circumstances.
‘Following your bliss’ : Les had values that led him into social work. And he also loved IT.
Risk taking : Setting up a new business, with a new product, is always a risk.
But I would guess that there are many people out there with similar values and a similar love of, and skill with, IT who wouldn’t have come up with this idea. The pieces of the final ‘product’ (in this case an idea) were there – but they needed to come together, be integrated, to be synthesised, in a new way.
And that often happens via an Intuitive Leap.
What is Intuition? And how can you access it?
Intuition has been defined in many ways. For example, “…knowing for sure without knowing for certain….”. Or as a hunch, a gut feeling, an instinct or an inner knowing.
Some people swear by it. Some people regards it as ‘unscientific’ – and yet many famous discoveries in science were the result of an intuitive leap, including Archimedes’ Eureka moment and the discovery of Vitamin C (Go Google!).
According to Einstein "The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."
There are a number of ways that you might access your intuition.
Through your feelings or emotions – “It just feels right”.
Through your body – a ‘gut feel’ (the Japanese refer to intuition as ‘stomach art’), a knot in the stomach, a sensation of cold or heaviness.
As an image. For example, sometimes when I am coaching I suddenly ‘get’ an image. It means nothing to me but when I run it past my client it often creates an ‘Aha’ moment for them.
The more you use your intuition the more readily you will notice it. But it can be like a ‘still, small voice’, easily missed in all the noisy, busy, mental and verbal chatter of our daily lives so you may need to actively develop your ability to notice your intuitive flashes.
Meeting Your Future Self
This is a simplified version of an activity I do with many cleints at some point - it can serve a variety of purposes.
- Find somewhere quiet and peaceful where you won’t be disturbed. Use any method (for example, the breathing exercise in Exploring the Edge No. 5) to get relaxed.
- Imagine that in front of you is a time travel machine (Dr Who’s Tardis or one of your own design). You enter it and set the controls to take you 10 years into the future, where you are going to meet your Fulfilled Future Self.
- When you arrive, you step out and see your Fulfilled Future Self walking towards you. Notice where you are, what is around you and what your first impressions of your Future Self are.
- The two of you find somewhere comfortable and private to sit and then you ask your Future Self the following questions. The important thing is that you listen for the answers (rather than feeling you have to make them up). Just see what comes and accept it. It may be a word, a thought, a feeling, an image – or a long speech. Don’t judge or evaluate it. You don’t have to understand it. It doesn’t have to make sense. Don’t reject what first comes and ‘make up’ something ‘better’.
- Here are a couple of questions you could try asking, although you can also make up your own :
1) What is the most fulfilling aspect of the life you are living now?
2) What do I most need to let go of or leave behind in order to get from where I am now
to where you are?
Whatever comes to you, just sit with it for a few moments. Ask any other questions you want to ask and then return to your time machine and to the here and now.
You have just used a visualisation exercise to access your intuition (which, for the purposes of this activity, we called your Fulfilled Future Self).
Maybe you got some answers that really ‘landed’ for you. Maybe you didn’t. Don’t worry – interpretation may come later. But even if you never get a conscious understanding of those intuitive messages, you’ve had an ‘intuition workout’.
The more you ‘talk to’ your intuition, the more it will talk to you.
Finally, for those of you that like research. A survey among 601 executives of Fortune 1000 companies, found that 55% of them perceived that they based their decisions on facts and figures, while 45% said they rely more heavily on their intuition.
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