When I first went to university, I chose to study business management (don’t ask me why; even my lemonade stand had failed terribly).
During one of our classes, instead of learning about calculous, marketing and business plans, our professor started talking about intuition (for several minutes I thought I had entered the wrong class). In fact, he devoted an entire class for the subject. I was a bit confused at first. I used to see business management as something entirely logical and pragmatic, based on numbers and market projections. I would never have imagined that it would have anything to do with intuition. Furthermore, I would never have imagined this topic being brought up to class. But there I was, learning about intuition during my business management class. And guess what, it was fascinating!
To approach the subject, the professor quoted Steve Jobs, Co-founder of Apple Inc. who died in 2011. Jobs had learned about intuition while spending time in India. In his biography, written by Walter Isaacson, Jobs said coming back to America was much more of a cultural shock than going to India.
“The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world,” said Jobs. “Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect; that’s had a big impact on my work.”
Our professor explained that, when managing a business, intuition plays a vital role. Sometimes market conditions and the advice of people we trust might point to a certain direction, but our gut feeling might be telling us to go on a different path. And more often than not, our intuition is right. In her magazine ‘O,’ Oprah describes intuition as a “whispery sensation that pulsates just beneath the surface of your being.”
Oprah says that learning to trust your instincts - using your intuitive sense of what’s best for you - is paramount for any lasting success (and if Oprah said it, it must be true).
“All animals have it [intuition]; we’re the only creatures that deny and ignore it,” she said. “I’ve trusted the still, small voice of intuition my entire life, and the only time I’ve made mistakes is when I didn’t listen.”
Even if you’re not as opened to the idea of intuition, you might have had glimpses of if when you first meet someone new - you’ve never seen this person in front of you before, but something tells you immediately if you will get along with this person or not.
We’ve all had to make difficult decisions in our lives - it might be deciding to end a long-term relationship, to quit a job you’ve had for several years, to move to a different city or to take a different direction in life. Making such decisions can add enormous amounts of stress to our lives and make us fearful that we might be making the wrong decision.
Jordan Bach, a young spiritual leader from New York, says that when faced with a difficult decision, a good strategy is to sense in your body which decision “feels like forward movement.”
“Some of the best choices might make no sense, but they feel right in your body,” he explains on his website (www.thebachbook.com).
Sometimes the choice that you have to make is not the most comfortable. In fact, you might forcefully wish that you didn’t have to make it. Nevertheless, your body is telling you that it is the right decision, and even though you don’t understand it, it is the best choice at that time.