I believe that the task of making sense of ourselves and our behavior requires that we acknowledge there can be as much value in the blink of an eye as in months of rational analysis.
—Malcolm Gladwell, author and speaker
Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking has popularized a form of intuition that Gladwell calls “thin-slicing.” He speculates that we are able to make highly accurate decisions with very limited amounts of information. “Thin-slicing refers to the ability of our subconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow slices of experience,” he explains.
Deciding to accept a new job is one of the more significant decisions you may have to make. Most of us do our research by talking to colleagues about the position, making inquiries, going on interviews, reading background about the company, and so forth. It’s the way you’re supposed to do it, right?
However, if you’re really honest with yourself, you probably had a gut feeling about the position right from the start. It might have been when you walked into the room for an interview, or the way you felt when you drove your car into the company parking lot. Perhaps it came even sooner, when you first heard about the job. Instead of trusting that instant when you knew in your gut the position was right for you (or not), you probably proceeded to do your homework and gather information. After all, is it really possible to accurately know something in the blink of an eye?
Gladwell posits that we understand a great deal without necessarily being able to explain why and how. We can frequently make some of our best decisions in mere seconds. We think without thinking. While he doesn’t use the word intuition in his book, he describes a form of it that is based on sizing up situations and determining how we feel about a person or situation based not on new information, but rather on our accumulated experiences.
Train yourself to ask this question before beginning the process of analysis and research. Note your response and store it away for future reference. The answer you receive shouldn’t preclude doing your homework on the subject at hand. However, when you use your intuition first and hone your skill through repetition, you’ll find you have quick, ready, and accurate insight at your disposal whenever you need it.
Asking this question alerts you to additional information. It gives you insight into what may be just outside your level of conscious awareness. What’s wrong (or right) with the situation you’re observing? It’s helpful to stay emotionally neutral or open when you ask this question. What insight comes to you naturally? Simply observe it. Don’t judge it.
What pops into your mind when you ask this question? There’s a big difference between using your intuition and impulsive, irresponsible decision-making. Again, it takes practice. If you were just beginning to learn to play a piano, you wouldn’t expect yourself to be a concert pianist within the first week. So it is with intuition. You learn by a series of small steps. How do you experience an intuitive yes response? How does an intuitively conveyed “Don’t go in that direction” feel to you? The answers present themselves in quick flashes, a sudden insight, an unexpected feeling, or a certain knowing. Only you have the key to unlock how it communicates in your own body, mind, and spirit. Once you find that key, you’ll find success.
How do scientists view this whole concept of intuition and “thin-slicing” in particular? Does it come from our mind? Our experience? In reality, they’ve yet to find anything in the body that defines either intuition or, more generally, consciousness. Where does “the mind” as we know it exist?
Dr. Larry Dossey is an author and internist who lectures widely on the topics of spirituality and science. He suggests there is an aspect of our mind that defies space and time limitations. He uses the term non-local mind, a concept coined and used in contemporary quantum physics.
He writes in his book Recovering the Soul:
The non-local model is not confined in space and time to the brain and body, although it may work through the brain and body. And it is not confined to the present moment. Infinite, and by inference immortal, eternal, omnipresent—all of these are consequences of anything that is non-local, not just mind. As a result, if mind is non-local, there is one mind, or Universal Mind, which the West has regarded as the Soul.
This opens up interesting questions about intuition. My position in this book is that intuition comes from two general sources. The first is a quick processing of subconscious information. You might use this when you’re making a hiring decision and you observe the applicant’s style of clothes, manner of speaking, and body language, and come up with an instinctual impression of them. The second type of intuition is what Dossey is alluding to. We have access to a larger, more infinite pool of knowledge through the non-local mind and we connect to it through our intuitive knowing.
Bell’s Theorem is named for its author, Irish physicist John Stewart Bell. He demonstrated mathematically that the speed at which information can travel from point A to point B is not, as Albert Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity stated, limited to the speed of light or less. Bell’s Theorem says that this connection is not just a theory, but actually exists in the real world. Dr Nick Herbert, also a physicist and author of the book Quantum Reality, maintains that when A connects to B, nonlocally, nothing crosses the intervening space, and that no matter how far A is from B, the connection is instantaneous.
How does all this relate to intuition? You have a connection to an amazing wealth of information at your disposal through your extended consciousness. When you’re thinking about how your factory is doing in Singapore or wondering how to make a sales pitch to your client in Boston, you can pick up information instantly. You don’t need to be there in person observing what’s going on. It also explains my work as an intuitive and my seemingly implausible ability to tell you, with no rational way of knowing, what will motivate a decision-maker to choose your company over the competition.
Interestingly, this information about the non-local mind is not new. It’s reminiscent of what philosopher Patanjali wrote in the second century BC (and found more recently on ThinkExist.com):
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
Lance is an engineer who specializes in large turbine-powered generators. He’s often called upon to join a “S.W.A.T.” team whose mission is to track down and eliminate equipment problems. The rational and logical approach usually rules with this group, yet Lance has become a convert to the more intuitive approach. He is, however, the first to admit he doesn’t know where the information comes from. He relates this story:
Several years ago, on a “mission” in England, the team found itself in the middle of a fascinating puzzle where a collective gut instinct provided the only solution.
It seems that a recently rebuilt turbine was showing an unexplainable increase of temperature. The customer was happy with the power output, but because of the abnormally high temperature, the unit would have to be checked out to satisfy safety requirements.
Normally, we’d have shut the entire unit down so we could get inside for a thorough examination. But the “patient” weighed twenty tons and was running at a thousand degrees Fahrenheit, which meant it would take three days to cool down enough to allow us to begin work. Add another nine days of outage to do the investigation, it could have cost the customer millions of dollars.
I felt instinctively that there wasn’t any significant issue with this turbine. But could the first stage turbine blades have been installed backward? Though we didn’t really know what was actually going on inside that monster, we collectively just knew—really knew—that those blades were not installed incorrectly and that the unit was safe.
Since engineers don’t readily confess to “feelings” about things, I wrote into my report that we were confident that (not “we felt” that) the blades were fine and the unit would continue to generate power without generating problems.
Three and a half years later the unit was still running like new. But we were enormously curious about what might have caused the temperature aberration, so, after high-fives all around, we began an animated half-way-around-the-world co-investigation. The unit was to be open for just a few hours, so we feverishly gathered data long into the night.
Bottom line: We found nothing. But most important, we found nothing wrong! So in the end, our collective gut feeling was verified.
Later, after looking closely at all the data we’d gathered, we concluded the errant indication was most likely caused by an unusual flow pattern around the temperature sensor. The result? The combined intuition of my team had saved an important customer tens of millions of dollars.
Maybe you’re not dealing with turbine-powered generators and a potential 10-to-20-million-dollar decision like our engineer, Lance. But you’ve got a big decision to make. Perhaps you’re responsible to thousands of shareholders or to the members of your immediate family. The business decisions you make are equally critical and capable of changing lives for better—or for worse.
The decision you’re about to make has been well thought through. You’ve done due diligence in gathering the facts, the data, others’ opinions. You’re ready to make that hugely important hire; to pitch that account you not only want, but need; to commit funds to develop that new product that will absolutely clobber the competition. And yet, you’re not sure. There’s something nibbling away at the back of your brain—a little cinch worm of uncertainty—making you hesitate, giving you pause.
Now is the time to sit back, relax, close your eyes, and ask the following question: Is the decision I’m about to make a good decision? Ask it as if someone besides you is listening. You’re asking your intuition an important question and your intuition is going to give you an answer. It may come in the form of words, symbols, images, feelings. Most people get a “feeling” that something is good or bad, right or wrong. The Japanese call it haragei, which translates to “belly sensitivity” or “stomach art.” We call it “gut instinct.”
Choices are a fact of life. What makes a life successful is the ability to make more good choices than bad choices. Your intuition is there to guide you, like a trusty compass, to the choices that are best for you. Take advantage of it, listen to what it tells you, then act accordingly and expect success.
Put Your Intuition to Work Tip
Get to know how your own inner guidance systems works. When you’re going in the wrong direction, how does your intuition let you know? Conversely, what signals do you get that say “Yes! Good decision!”? Pay attention to your own unique intuitive signals, especially when you’re making relatively low-risk decisions. These same signals will be there when you have to make a fast, quick, and significant decision in your life.
No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.
—Sir Isaac Newton, English physicist and mathematician
This is a great technique to use when the stakes aren’t too high. I wouldn’t necessarily use this method for major decisions like whether to sell the company, quit your job, or move across the continent. But then, that’s just me!
Think about a decision you’re trying to make. Form it in your mind as a yes or no question. Examples are:
Should I take the position with XYZ Corporation?
Is this the right time to ask for a raise?
Is it important that I attend the annual association meeting next month?
Take a coin and flip it. Heads indicates yes. Tails indicates no. Okay, what was the answer?
Think about how you felt about the answer. Were you disappointed? Relieved? Did you get a thrill of excitement through your body, or a knot of fear in your stomach? Admit it: Did you immediately want to flip the coin two more times and try for best two out of three? (Or have you actually done that already?)
Any of these responses is an example of your intuition speaking to you. You know the answer. It’s the one you wanted in the first place. Your response after you tossed the coin gave you more information about the answer to your question.
So often we expect our intuition to speak like Darth Vader in Star Wars, booming out, “Yes! Take that job!” It’s more likely that the message will come through subtle feelings, an inner nudge, a physical sensation. When you learn to pay attention to these inner clues and act on them, they can be as loud and clear as any booming voice.