Be Your Best

Todd Gifford – Success Coach

Generally speaking, we are taught, trained, and conditioned to use logic, data, and research to attack every problem, need, or goal.  Very rarely do you hear someone in business say they made a big decision or took a big action based on their ‘gut instincts’ (aka Intuition).  However, the more I learn about the concept of intuition, the more I understand that your intuition is something that should be focused on, fueled, practiced, and leveraged to make you more successful at work or outside of work.

Intuition is defined as instinctive knowing (without the use of rational processes), or an impression that something might be the case, or the apparent ability to acquire knowledge without inference or the use of reason.

The reality of intuition is that it is a thought or idea and/or a physical feeling that comes to you about anything that might be on your mind.  That thought or feeling, although conveyed by your subconscious, is being created by a lot of information that you have built up and stored away through all of your life experiences.  A “gut feeling” sort of suggests that this intuitive thought or feeling is random or out of the blue sky, when in fact, all of your experiences and information learned or absorbed up to this point is largely, if not entirely, responsible for it.  The key is that much of this information you have stored away was not consciously learned information (ie. not learned from studying in school or in a conversation), but rather picked up through your observations and unconscious senses.

You can increase your productivity and success by leveraging your intuition capabilities.  To leverage your capabilities, you want to do a few things.  First, you want to accept the idea that intuition is a valid skill or tool for achieving success vs. just some way out there phenomena.  Second, it is good to understand if you are currently more ‘rational’ or more ‘intuitive’ when it comes to making decisions.  I was very surprised to find that I rated very high on making intuitive decisions, when I thought I would be super highly ranked towards ‘rational’ decision making (I was a Finance and Accounting Major in school, was taught to do a lot of analysis, so I must be a highly rational decision maker, right?).  By the way, if you would like to get a copy of a quick test you can take to find out your Rational vs. Intuitive score, just send an email to MyFeedback@dee-inc.com, put in a subject of “Rational/Intuitive Self-Assessment”, and provide your contact information.

Regardless where you are at on the scale, you can develop better skills to listen to your ‘inner self’/intuition and incorporate this into your daily life.  First, get into a habit of asking yourself good quality questions.  No, you don’t have to state them out loud, where people might look at you funny.  You can simply say the questions in your mind to yourself.  Posing good questions allows your subconscious to work on answers to those questions.  Ever had one of those situations where you were trying to figure out the answer to a puzzle or question, could not do so, but then 4 days later, BAM!, it popped into your mind while taking a shower?  That is your intuition searching for the answer to that question, finally coming up with the answer, and delivering it.

Next, you want to put yourself into a calm relaxed state as much as possible when doing a ‘gut check’.  Intuition works best when you are mentally relaxed.  Again, this is why you tend to come up with new ideas or answers in the shower, brushing your teeth, during exercising, etc…  Also, when ideas or thoughts pop into your mind about something, get in the habit of writing them down right away.  Your intuition does not convey information via a Billboard.  These important ideas and thoughts can come very subtly many times, and are gone as fast as they showed up.  The ideas may not even make sense at first, but write them down anyway.  Lastly, have confidence that your intuition is working for you.  Be patient and listen to yourself.  It’s not a perfect science, but your gut instincts are very powerful stuff.

Be Your Best,
Todd D. Gifford