Posts Tagged ‘intuition’

“I don’t know”… Time to listen to your inner expert?

Friday, September 18th, 2009

The other night I was lying there, half awake, half asleep, having one of those drifting conversations with myself, and the answer to every question seemed to be “I don’t know..”  I wasn’t totally surprised but it didn’t leave me feeling very good about myself.  After all I’m meant to be something of an expert, people pay me to know things! 

The other day I was working with a client and we had a difficult session scheduled, we had to design a key meeting with very little time to do so.  Then our meeting was cancelled and and it all had to be done over the phone.  There was very little time for rework, and rabbits definitely needed to be pulled out of hats.  However, I still had the legacy of my late night conversation lingering in my head. 

We began our call, and he was talking away, and suddenly he said something.  It was almost as if it was spoken in a bold, oversized font.  Suddenly, it all fell into place and I knew exactly what needed doing.  This experience didn’t particularly surprise me but none-the-less it was still a powerful one.  I’m always impressed when I meet people who are able to trot out facts, figures and specifics; my brain doesn’t work that way.  However, it does seem to conjure ideas out of the ether when they are needed.  The rest of the time it seems rather vacant…

These days we are all used to experts & pundits being produced by TV and radio, telling us what has happened and what to do.  I think perhaps we need to be reminded that we can all tap into a rather high wisdom if only we take the time to listen.  I’m sure you have had this kind of experience too and would love to hear about them.  What do you think, is it time to listen to your inner expert?

“Experts often possess more data than judgment.”   Colin Powell

“Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.”   Bertrand Russell

 

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Rhythm and Doing what comes naturally

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

As regular readers will know, I’ve been taking some time out over the last few weeks  doing a few pet projects and just shifting my focus, pace and rhythm.  The summer is often a quiet time in my line of work (and thought that hasn’t really been the case this year) I usually use this time for planning, writing, networking etc. 

Yesterday was my first full day ‘back to work’ and so obviously today was meant to be day two.  I had an early morning breakfast meeting today and was anticipating getting on with my long list of things to be done.  However, as I was driving home, I realised that I really didn’t feel like doing that.  Now, I’m a pretty disciplined kind of worker and would formally have just told myself “Tough! Get up them stairs and settle down to it mister…”   Today I felt that wasn’t the best response.  Interestingly, after a family weekend away, both my son and wife were both feeling very slowed down too, so I opted to join them in a lazy, gentle day.  There were only a couple of things I had to do that wouldn’t wait till tomorrow.

These days I increasingly feel that wisdom lies in listening and responding to these kind of random urges.  It takes a little courage to do something so counter-cultural, but I place a great deal of value in intuition and feel the only way to really develop it is to respond to it.  If your inner voice is whispering to you, perhaps you might listen to it and try to trust it…

I’d love to hear from you about your experiences and experiments in this…

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Leaking

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Regular reader will know that I have been fiddling about with my ponds recently, and one project was to increase the flow of our waterfall, by installing a second pump.  This arrived yesterday, and I duly installed it.  Imagine my surprise when I woke this morning to find we had lost hundreds of gallons of water over night.  Apparently not all the water was falling back into the pond and the accumulation of all these ‘spilt’ drops was a a 6” drop in level! 

I think there is a parallel both in our personal and business lives.  When our enthusiasm drops or morale falls, initially you can’t see any difference, but over time, it becomes very apparent.  It is strange how a series of seemingly tiny events can have such a profound impact.  I was lucky, as I had quite long time between my before and after pictures.  If you don’t have such a clear ‘picture’ that things have changed for the worse, but none-the-less feel that things are not as they should be, assume that you are right and look for your ‘leak’.  We are much better at spotting this kind of tiny change using our intuition rather than our brains.

I’d be interested in any examples you have of this kind micro-change and how you spotted it and what you did.

“Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than energy devoted to patching leaks.”   Warren Buffett

 

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Is that little voice prejudice or intuition?

Sunday, June 8th, 2008

This morning I was online in a group that I belong to and came across the name / profile of someone I had once met.  I followed a couple of links and found out they were involved in some areas I had been unaware of.  Now these are areas that interest me and my normal reaction would have been positive, and made me more warmly disposed toward this person.  I was aware though, that in this case, it just made me feel uncomfortable.

I found myself wondering if this was the voice of intuition, warning me off, or just prejudice getting in the way of me offering them a second chance.  After all, none of us always makes a good first impression;  shy people can come over as brash if they over-compensate, apparently self-centred people can have hearts of gold. 

I believe both in intuition and its power to help and guide, and also in the value of an open mind and heart.  How do you know which voice is speaking to you?

“The very ink with which all history is written is merely fluid prejudice”    Mark Twain

“Everyone is a prisoner of his own experience. No one can eliminate prejudices–just recognize them.”  Edward R Murrow

“Intuition isn’t the enemy, but the ally, of reason.”  John Kord Lagemann

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