Three Truths about Your Sixth Sense – Intuition
By Pamelagrace Beatty
Ever wonder why you get a “funny feeling” about someone? Especially if that someone is a date! Or, you interview for a position, get the job, and your inner voice is telling you not to accept? In those situations, my friends, your intuition is trying to help you out. Intuition is the ability to access knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning or quantifiable data. However, different fields of study use the word “intuition” very differently.
The Many Truths about Intuition
The first truth is everybody is intuitive. The second truth is many people don’t make use of it. The third truth is it shows up differently in, and for, different people.
It’s on the Internet
If you search the Internet, you will find many different definitions and examples of what intuition is and what it can do. If you are a sci-fi buff, you probably have read some pretty far out descriptions of extrasensory perception, aka ESP and/or intuition. Some of the stories may have talked about telepaths, empaths, telekinesis, teleportation, precognition, retrocognition, and clairvoyance. There are lots of opinions and experiences and documentation about how people have demonstrated or experienced ESP. I’m going to stay with some basics in this blog.
She Heard Voices
Some of the stories about people hearing voices and what these voices “told” them to do have been frightening. The people who “heard” these voices and did some dastardly deeds were usually mentally disturbed and the voices were coming from a diseased mind. But not all the “voices” we hear are bad, because these voices are speaking to us all the time, and we are frequently acting on them without thinking about it.
Sometimes the “voices” we hear are not our intuition. For example, when I was a recruiter debriefing an interviewing team, someone would say, “Well, they are just not a fit for this position,” but they couldn’t tell me why. They were responding from some information they picked up unconsciously during the interview. With further questioning, I could usually get to the source of how they came to their conclusions. They were usually reacting to a series of body language and vocal presentations. This was not their intuition at work. They were simply unconscious of what they were receiving and making a judgment on. They had physical cues they used that went under their radar. Once I checked with interviewers, I would find that out.
Intuitive knowledge, however, is not quantifiable. There is not a body of data to base it on. It is something we know but don’t know how we know it. That is where the problem lies with using our intuition. Frequently, we simply don’t believe it when we hear that “still, small, quiet voice from within” telling us some information. It doesn’t make sense.
This happened to me some years ago when I was driving home from work and decided to stop to get some painting supplies. There were two art stores near my home. I heard my intuition say, “Go to the store on 6th street.” I said, “I don’t like that store; I’m going to the one on 17th.” My intuition again said, “Go to the store on 6th.” I ignored it and went to the other. As I turned right onto 17th, someone crashed into my car on the driver’s side and ruined my darling little sports car. Although it spent weeks in the shop, and my taking it in to be worked on again and again, it was never fully repaired. Of course, many people would say, “Oh, that was just a co-incidence,” and if it had only happened once, I would agree. But I have been hearing that “still, small voice” since I was 19 years old. I have way too many “coincidences” of that nature to believe it’s all just by happenstance.
Why Don’t We Listen?
At this point you might be saying, “OK miss smarty pants, if you have had so much experience with your intuition, how come you didn’t listen when it told you to go to the other store?” Well… because even I find it hard to believe that little voice inside me is talking to me and that it might be right. It is also sometimes difficult to recognize that voice from the chorus of voices in my head that are chattering all the time. No, I’m not crazy. I’m talking about the ones that might be saying, “Hurry up, you are going to be late.” Or, “You really shouldn’t have said that to him; it probably hurt his feelings.” Or, “Should I wear the brown shoes or the red shoes? The brown would go better with this outfit, but the red ones would be more fun.” And so on.
The reason I find it hard to believe is because it isn’t based on information I am aware of. Yet, I have actually experienced the truth of what my intuition said. A different memorable one is some years ago a client asked me to develop and deliver a customer service class to a new team who had been separate groups and were now going to be in one department. The client wanted them all to have the same information going forward. I designed the class and sent the outline to my client who was the director of this new team. He approved my work and we set a date for when I would fly down and teach it. But something (intuition) kept telling me, “Pamela, this isn’t going to work.” I argued, “But this is what the client said he wanted.” My intuition repeated, “Not gonna work.”
So, at the last minute, I designed an additional, totally different workshop on dealing with change. It was not what the client asked for and I didn’t have time to tell him what I had done. I did, however, develop participant materials for both workshops and took the materials with me.
When I showed up at the workplace, people looked a little odd. They didn’t greet me warmly, but led me straight to the auditorium where the workshop was being held (it was a big group). When I asked where my client was, I got no answer. When it was time to start class, the participants looked extremely unhappy. I had expected reluctance, but this was far beyond that. It was then that I found out the director, the one who hired me to do the workshop, had been fired. The people in the room had no idea what was going to happen to them now. And it was obvious that teaching them about the mission, roles and tasks of customer service would be a waste of their time and interest. So, I said, “Let’s talk about dealing with change.” And we did.
I had no idea there was upheaval going on in the company. My intuition did, and listening to it made a big difference for me and the participants in the room that day. After that experience, I consistently checked in with my intuition when I designed workshops to see if I had missed anything or should change something. I even let my clients, or anyone I was working with, know my process so they wouldn’t be surprised if I wanted to change something at the last minute. The results have been consistent. So now when my intuition says, “Change it,” I change it.
What’s Your Intuition Saying?
Intuition is in everyone. We can use it by first believing we actually have it and then learning to recognize it and how it shows up in us (more about that in another blog). Once we know that, then when we feel or hear it, we follow it. That’s the toughest part. But with practice, we will know it, and we will see the good results of paying attention and following our intuition. Intuition is not science fiction; it is simply a sense we have that we can put to good use.
