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Ironically, like the nutrient-rich ashes from which the phoenix rose, the primary cause of intuition’s fall — technology and the resulting flood of data pouring into our left brains — is fueling its revival. We are overwhelmed with data. We are confused. We are tired. We are ungrounded. We are not making better decisions than we used to. We are not behaving better. We need to find an anchor in the storm — an anchor that will help us manage the data better and with less stress, an anchor that will make the data more relevant and thus help us make better decisions and behave better, an anchor that will bring us closer to reality, that will ground us and rejuvenate us. That anchor is intuition.
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During the past two hundred years, most people have shifted from balanced brain beings to primarily left-brain beings. As the velocity and complexity of life accelerated, we increasingly focused outward. This change was not due to a conscious choice; we were simply been overwhelmed by the external world. With very little time to ground ourselves amid the onslaught of external data, we lost confidence in intuition. We came to rely disproportionately on rational thinking.
Technology. Ever so insidiously, technological advances opened up data channels, or means of exchanging information. They began to overfeed our left brains. Today, we simply don’t have time to fully use our right brain and, specifically, its powerful ability to intuit. Intuition has largely been crowded out of our existence as a tool. It still exists, of course. We have each experienced the first impression that proved to be absolutely correct. Yet we just don’t have the time or energy to use or develop our intuition. And because we don’t use it much, we don’t trust it much.
Childhood Conditioning. As technology began to change the shape of industry in the nineteenth century, industry began to change the shape of families and education. As men and women began working away from their homes and farms, the education of children changed from home schooling to collective education. Schools began to proliferate and their attendance increased. To effectively manage them, teachers, administrators, and parents understandably, increasingly relied upon objective tools. The result was that the left brain, home to the thinking process necessary to formulate a “right” answer, or distinguish between a right and wrong answer, increased in importance vis-à-vis the right brain.
Social Conditioning. Another phenomenon of recent history is the development of a culture that discourages personal responsibility. Our governments, court systems, and religions encourage many of us to believe we are without power. Many of us believe our lives are determined by other people and forces beyond our control. With the pervasiveness of this belief, it is easy to see why we ignore and distrust this powerful driver of intuition that burns inside of us. We feel these outside forces have control over us and they want “correct”—objectively defined and verifiable—behavior from us. We’d better provide that behavior or we will suffer.
Fact Addiction. Somewhere along the way, in our pursuit of the “right” answer, many of us became addicted to facts. Indeed, we associate “facts” with virtue and rightness. Many think that those armed with facts are more credible, indeed better, than the unarmed. But what is a fact? It’s a mere snapshot of reality. As a snapshot, it is limited in time, range, and context. First, it is only valid as of the time of the snapshot. What existed at the moment of the snapshot is now different and will be different again at every moment going forward. Second, the snapshot only captures a limited range of reality at the time of the snapshot, and its value is maximized only where we can understand it in the context of everything outside of its range. While I may try hard to document the reality outside of the snapshot, it is impossible for me to really know everything that existed outside the range.
The Mega-Size Organization. With the booming human population and our creation of the Industrial Revolution and Information Age, the number of large organizations has increased dramatically and organizations have increased dramatically in size. Today leaders of large organizations are often far removed from both the members of their organization and the people—such as customers, suppliers, and shareholders—who influence the organization from the outside. They create policy and then employ multitudes of people to execute it. They control the behavior of their employees the only way they know how—through objective means. Performance and productivity are measured, weighed, and analyzed. Just as there is little room for pe |
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At some point in the millions of years of human evolution, the right side of the human brain (the inward focused, non-logical side of our brain, fueled from deep within, versus the left side, which houses our rational, logical capabilities and is externally fueled and focused) developed a capacity for intuition. Until the last two centuries, we relied upon intuition as heavily as we relied upon our other five senses. We were “balanced-brain beings.”
Think about a world where the only data you could access is that which you perceived through your tongue, ears, skin, nose, and eyes. Physically, you were limited by how far your feet would carry you. In your effort to survive, you undoubtedly relied greatly on rational thought and your left brain. You saw rain clouds gathering on the horizon, sensed cooler temperatures and higher humidity on your skin, and deduced that rain was likely and you better bring in the meat that was drying on racks outside your cave. But the amount of data that could be perceived through your five senses and fed into your rational thought processes was so limited that you also relied greatly upon the non-logical senses in your right brain—that is, you relied on your intuition. You may have felt the presence of valuable water beyond a distant mountain. Long before you saw or heard anything, you likely felt the threat of an approaching pack of predatory animals. Simply by seeing the silhouette of a stranger approaching in the distance, you may have sensed he was from a friendly tribe and thus meant no harm. In fact, in shamanic cultures, going back tens of thousands of years, the greater your intuition, the more likely you were to be the tribal leader and healer.
Next: The Fall Of Intution. |
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| In a study several years ago that was partially underwritten by the National Science Foundation, psychologist Lia DiBello worked with three seriously troubled companies in a highly unconventional way aimed at reversing their fortunes. Most consultants would have spent weeks studying things like the companies’ markets, operations, marketing strategy, and sales platform, among other things, and then delivered a 300-page report on changes the company should make. Company leaders would have read the report, noted the insights and perhaps made some changes in the company, and then largely reverted to their old way of doing things. DiBello, however, developed a program designed to improve the individual and collective intuition of the leaders running the companies. In essence, she designed a two-day simulation of each company’s business, where each simulated day unfolded in 20-minute increments. She attempted, as best she could, to mirror the companies’ actual workplace demands. Lo and behold, while the first days of simulations produced pretty dismal results, the second days witnessed great improvements. In that short of a duration, leaders had developed an intuition – a "thinking-on-their-feet" sixth sense - about their jobs that proved highly accurate. They made better decisions, and better results were achieved. More importantly, all three companies made dramatic improvements in the following year after the simulations, and were very healthy in all respects after teetering near bankruptcy just a year earlier. |
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| I am tired of research. I am tired of focus groups. I am tired of market studies. I am tired of facts. A lot of times, I am tired of other people's opinions. I mean they literally tire me out. I think we cling to these out of fear. It feels like the safer route. The reality is that it diminishes our energy, as do all fear-based thoughts, emotions, and actions. It is an abdication of our responsibility in life to connect with energies deep within us and this existence we share. A few years back, I befriended something we were all gifted with: a powerful source of inspiration - a knowingness, an intuition - that is embedded in this ubiquitous energy that binds everything that is. Everyday, I find this intuition is my best guide, and I feel tremendously empowered by this finding. |
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