Intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning. Different people give the word “intuition” a variety of different meanings, ranging from direct access to unconscious knowledge, unconscious cognition, inner sensing, inner insight to unconscious pattern-recognition and the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.

Most of us believe that we are rationalists, we insist on logical conclusions for almost everything in life. But, not everything in life is logical and rationale.  A naturalist is somebody who assumes that everything which occurs in the world has an explanation in terms of natural causes. Rationalists put this point another way: everything which happens has a rational explanation. For lack of a better word, there are laws of being and there are laws of nature, and it is impossible for anything to act in ways that are fundamentally exact and are logically explained. At times some instances in our life are illogical, absurd, or aberrant.

Intuition is a gift that each of us possesses, trust me, it’s a biggest gift of all abilities and all talents. It’s famous that Henry Ford used to follow his intuitions and gut feelings. When the automobile sector started experiencing falling demand for his cars and high worker turnover, in 1914, he did something that probably made other barons of industry go pale: he doubled his employees’ wages. Many felt he’s gone crazy. Well, within a year, turnover dropped by a factor of more than 20 while productivity nearly doubled, and demand for Ford cars boomed because Ford’s own workers could now afford the product they were making!

Another example is:  In 1954, Ray Kroc, a seller of Prince Castle brand Multi-mixer milkshake machines, learned that the McDonald brothers were using eight of his machines in their San Bernardino restaurant. He became very curious and he went to take a look at the restaurant. Ray Kroc suggested McDonald brothers to franchise their business throughout the country. He didn’t stop after suggesting; Kroc offered to take the major responsibility for setting up the new franchises elsewhere. Kroc’s lawyer cautioned him, but he ignored his lawyer’s advice, just because of his gut feeling at that moment. He borrowed $2.7 million to buy out the modest fast-food franchise he helped build. Rest is history.

When we don’t work on our intuition it goes waste. Intuition is for real and whether you believe it or not, it does not change the fact that it exists. Explore the amazing depth and power of your intuition. In 1965, Paul McCartney hears a tune in a dream “the most magic thing!” He thinks a lot about where he has heard this song………but it’s so unlike anything he’s written, he worries that he’s recalling someone else’s song. McCartney plays it for anyone who will listen, but no one can identify it. So the Beatles record the track and title it “Yesterday.” It became super duper hit! Often, intuitions appear in our dreams.

Another interesting example of human intuition comes from Jose Silva, founder of the Silva method, which is aimed at attuning individuals to their unconscious mind to solve their daily problems. In a dream, Jose saw two sets of numbers, 3-4-3 and 3-7-3. Then, he saw the image of Christ and the book “One Solitary Life” which is an essay detailing the effects of Jesus Christ on humanity. He asked himself what exactly did these numbers mean that appeared to him in the dream? He started looking for license plates, telephone numbers on the telephone book, home addresses, etc. but there wasn’t any relationship of these with the sets of numbers he dreamed of. He became restless, and kept questioning himself the relevance of the numbers he saw in dream. That night, his wife asked him to go to the store to get a bottle of wine. On the way to the store he met a friend and told him about the whole experience. His friend suggested that maybe that number belonged to a winning lottery ticket. Jose Silva then went to the lottery agency and bought tickets with the numbers 3-4-3. The 3-7-3 weren’t available as somebody else had already purchased them. The end of the story is Jose won over $10,000!

The Indian Ayurvedic medicine practitioners agree that both intuition and intellect are necessary to give a person a correct diagnosis and treatment of their specific disease. Pulse diagnosis which is done by the physician placing three fingers on the patient’s pulse allows him to know the types of energetic imbalances he has and to some extent how to correct them. The mind and heart of the doctor have to be in tune while this takes place. Do you know that pulse diagnosis has been used for over 5,000 years and it continues to be used even today?

Getty museum is an art museum in California housed on two campuses: the Getty Centre and Getty Villa. The museum is famous in world and has been visited by millions of people so far. In 1983 the Getty Museum received a statue that was thought to be original. However, when experts in the field came to check it, they all declared that the statue was phony or fake. They didn’t specify any particular reason but only recognized that a gut feeling told them there was something wrong with it.

Use your intuitive power for the best results in your life. When it comes to making decisions about what to do with the rest of your life, with your career, with your relationships, the societal and household pressures that seep into our unconscious are irrelevant. It is our intuition alone that can play the pivotal role. Turn to your intuition in these times, turn inward and ask yourself what feels right and what feels wrong. You will never be let down.

It’s a shocking fact but according to multiple sources, on an average an adult makes about 35,000 decisions in a day. Young children make about 3,000 decisions each day. The decisions diverge from which dress to wear, what to eat for lunch, what to cook, whether to go in for a haircut, whether to go for voting, whether to continue sleeping, whether to say hello to someone on the road who is friendly or not so friendly etc, etc…. these are common decisions besides the serious issues on which we take decisions almost every moment in a day. However, there is no accuracy in each decision making of ours. For many of us decision making seems more of a challenge than it should be, for many of our decisions we rely on somebody for their opinions.

When we look back, I am sure, we feel there are so many decisions we made are not the correct decisions. Let’s take a simple example, your recent visit to restaurant for dinner will make you think whether your menu choice was right or not, was it the best decision? Could you have something new on the menu? Think of all those business decisions we need to make. They are more complex and more puzzling. It’s not that we don’t want to decide, or that we are intentionally being difficult about an issue. Sometimes, decision-making is just really, really challenging, even when it seems like it’s about something totally superfluous. We find loads of people who shy away from making decisions; it is an issue for many people. Let me tell you, it is a glaring fact that more and more people want shy away from making decisions than ever before.

Recently, a lot of research has focused on a certain mental limitation, which has to do with our ability to use a mental trait known as executive function. When we focus on a specific task for an extended period of time, mind gets confused about how to implement the task; it’s like if I wanted to eat a burger and I instead ate salad, I am flexing my executive function muscles. Both thought processes require conscious effort; one needs to resist the temptation to let his/her mind wander. However, that use of executive function, which is a talent we all rely on throughout the day draws upon a single resource of limited capacity in the brain. When this resource is exhausted by one activity, our mental capacity may be strictly hindered in another, seemingly unrelated activity. And this process of thinking and making decisions goes on and on.

The skill of good decision-making has become increasingly important. We have an abundance of choices, both with the simple things in life such as ordering from a menu, where to go for a haircut, which style of suit to stitch, which perfume brand to buy to the serious things in life such as choosing your career, health treatment, or whom to marry. When making a tough personal or professional decision, I think the best advice is ‘Be TRUE to yourself.

Before you know when to trust your gut, you have to know yourself well enough to understand where on the decision-making scale you fall. On one end of the spectrum, you have the highly intuitive people, and on the other are the intensely analytical people. It seems, Sam Walton used to take a lot of decisions based on his gut feelings: on one such occasion, Walton’s decision to hold Saturday morning all-employee meetings which led to a culture of rapid information and decision making, which in turn created one of the biggest companies in the world. Similarly, Jack Welch’s decision at General Electric (GE) to fully fund a first-in-class training center at Crotonville, led to the development of hundreds of great leaders who practiced the “GE Way”. Henry Ford was a quick decision maker – he is famously known for his decision making power. Henry Ford’s decision to double the wages of his workers enabled him to attract the talent he needed, and helped insure a class of worker who could afford the very products they were building.

Under the dynamic leadership of Indira Gandhi, India’s voice was heard with respect in various international organizations and forums. She took certain decisions keeping in view the prevalent circumstances that resulted in raising the stature of India at the international level. She had no articulated world vision but had observed her father identifying India’s national interest with independent decision-making in international affairs, economic development at home and the exclusion of India and its neighborhood in Southern Asia from either of superpower’s sphere of influence. Her decisions were pragmatic, her dealings with foreign leaders tough.  The truth is under her leadership, India started progressing in many areas. Indira Gandhi was a quick decision maker.

Our emotions help us decide what’s important to us, they prompt us  to take some action, they guide us toward an aspect of what needs to be exposed and what needs to be healed of self, they also guide us when we are out of balance so that we can bring back ourselves to center. Friends, each decision of ours need not be ‘correct’. In life’s journey, we go through the thick and thin, with each good or bad experience. Some choices may lead to more painful lessons than others, but that doesn’t mean we should not make decisions. I have seen people who flip a coin to make decisions as in ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ chits with ‘yes’, ‘no’ scribbled on them, seeing a soothsayer for his advice and some more weird things. Life involves some risks. Flip the coin and see where it leads you.

I believe, it’s better to trust our intuition because sometimes our intuition guides us toward those things we fear the most so that we can push past them and become stronger as a result. The next time you feel fear, embrace it, inspect it, and if guided to do so, move boldly toward it. Try it!