“That was great. You have such great perspectives and ideas to share. I’m a fan. :)”
I received that message yesterday after joining a business mastermind as their guest speaker. I shared several physics and neuroscience principles behind Quantum Surfing – principles that allow you to make choices with ease and experience delightful serendipity as a result.
It can be really difficult to know where to focus, what to choose or where to place energy for optimal results. As entrepreneurs we’re often spread thin, executing on multiple fronts simultaneously and frequently exhausting ourselves.
In Quantum Surfing I share 4 behaviors to become predictably lucky – curiosity and openness, resilience, intuition and positive expectations. And then if you want to accelerate your results, add in a dash of playfulness.
One behavior you can adopt to be lucky right now is listening to your intuition. And that’s the behavior the mastermind participants wanted to explore more deeply.
Research shows that the most successful people don’t make their decisions by using solely rational criteria or by following conventional thinking. They may tell you all the logical reasons they opted for a particular direction. Yet those reasons are frequently stories to rationalize, coherently communicate and give credence to the choice. They chose by listening to their intuition.
Understanding Your Intuition
But what is intuition? Intuition is not a sense that we use, or are trained to use. In fact, we may even doubt that it’s truly a thing. But less technically advanced cultures relied on their intuition. Polynesian navigators didn’t have the sextant – an astronomical instrument used to determine latitude and longitude at sea by measuring angular distances, especially the altitudes of sun, moon, and stars. Without that device, how did they navigate? By heightening their senses. In his book The Wayfinders, author Wade Davis describes how Polynesian navigators were trained to feel the dynamics of the waves. In fact, their senses were so precise that they could detect five swells at a time – deep, slowly rolling swells that crossed the ocean across long distances, and shallower, more chaotic swells reverberating off nearby islands. They learned the energetic fingerprint of each island, and so could identify where they were at any time. Because we live in a technologically rich society, we’ve lost the need, and thus the ability, to tune into our intuition.
Today, most people will tell you that intuition is a gut feeling. But that’s not quite right. A gut feeling often arises as a survival response, or is the result of pattern matching from years of experience.
Intuition is different. It’s available to everyone. And rather than a gut feeling, it’s a feeling of alignment. It can be subtle. As you hone your intuition, it becomes a sense of clarity, of “rightness” for you.
How to Activate Your Intuition
To activate your intuition, make a simple shift.
Ask feeling questions rather than thinking questions. When you’re stumped, ask yourself, “What do I feel to do?” And then wait for a response to emerge. This is very different than what we typically do, which is to ask, “What do I think I should do?” (And when we don’t get a ready answer, we start asking everyone else, “What do you think I should do?!?”)
Instead, center yourself. Get quiet. And tune in to how you feel. Ask questions like, “What do I feel to do next? Who do I feel to talk to? Do I feel to send that message right now?” And so forth.
Start small. Don’t go for the big hairy decisions up front. Begin by tapping your intuition even for inconsequential decisions, so you get used to how it feels.
As you practice this shift you’ll discover that opportunities and solutions arise easily – and you spend a lot less time spinning, stressing and chasing.
Your intuition focuses your consciousness on the path that’s most aligned for you.
Your intuition is a lucky superpower. Learn to tune in to your internal knowing. To your own wisdom. Listen. And take the right action for you.