What is your better intuition hinting at for 2021?
By: Patricia Bouweraerts
Tags: Predictions, Intuitive Intelligence, Decision Making, Intuitiion, Coronavirus

What is your better intuition hinting at for 2021?

Dr. Dale Mericle worked for a large medical practice in Iowa, and the partners were having a dinner meeting one evening — an evening that would change his mind about intuition.

Before going to the meeting, he planned to get a take-out meal for his wife and daughter. He was driving, passing the large uphill yard in front of a church.

“I think that it is the First Presbyterian Church,” he said. “It’s on the hill on Bluff (Boulevard) at about Sixth Street. As I was driving to get the pizza I could see the man on a large lawn tractor mowing the grass and a little girl sitting by a tree playing with dolls or something. On the way back, as I passed, I saw the man off of the tractor and talking loudly, screaming, I can’t be sure but I knew he was in distress. “In my mind I immediately knew that he had hit the little girl with the tractor. I just knew that. I did a U-turn immediately and went up the drive to the church. By that time, he had already gone inside with her. For some reason, I was wearing whites. So when I entered, and was backlit by the door, I probably looked like an angel. I saw the little girl who is bleeding heavily from her thigh. I told him to grab some towels. And put pressure on them. I believe they had already called an ambulance. Then I got in touch with Frank Rogers, one of the best surgeons I’ve ever seen, and we took care of her at Mercy Hospital.”

Intuition may be an educated scientific guess, or it could be based on information that your subconscious mind picks up not processed by your conscious mind. It could be a psychic phenomenon, or intuition may be a function of the brain not yet discovered. Researchers from Princeton University in New Jersey, to the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California have differing theories about intuition, but many have described ways it can be a useful tool for making better, or the best decisions.

“What made me specifically look at that hillside on each of my trips? … I was just going to get pizza,” Dr. Mericle added.

What is intuition?

“Intuition: The Inside Story” is a book of essays written by authors who studied together during a 1994 summer research project at Princeton University. They were at the time Fellows of the Academy of Consciousness Studies at Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory.

Sometimes intuition is called a gut feeling, right-brain thinking, or a hunch, writes contributing essayist Marcie Boucouvalas, professor of adult learning at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. It may be experienced as a thought, feeling, spiritual event, or “a visceral sense.”

She writes that throughout history intuition has been called the “Eureka” moment of scientists and mathematicians, or “Muses,” the creative inspiration of composers and artists. Then, during the 1800’s, the Western world embraced scientific methods — and thinking about the mystery of intuitive knowing went out of fashion.

“While many hold the position that the source (of intuition) is a direct apprehension that lies outside sensory channels and analytic thought, others claim that such knowledge may indeed come through the senses first, but through subliminal or non-conscious awareness that is stored in the unconscious before coming into consciousness,” Boucouvalas wrote.

Members of the Academy think that including intuition, along with logic, brings about wholeness in humans to best function in the world. The Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) is a nonprofit research organization founded in 1973 by astronaut Edgar Mitchell. It studies what consciousness is in relation to the brain, and explores theories of unseen connections between living organisms.

Intuition can support teamwork in work relationships

Photo courtesy Kathleen Berry, headshot by Ken M. Johns. Berry is author of the book “A Reluctant Spirit,” and writes a weekly blog.

Author Kathy Berry was skeptical about intuition before she experienced it directly. She is marketing manager for noncredit programs at Workforce Development and Continuing Education, Truckee Meadows Community College, in Reno, Nevada.

Berry was chosen as an impartial observer in a 2007 investigation by a team of TV news journalists and paranormal experts when they investigated Nevada’s long-closed Goldfield Hotel. Her experience there transformed her outlook, and led her to write the memoir “A Reluctant Spirit: A True Tale of God, Ghosts and a Skeptical Christian,” published in 2013.

“I thought it was silly and that if you can’t see and can’t scientifically prove something it cannot exist,” she said. “Experiencing the spirit realm blew apart my views on reality, spirituality, and energy. There is much more to reality than what we see. All life and spirits are energetically connected. What we project energetically, we attract — not in ‘The Secret’ kind of way, as I also believe you have to work to achieve goals.”

She explains that intuition helps her start her work day and creates better working relationships.

“Personally, I believe it’s more important for setting an intention for your day,” Berry said. “I will recognize everyone I meet as having value or I will clear my mind and focus more clearly on work tasks. …Workplace relationships are stronger when you set a daily intention to honor those you work with. I make it a point to ask the Higher Power to fill me with divine love and to help me spread that to everyone I interact with. This has helped me to limit the number of unproductive confrontations.”

In addition, she thinks that noticing what stands out to a person during a job interview may give reliable knowledge about what it would feel like to work at the prospective company.

“Pay attention to your comfort level while there and when you meet people,” Berry added. “Do they make you feel comfortable and at ease? Or do they make you feel insignificant? Once home, meditate on whether you’d be a good fit and pay attention to your feelings.”

Problem-solving is best when using intuition as a tool

Berry agrees with the researchers at Princeton and the IONS about combining intuition and rationality.

“Intuition is a great companion to logical thinking,” Berry said. “I try to keep the balance of both on every project I work on.”

Sometimes an unexpected impasse can seem to block progress on a project.

“Intuition helps me to let go.” she added. “To stop pushing when I run into a wall. To have faith that there is another way that will manifest itself. When I relax and stop beating myself up over a problem, I find that a solution presents itself.”

The book, “The Hidden Intelligence: Innovation Through Intuition” was written by Sandra Weintraub, a management consultant for Fortune 500 firms and adjunct professor of management at Brandeis University.

Weintraub writes that intuition is something unique from logic or emotion, and that it can contribute to “wise judgment” when there is just not enough information available for reason alone.

She lists ways an intuitive insight can be recognized in the mind, body, emotions, or found in experiences out of your control:

• A hunch

• Sudden memory, or lyrics to a song

• Internal seeing or hearing

• A new connection between dissimilar ideas

• Awareness that events are flowing in a direction

• Getting a glimpse of the bigger picture

• Muscle contraction or upset stomach

• Increasing or decreasing energy for needed actions

• A sudden change in feelings about a situation

• An unusual coincidence

• A job loss that leads to a better work situation

• All other options disappear but one

Weintraub wrote that data and predictability is valued in our society, while intuition is sometimes viewed as having little or unproven value. Conversely, at the top levels of U.S. companies, such as at 3M and American Greetings Corporation; chief officers recognize the importance of intuition in decision-making and overall success.

“Eighty percent of the CEOs whose profits doubled over a five-year period were found to have above-average intuitive powers, according to research by John Mihalsky and E. Douglas Dean at the New Jersey Institute of Technology,” Weintraub wrote.

She thinks one of the reasons that this is so is because intuitive people develop an ability to perceive an entire situation during a sudden burst, or leap, of logical thought.

A possible explanation involves the unconscious mind

Patrick Schwerdtfeger, author and keynote speaker, presented this similar explanation of a leap of logic in his 2012 TEDx Talk, “Learned Intuition.”

He explained that there is a large difference between the amount of data the conscious and unconscious mind can process. Consensus among researchers is that the unconscious mind can process 10 million or more data points in a given scene. The conscious mind can only handle between 40–150, based on the various research studies, he added.

Schwerdtfeger then calculates out the numbers during his talk.

“But let’s use 10 million and 100 to keep the numbers easy,” he said. “That means that 99.999 percent of the observations you make you’re not even consciously aware of. The information came in. It came in through your eyes and your ears and it made it into your conscious mind, but you were never consciously aware that you made those observations.”

Exercises to develop intuition

Laura Day is a professional training coach and intuitive who provides training sessions to companies such as Seagate Technology, and intuitive forecasts to firms including the William Morris talent agency, private individuals and celebrities. She is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books.

Day does not agree that intuition comes from the unconscious mind and writes that it is more of a sense or hidden ability.

“Although the intuitive self often borrows the language of the unconscious to describe itself, the unconscious and the place from which we receive intuitive data are actually different,” she wrote in her book “Practical Intuition.”

Day believes that anyone can become more intuitive — that it can be developed much like your muscles can be strengthened. Two of her books that provide step-by-step exercises to develop intuition are “Practical Intuition” and “How to Rule the World from Your Couch.” Intuition is not the absence of logic, rather it is when an individual actively observes and records their impressions, interprets them, and then integrates the intuitive knowledge with other mental processes, she added.

Weintraub also lists intuition-developing exercises in her book, such as using metaphors, journal keeping, and dream interpretation.

“Tapping into your intuition can have a profound effect on your well-being, including your health, relationships, and work life,” Weintraub wrote.

The pandemic has been stressful, and intuitive thinking may help

COVID-19 has struck humanity with illness, economic turmoil, and loss. Many are seeking insights about how 2021 will unfold. Even more are coping with the stress of wondering what is next in their work and personal lives. Intuition could play a role in how we navigate the course of the current pandemic.

In the past, intuition has been highly valued by Dr. Jonas Salk, who created the polio vaccine. He said that reason alone, without intuition, can lead in the wrong direction. Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce used intuitive thinking when inventing planar transistor technology, the precursor to integrated circuits and microprocessors. And irrefutable is the way that freely-flowing thought and creativity involved in musical composition and improvisation have created cultural beauty.

Perhaps trying some intuitive exercises is worth a shot, combining the results with emotion and logic.

Finally, intuition may help us achieve a better balance, as well. Kathy Berry said there is an association between trusting intuition and relieving unmanageable stress.