Despite the apparent lack of any scientific evidence of its accuracy, most successful entrepreneurs place a high value on intuition for making decisions. Particularly where there is a large amount of information and where the data is conflicting.
There are few great scientific advances made without intuition. Einstein created his theories of relativity after a visualising sitting on the front of a beam of light and imagining what happens as he travelled along it.
The discoverer of the chemical makeup of Benzene only managed to unravel the problem of "too few hydrogen atoms" after dreaming of a snake wound in a circle eating its own tail. This image led him to the realisation that the only way the benzene molecule could be made stable is if the carbon atoms were arranged in a circle just like the snake.
This kind of new age visualisation is often slated in the rational world of business, yet without it the world would be a place of slow, cold logic.
Research conducted by Professor Gerard Hodgkinson of the Centre for Organizational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School suggested that intuition is a real phenomenon that is caused by the way our brains store, retrieve and process information (source Science Daily Mar. 6, 2008).
This and other research suggest that our brains make almost instantaneous decisions based on a combination of generalisations made from previous experiences, matching this with current external stimuli to make a decision. When this happens it seems to bypass our conscious (rational, logical) mind so that we are left with a general or vague feeling that something is "right" or "wrong".
Professor Hodgkinson reported an incident where a racing driver had inexplicably stopping mid race when the visible road ahead was clear. The driver simply felt he had to stop.
During forensic analysis by psychologists the diver was shown a video and mentally relived the event. As he watched the video he realised that the crowd were looking the wrong way. Instead of looking at him and cheering as he approached a bend they were looking silently at something around the bend. This was the cue that triggered him to brakes. He did not process this consciously but simply stopped seemingly without thinking.
Two Minds - Two ways of thinking
Psychoanalysis, NLP and hypnosis has, for many years, held that the mind has two aspects that work in completely different ways, the unconscious (sometimes called the subconscious) mind and the conscious mind.
The conscious mind uses logic and rational thought. Research suggests that we can only consciously pay attention to 5 - 9 ideas or pieces of information at a time. For example, once you have learnt to drive, the process of driving is done unconsciously. That's why you can arrive safely at your destination and have no memory of the journey.
The unconscious mind processes over 2 million pieces of information at a time, it filters out superfluous information and only brings to your conscious awareness a tiny fraction of all the information. If you were aware of everything you would be utterly overwhelmed
Due to its much greater processing power the unconscious mind is much better suited to making decisions with large amounts of data. When we access this it's known as intuition.
Intuitive hunches are your unconscious mind processing based on previous patterns which it can do much more quickly than the conscious mind can. It should be noted though, that like any computer the accuracy of intuitive hunches is based on past experiences, and some experiences can lead to erroneous processing and jumping to the wrong conclusions. This happens when your mind wrongly assumes that one bad experience means the same bad thing will happen every time.
There is nothing spooky or magic about it. It is simply the way the mind was designed to work. With training it is possible to ensure your mind's programming is working perfectly and increase intuition to the level where others will think you are psychic.
Communication with your unconscious mind can skyrocket your intuition and help you make better decisions more quickly. And now I would like to offer you free instant access to an online test to find out how intuitive you are. How Intuitive are you?
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