Paying Attention to Our Intuition

So far this vacation really sucks.

Much as I like Canadian Tire it’s never been on my list as a vacation destination. And yet here we are sitting in yet another waiting area in a third location during the first two days of our precious week of vacation.

Three hours away from home our van sputtered, stuttered and eventually lost all power. One tow, five hours and four hundred and fifty dollars later we were back on the road breathing a sigh of relief. Not for long however, as forty five minutes later we were once again stranded at the side of a busy highway speaking to our friendly CAA dispatcher arranging another tow. Being a long weekend the second Canadian Tire didn’t have a mechanic on duty thus the tow to a third Canadian Tire in yet another town. By then they were closed and we were left scrambling to find a hotel room. Chris, our charming tow truck driver, in an exceptional example of customer service, refused to leave us in the Canadian Tire parking lot and made sure we found and were safely checked into a hotel before he left. Now as we sit here waiting for the latest diagnosis I’m also kicking myself somewhat because the day before we left a little voice in my head had been telling me that we should have taken my car. Knowing that wasn’t an especially logical conclusion given that my husband’s van was newer and more reliable, I quashed that niggling little voice.

So once again within every painful experience there seems to be a learning. In this case it was a reminder to pay attention to intuition.

Intuition is something we’ve been talking a lot about in terms of leadership these days and yet I’m not sure we really know what it is. We often say we should “trust our gut” or ‘trust our hunches” and yet that too often competes with our bias in favour of logic and common sense.

It’s not unlike how I dismissed my hunch about the van thinking to myself, “That isn’t logical, that doesn’t make sense, I’m being silly.”  But perhaps we simply need to be more open to our intuitive impressions. After all, our intuition is just another way of gathering and sensing what we need to answer questions and make sound decisions in all aspects of our lives. In fact, Albert Einstein has been quoted as saying we’re typically only using two to ten percent of our ability to gather impressions. It’s also likely that we all have the ability to tap this intuition or six sense. First however, we need to embrace the idea that intuition is a non linear way of gathering information. In other words, it’s not logical. When we use reason, we take time to gather and analyze. With intuition we know and know instantly even when we get the information in bits and pieces. Additionally it is not just the same kind of information we gather with our five senses. Instead intuition is more than raw data because it‘s often been interpreted for us. Our job is simply to pay attention.

As for our van, cross your fingers because my gut instinct is telling me were not going to get off cheap. 

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