Yes and no. Intuition when preceded by the word “women’s” and said by men or manly women cheapens it— implying it’s unreliable, weird or just too mysterious to bank on. That’s why we turn our backs on this marvelous gift instead of harnessing the power.
You can call it trusting your gut, using your belly brain or getting a hit—and you’ve experienced how reliable it is. That’s because ladies catch concepts and notice patterns and put it all together in our library of a brain for later use. And like profiling, when we experience something similar to what we have known we recognize the larger picture and viola we receive a message. A flash of inspiration that says, “the last time someone told you that in this context it worked out horribly—don’t go for it.” Or a picture or a feeling that makes you want to bolt. This happens in a blink of a eye at a subconscious level.
Helen E. Fisher says that our brain circuitry evolved so we could size up people and situations that threatened our survival and being able to tune in allowed women to save their babies. This is why women have an edge when it comes to reading people. With thousands of years of development you need to understand that we are accessing something amazing. At the very least –listen to the hunches and couple it with logic to double check your belly brain.
Intuition is one more tool for making choices.
Here’s when you can trust the reliability:
1) When you have experience in something your instincts will be sharper. For example, you grew up driving in extreme weather conditions so even though you might live in Florida or California you need to honor your instincts to stay home when it pours.
2) When your body talks to you. If you feel exhausted, get a horrible headache or experience pain when you are around a prospective customer than something is “off” and wrong, this may not be a great fit. ( If you are skeptical see if you can’t find someone who knows them and get a beat on them.)
3) When you are going to invest beaucoup bucks or time notice your feeling and check it. If you are going to spend thousands on a course that promises the world and it feels wrong you need to sleep on it. If you are going to spend lots of time on a project—check to see if it feels right. Use your logic and check on it —see if there are lots of bad reviews.
Intuition isn’t 100% reliable. But it’s a valid tool for making choices and a very cool GPS. I use it to follow my joy. If someone feels good and it feels right I trust it and proceed. Here’s the caveat—when it feels really right it’s rarely wrong. My buddy created a live website on spec for a company, her partner warned her not to go all out because she only had 24 hours to do it. She ignored his advice because she had strong chemistry with the prospect and the deal worked out to be a $30K+ deal that went well beyond website development. She told me she just knew. We need intuition and logic to prosper in this economy—don’t ignore half of your brain.
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