Happy & Healthy

INTUITION

And yes, you have it too

Do you know that feeling when something annoying happens and you think to yourself: ‘I knew this was going to happen! I knew it, … (insert your choice of expletive here), but I did nothing about it.’ Or when you don't trust someone, but you can't put your finger on why. Or that you really trust someone, even though your friends say it's not a good idea.

How do you come to these thoughts? You can't say for sure. You have a ‘feeling’ about it. Or something flashes through your mind, a thought, a word, an image. But because you don't have concrete facts to back up these brain twists, you do nothing with it.

What is intuition?

Intuition is often treated in a very airy-fairy way. As if you need to be connected to a higher power or the goddess within yourself to get an insight about something. Now, I'm not against a bit of tree-hugging or a burning ritual at full moon (more on that another time), but I believe that intuition is something logical and that we all have it. Even those who don't meditate every day or communicate with angels.

In your head, there is an enormous database of knowledge, experiences, and skills that you have ever acquired. A part of that is readily available, meaning that if I ask you for Brad's last name, you immediately say Pitt. But a much larger part of everything you have ever known, seen, or been able to do, is somewhere in a hidden part of your brain. That is information you no longer need, but also the millions of impressions you gather in a day. So if you dislike someone while that person is being very nice, it could be that your subconscious has picked up some impressions that you yourself have long forgotten or never consciously knew.

‘You feel fear more in your stomach, for example. Intuition is more a kind of knowing.’

By the way, your intuition can also just be wrong, because incorrect puzzle pieces are being connected. But because there are no misleading emotions involved, the chance is greater that your intuition is right than when you start thinking hard about it. So if you have an intuitive thought, it's important to take a good look at it. If you sit down for a moment, you can bring the underlying reasoning to your consciousness and see if you want to do something with it.

But what about this? Very often, I feel a bit nervous before I fly. And then I sometimes wonder if it's my intuition trying to tell me that the plane is going to crash. And so far, I always get on anyway, because I really want to be at my destination. Luckily, it has always gone well so far.

I talked about this with my super-smart friend Susan Smit. According to her, you can easily confuse intuition with emotions. She said: ‘You feel fear more in your stomach, for example. Intuition is more a kind of knowing.’ Emotions usually arise when you think about something. Intuition usually just comes to you.

Everyone is therefore intuitive. Even the ‘down-to-earth’ people. It's just part of how our brains work. So: use it!