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Why It's Important to Follow Your Intuition

We've all experienced it: That feeling in your stomach compelling you to do--or not do--something for no logical reason. It's what drives you to take the long way to work and miss the traffic accident or to accept the date with the guy who turns out to be the one. And while it may seem like a mysterious force, scientists are discovering that intuition is actually a highly specialized way of thinking. "It's learned expertise--something we might not even be aware we had-that is instantly accessible," says David Myers, Ph.D., a social psychologist and the author of Intuition: Its Powers and Perils.

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 Can We Rely on Our Intuition?

As the world becomes more complex, making decisions becomes harder. Is it best to depend on careful analysis or to trust your gut?

 Intuition is not a myth; it's a very real part of us all that can change our lives. Here's how to tap into your intuitive superpower

We've all heard the word 'intuition' used to refer to some intangible feeling that tells us right from wrong, or helps us understand something without logic or reasoning. But have we ever stopped to think about what this very personal gut feeling actually means, and the implications it can have on our mental wellbeing?

 Listen to Your Intuition, Because Your Body Can Predict Future Events Without Conscious Clues

Humans can predict the future when we have some evidence--like clouds and the smell of rain hinting at a storm. But can we anticipate future events without sensory clues?

 Should you trust your intuition?

Professor Guy Claxton, author of Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind, claims we have three basic mind speeds: slow, contemplative thought; deliberate thought; and intuition, which is faster than logical thought and may be more efficient. There are thousands of cues in our environment that we might not notice consciously, but nonetheless may inform our intuitive choices. Our impulse might be to dismiss our intuition, but, in some cases, relying on instinct is not only faster, it may also give us more satisfaction.

 Want to be happy? Don’t follow your gut.

A new book by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, called Don’t Trust Your Gut, argues that our “gut” — or whatever you want to call it — is usually wrong. And it’s wrong because our intuitions are often influenced by false impressions or dubious conventional wisdom.

Articles of Interest

Ask an Expert: 5 Times to Trust Your Intuition

Have you ever felt like something was telling you to go through with a big decision? Or that deep down, you felt compelled to say "no" when all logic indicated you should say "yes?" Many experts call these and similar feelings our intuition. And whether we admit it or not, our intuition "speaks" to us all the time.

Can We Turn Our Intuition Into a Real-Life Superpower?

US military scientists are trying to identify where "gut feelings" come from in an effort to create the perfect soldiers.

Does Your Gut Always Steer You Right?

Weighing a big decision? Here’s what experts say about when to go with your gut or your rational brain—or some combination of both.

Don’t Trust Your Gut by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz review – the problem with intuition

From relationships, to sport, to happiness – why data points, not feelings, are a better guide to what works.

Explainer: what is intuition?

The word intuition is derived from the Latin intueor – to see; intuition is thus often invoked to explain how the mind can “see” answers to problems or decisions in the absence of explicit reasoning – a “gut reaction”.

Following Your Gut Isn’t the Right Way to Go

I’m not advocating for accepting whatever experts say without delay or question. When our instincts and expert advice are in conflict, that presents a real dilemma. Experts can say that something is safe, but if we don’t feel that it’s safe, our inner voice can win out over reason. (Likewise, when experts say something is bad for us, we often dispose of that advice in favor of listening to the little imp on our shoulder telling us that it’s something we want to do, so it can’t be all that bad.)

How to Get Your Intuition Back (When It’s Hijacked by Life)

Suddenly at midlife, the gut instinct I had long relied on to make important life decisions left me. Here’s how I learned to get it back.

Intuitive Eating Is Transformative and Also Not as Intuitive as It Sounds

Thanks to diet culture, it’s actually pretty challenging.

Intuitive Self.

A unique movement and expressive therapy practice which supports you to strengthen your connection to Self.

Is it rational to trust your gut feelings? A neuroscientist explains

When you have a lot of experience in a certain area, the brain has more information to match the current experience against. This makes your intuitions more reliable. This means that, as with creativity, your intuition can actually improve with experience. Indeed, relying on your intuition generally has a bad reputation, especially in the Western part of the world where analytic thinking has been steadily promoted over the past decades.

Science says your “gut feeling” isn’t a metaphor

The brain’s powers are a little overrated. To keep your body going, you don’t need a functioning brain, but you do need something to provide energy. Enter the gut.

Should we worry that half of Americans trust their gut to tell them what’s true?

We found some surprising differences between how people think about intuition and how they think about evidence. It turns out that how often someone trusts their intuition and how important they think it is to have evidence are two separate things. Both make a big difference in what we believe. What we learned offers some hope for people’s ability to tell truth from fiction, despite the fact that so many trust their gut.

Some Hunches About Intuition

CAN people improve their intuition? The question, of course, sounds oxymoronic on its face. People make decisions intuitively or they don’t. Still, an article in MIT Sloan Management Review not only argues that managers can improve their intuition, but outlines how to do it.

The Science of Intuition: How to Measure 'Hunches' and 'Gut Feelings'

Intuition is a popular topic in psychology these days, and generally refers to a brain process that gives people the ability to make decisions without the use of analytical reasoning, the researchers suggest. Despite widespread acceptance of this idea by psychologists and the public, scientists have lacked a reliable test to gather objective data on intuition and even prove its existence.

Trust Your Gut—If You're Aware of Your Heartbeat

All the songs that tell people to listen to their hearts may be truer than crooners realize, a new study says. Test subjects who were more conscious of their heart rates were more likely to "trust their guts" when making decisions—and in some cases that intuition paid off.

What Do We Mean When We Talk About Intuition?

At its core, Blink is a book about the phenomenon you call “thin-slicing,” which is “the ability of our unconscious to find patterns in situations and people based on very narrow ‘slices’ of experience.” Some people are what you might call experts in thin-slicing, and the book is full of portraits of these people, including John Gottman, who can watch a couple talking for 15 minutes and predict with 90 percent accuracy the future of their marriage...

When to trust your instincts as a manager

Humans have been honed over millions of years of evolution to respond to certain situations without thinking too hard. If your ancestors spotted movement in the undergrowth, they would run first and grunt questions later. At the same time, the capacity to analyse and to plan is part of what distinguishes people from other animals. The question of when to trust your gut and when to test your assumptions—whether to think fast or slow, in the language of Daniel Kahneman, a psychologist—matters in the office as much as in the savannah.

‘Feel the Force’: Gut Instinct, Not Data, Is the Thing

As computer-generated models flood the C-Suite, it’s important to remember that they shouldn’t displace intuition.