Develop your intuition

An inner voice, a sixth sense, an inexplicable certainty that it is necessary to do just that, a sudden flash of insight — intuition has many faces, but all its definitions come down to one thing — it is the ability to instantly find a solution based not on the usual logic, but on an inner feeling. Where does it come from?

According to the scientific definition, intuition is a decision—making method based on recognizing situations stored in memory and comparing new information with past experiences. When something very similar to the previous event occurs in front of us, the hippocampus turns on — the part of the brain that processes signals coming from the senses: sight, hearing, touch, and so on. — and begins to search for coincidences in his memory. The result of this search is transmitted to the amygdala, which is responsible for emotions and participates in decision-making. And if you have a similar experience in your memory, you get that sixth sense. The brain just already knows what to do.

Both of these departments are located close to each other, and the processes between them proceed quickly and unconsciously.

Source: RIA Novosti. Depositphotos / sudok1

Intuition is the result of experience. Psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, writes about this in his book “Think Slowly … Decide Quickly”: “Intuitive competence can develop only if situations are repeated regularly and there is an opportunity to study them for a long time; it takes at least 10,000 hours of practice to become a specialist.” A professional goalkeeper already intuitively knows which part of the goal the ball is likely to fly into, an experienced doctor knows what disease the patient develops after the first examination, and a businessman knows which decision is best invested in. This is not a strange premonition, experts warn, but the ability to act on the basis of information that the brain has already processed, but has not had time to rationalize. Therefore, it is not always right to rely on an inner feeling in an unfamiliar situation — it can fail.

Does women’s intuition work better than men’s — myth or truth? Scientists from the University of Hertfordshire (UK) tried to find the answer to this question. To do this, they conducted an experiment involving 15,000 women and men who were shown photos of smiling people. The participants had to determine who was smiling sincerely and who was pretending. At the same time, 80% of women and 58% of men said they had good intuition before the start of the study.

As the results showed, there is no gender difference in questions of intuition: women answered correctly in 71% of cases, and men — in 72%. According to the authors, the source of intuition is life experience, and age is most likely the only distinguishing factor: as a rule, children have less experience and acquired knowledge than adults.

On the other hand, there have been some suggestions that intuition works better in pregnant women. American scientists from the University of Arizona, as part of their study, asked pregnant women to predict which sex of the child they would give birth to. And women made the right choice in 70% of cases. However, there turned out to be many weaknesses, the main of which is a possible banal guessing. In addition, scientists note, intuition can often be confused with desires. Critics also criticize the relatively small sample of participants — there were only 100 of them.

Thus, it is safe to say that the concept of “female intuition” does not exist. According to scientists, women just use intuitive thinking more often than men.

Intuition works best in people with good sensory abilities — that is, those with a developed right hemisphere of the brain. If the left hemisphere of the brain is responsible for building a logical chain, a sequence of conclusions and analysis, then the right hemisphere is responsible for the richness of images, creativity and sensory perception.

Here is an example of a classic story from detective stories and spy films — when the hero enters the house, he begins to feel alarm and realizes that someone has been here. In an instant, his eyes capture hundreds of minute details. But it would take a long time for the left hemisphere to analyze all the information and come to the conclusion that the doormat was shifted a couple of centimeters, the jacket was hanging out of place, and the chair was turned at a different angle. It’s the right hemisphere that helps you see the whole picture in a split second. This is how the brain picks up an image stored in memory and sends an alarm signal: “Something is wrong here!”. But if the ability to “notice” is not developed, then intuitive thinking will not fully manifest itself.

Everyone has an intuition. Psychologists say that absolutely anyone can turn to her to assess a situation or a person, receive a warning about danger or find the right solution. You just need to learn to hear your intuition — to do this, you need to “turn on” the right hemisphere more often. And there are several effective ways.

Working with images can help develop sensory perception. One of the most popular forms of visualization is the representation of geometric shapes. The order is as follows:

1. take a comfortable position,
2. imagine a blank sheet or screen in front of you,
3. mentally draw any geometric shape on it: a square, triangle, circle or whatever comes to mind first,
4. focus on this picture for a few minutes,
5. also mentally draw another shape and concentrate on it too,
6. take a break, and then imagine a combination of several geometric shapes in one whole: for example, a triangle in a circle that is in a square.

Any visualization is suitable — the representation of a sunbeam passing through the body, people smiling around, yourself on a warm seashore, sending love to yourself and others in the form of white light, etc. — the main thing is to stimulate the “creative” hemisphere of the brain.

Source: Learn Zen / Yandex Zen

Meditation is a good tool for developing the sixth sense. It helps to be alone with yourself, concentrate on your feelings, teaches you to “notice yourself” and everything that happens around you, brings calmness and clarity, increases creativity. Any meditation is also suitable here — it is important to devote time to it and do it regularly. For example, mindfulness meditation, which is recommended in Forbes:

1. Sit back and concentrate on your own breathing.: how the air fills the lungs and how it leaves them. Take a few minutes to do this.
2. Start “scanning” your body from the top of your head to your toes. Try to feel any breeze touching the skin, feel what processes are taking place in each organ, each limb (even how individual molecules move). After a few weeks of this practice, you can learn to perceive the most subtle sensations.
3. After the first scan is completed, you need to perform it again — also intensively go through the sensations of the body part by part.
4. Then it is important to turn to childhood memories, about specific moments and episodes in life, preferably those that caused pleasant experiences. Sages believe that this is how the memory stored in the body begins to work, which can give us a lesson and help us find answers to important questions — this can be considered the development of intuition.

It is enough to practice meditation for 15-20 minutes a day, and over time it can be extended to an hour.

You need to pay more attention to the body — intuition can work through it. My eyelid twitched, my lower back ached, I shuddered, felt sick — it is necessary to read bodily reactions, because they can prompt the right decisions, says psychologist and art therapist Elena Ryzhova. If you get scared, she continues, you need to breathe, come to your senses, and then, when the excitement is gone, listen to yourself: does it feel like the right decision? If the fear does not go away, but other unpleasant feelings are added to it, it is very possible that this decision is wrong, the psychologist concludes.

In order to clearly learn how to hear the inner voice, experts advise you to regularly perform the following exercise::

1. In a quiet, cozy place, take a sitting or lying position, relax, breathe slowly and deeply, focus on your emotions (whether you are depressed, upset, or, on the contrary, filled with a sense of joy) and body sensations (whether your muscles are tense, whether something hurts, etc.).
2. Ask yourself questions: are you happy I’m with my life now, what can I do to improve it? The answer should come to you by itself, you don’t need to resort to any rational analysis to get it. If he does not come, then you need to refer to this exercise later on the same day.
   It is important to remain open here, not to reflect, not to analyze — just to keep in touch with your feelings and emotions.

The following exercise was developed by art therapist and coach Dominique Vaudoise. In her opinion, it will help you hear your own desires and discern hidden meanings in the usual course of affairs.

1. Take two clean sheets of paper and colored pencils with you to a comfortable place.
2. Choose a topic that you would like to understand, write it in the center of one sheet and circle it. Then start writing all the words that come to your mind (for example, write the word “work”, and next to it associations along the chain: office, colleagues, friends, coffee, edit, interview, meeting, etc.). If the place ends, go back to the word in the center and start writing another thread. The words can be repeated, there’s no need to worry about that. If you are at a loss for a definition, write “uh” or “um” and repeat the word that started the new branch – this should help you continue.
3. Next, turn on the left hemisphere to try to decipher the tree diagram. Mark the root words. For example, “writing” and “writing”. Circle them and connect them together.
4. Color the resulting circles of words with different colors.
   Take a second sheet of paper and write out all the words that repeat in the diagram on it. Pay attention to them: perhaps the word “joy” was most often encountered? Or a “meeting”? What color zones are they located in? What does this mean? Perhaps these words have a special meaning for you? Try to find the maximum possible meanings in the resulting combinations of words.
5. Imagine (or also draw) a coordinate plane on your diagram. Dominique Vaudoise explains: what will be located on the left is your past, what is on the right is the future, above is the conscious, below is the unconscious.
6. Hang this diagram on a mirror or refrigerator. Look there every day and observe what feelings and thoughts are awakened in you when you look at it.

Simple guessing exercises will help you learn to feel and hear your inner voice.

1. Events of the day. When you leave the house in the morning, try to guess who you will meet first — a man or a woman. Or standing at the bus stop, guess the bus route numbers that should be coming. Before answering a phone call, make it a habit to guess who is calling you and not look at the screen at the same time.
2. “I’m a psychologist.” Observe the faces of people in any public place: on the street, in transport, in the office — and try to understand what kind of person you have in front of you: what kind of character does she have, what kind of life, what are her interests?
3. Weather forecast. In the evening, before going to bed, think about what the weather might be like tomorrow: is it worth taking an umbrella or will the sun shine all day? Write it down, and the next day compare the real data with your own forecast. Do this every day.
4. Cards. Take a deck of cards face down, pick up a number of cards and try to guess which color the suit of the bottom card is red or black. You can also try to guess a specific suit.

…And keep notes in it about when you used an intuitive feeling: for example, when you chose a new route or preferred to walk instead of using public transport. Write down all the times when your inner voice spoke there — then you can check if it coincided with reality. If a paper notebook is not suitable for you, you can keep notes on your smartphone.

Try writing with a “non-dominant” hand more often. For example, if you are right-handed, writing with your left hand will help activate your right hemisphere, which will be useful for developing intuition. In addition, it will force the brain to switch to controlling an unusual action and concentrate on performing it.

Source: medvoice.ru

Choose a day of the week when you have less work and no important meetings. Start it, for example, with the first, second or third exercise from this article — this will allow you to adjust accordingly, become more attentive and receptive. And then let the day run its course.

Try to listen to your inner voice and act on it. Avoid logical reasoning and habitual, automatic actions. Pay attention to your feelings, pleasant and unpleasant, and write down everything that happens to you. Psychologists say that such practice on a regular basis will help to quickly develop intuitive thinking.

Download the apps to help

Apps can become real helpers in terms of developing intuition. Here, for example, are three popular:

“Intuition (Associations)” is a game whose mechanics are very simple: out of 28 words, you need to remove pairs related in meaning until the screen is “cleared” of words. It is important to keep in mind that not every combination will be correct, and there may be words left at the end that are not pairs.

INTU — Intuition Trainer is a program consisting of three parts: an intuition simulator, an answer generator, and information. The first one contains simple and effective techniques for developing intuition, designed for 10-15 minutes. The second helps to get a subconscious answer to personal questions. The third allows you to save training results and track your progress.

Intuition Simulator is a guessing game application in which you need to guess the color of the card (for the first level) and the suit (for the second level). The more cards are guessed, the higher the percentage of intuition in the application.

Intuition will not manifest itself if you just sit and wait for the inner voice to speak. In addition to the above exercises that contribute to her development, it is also necessary to increase the level of erudition, empathy, broaden horizons and learn to formulate questions clearly.

It is also useful to consult with more experienced people. Scientists from the University of Lincoln (New Zealand) recommend consulting with family and a wide range of friends, colleagues and just those in the know — to listen to their opinions, reflect or criticize the conclusions. If you suddenly decide to become a player on the stock exchange, you first need to read economic literature, understand the financial statements of companies, talk with experts, and only then rely on your gut feeling.

Photo: naturalhealthcourses.com