How often do you have a really strong gut instinct and it proves to be wrong? How often do you override that instinct and then kick yourself later on? My guess would be that if you’re anything like the people that come to me for life coaching the answers are hardly ever and always.

    Everybody knows intuitively that they have solid instincts. I have never met anybody either professionally or socially that says. “My gut feeling is terrible, I’m always getting in a mess by listening to myself, what can I do about it?” How weird is that? It seems to me it’s a universal truth.

    Although at this point I have to confess I only know a small percentage of people when we look at it from a global perspective. In fact, we are probably talking about 0.000005% of the population; so statistically speaking it’s about as accurate as a blind baseball pitcher with Meniere’s disease.

    Having said that, I’m prepared to bet that you don’t disagree with me. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that if you can honestly say you believe your gut instinct lets you down on a regular basis, drop me an e-mail and I’ll mail you a copy of my book with instructions on how to operate it, because you’re going to need them.

    The conscious human mind can only deal with 7 + or – 2 pieces of information at once. Until you read this sentence you almost certainly aren’t aware of your left foot. But hey, presto, now you are! Way to go on shifting your awareness like a Zen Master. If you lost your foot in a freak fairground accident last week I apologize for my lack of tact. I hope you can forgive me and please accept my best wishes for a speedy recovery hoppy.

    The fact is, you have to constantly delete information from your conscious mind, otherwise you’d go into sensory overload. Try and do it now if you have any doubt. Place your awareness in your right hand, now your left hand too. Now move to your feet and remain aware of your hands. Easy? Maybe, but that’s still only 4, so try thinking about what your lower back feels like without letting your attention move from your hands. By now you will be starting to struggle, but if you’re not keep going and you soon will be.

    Think of your conscious mind as being like the RAM on your computer. It does lots of good stuff and it’s nice to have around and all that, but hey c’mon, it’s no hard drive! That is like the difference between your conscious and unconscious mind.

    Your unconscious mind can do lots of stuff easily without you ever having to intervene. I presume your heart is beating, your food is being digested, and you do not have to remember to blink your eyes or maintain your blood pressure, right? If not you maybe dead, so stop reading now and call for an ambulance and/or an undertaker.

    What happens when you get a strong gut feeling is that your unconscious mind is trying to tell you what it thinks in the only way it knows how, with feelings. It can’t talk to you because it’s unconscious, hence the rather obvious name. It has done lots of calculations, looked at all the permutations, given it serious consideration and is now shouting “Whoa there big fella, it aint a great idea to poke that skunk with a stick” Of course the ‘shout’ can manifest itself in any number of ways. You may get sweaty palms, a nauseous feeling or just a sense of something not being quite right.

    So what do most people do when they get a strong gut feeling?

    That’s right, they override it. Because it doesn’t make logical sense on the surface, skunk poking notwithstanding, it tends to get dismissed. A feeling is just that, a feeling, it can be hard to put into words. When we can’t explain logically why we think something is a bad or even for that matter a good idea, we can tend to either ignore it completely or use faulty logic to dismiss it out of hand.

    Some people (kinesthetics) find to very easy to tune into their feelings, but truly kinesthetic people account for less than 15% of the population. If you’re not one of the lucky few then you’ll have to pay extra special attention. Tune in to your body more often and start to recognize the patterns an when it’s trying to tell you something.

    If your unconscious is saying don’t take that job, go on that date, poke that skunk - take heed. It knows what it’s talking about and it has your best interests at heart. The alternative it to disregard it as some weird nebulous feeling that’s come out of nowhere and almost certainly live to regret it.

    你通常多久會有一次直覺，然后又證實是錯誤的？通常多久會不理會那直接而去做別的事？我的猜想是，如果你和那些來找我做人生規劃的人一樣的話，那么答案很難說。

    每個人都直覺的認為他們擁有可靠的直覺。我從沒遇到過內行的或是善于交際的人。有這么種說法，“我本能的感覺是可怕的。我總是因為自己的直覺而使自己陷入窘境，我該怎么辦？”多么奇怪啊。在我看來這似乎倒是普片存在的真理了。

    盡管在這一點上我不得不承認，我只是認識小部分的人但卻從整體觀念看這個問題。事實上，我們可能只談論了人口的0.000005%；但從統計學上說，這就好像失明的棒球投手得了梅尼埃病（又名內耳眩暈病）一樣準確。

    不得不說，我敢打賭你一定不會贊成我的觀點。事實上，近的不說，如果你能很坦誠的說，你相信你的直覺能讓你經常感到沮喪，那么請給我電郵，我會將一份我的書的副本電郵給你，里面有一些如何處理這類情況的用法說明，因為我覺得你會用得到它。

    清醒的人類大腦只能同時處理7（加或減2）條信息。直到你讀這個句子，你幾乎很肯定你沒有意識到你的左腳。但，現在你意識到啦！像禪師一樣轉移你的注意力。如果你因上星期的意外事件而失去了你的腿，我很抱歉我欠缺考慮。希望你能原諒我并接受我最誠摯的祝福，祝早日康復。

    事實是，你必須堅持不懈的將你潛意識里的想法去除，否則你會感覺超負荷。如果你有任何疑問，現在就試著去做吧。講你的意識集中在你的右手，現在，也集中到你的左手。 現在將你的意識移到腳上，同時也把意識留在手上。 很簡單是么？也許是的，但人只有四肢，所以試著想象一下，在將意識保留在手上的同時，你的后備的感覺是什么？到現在，你會開始奮斗了 ，但如果你不堅持，你又會回到老樣子了。

    把你清醒時的意識想象成電腦的隨機存儲器。它做了很多瑣碎的事情，但最后竟然沒有硬盤存儲！這就好像清醒的意識和潛意識間的差別。

    你的潛意識能在不經意間做很多瑣碎的事情。我假裝你的心臟正在跳動，你吃的東西正在消化中，你不必記得去眨眼睛或是保持血壓，對么？如果不是，那你可能就是死人了，所以停止閱讀吧，打電話給救護車或是殯儀館。

    當你強烈意識到你的潛意識正在試圖告訴你某事時，會發生什么？它不能與你交談，因為它是無意識的，因此才得了這么個名字。它做了很多計算，查看所有的排列，做出嚴肅的考慮并且現在正在呼喊“那個大個子，用棍子戳破它并不是一個好主意。”當然，“呼喊”可以用多種方式表達。你可能會手心出汗，出現厭惡情緒，或只是感覺什么東西不對勁。

    所以，當有一個強烈的直覺時，大多數人會怎么做？

    對了，人們會置之不理。因為表面上這并沒有什么合乎常理的意識。盡管戳破了，它也傾向于被遺忘。感覺就只是感覺，很難用言語說明。當我們不能用邏輯解釋我們認為某些東西是壞的或就那事而言是好事，我們更傾向于完全忽視它或是使用錯誤的邏輯立即將之遺棄。

    有些人發現將他們的感覺協調好是件很容易的事，但真正的這類人只占人口的15%還不到。如果你不夠幸運不是他們中的一員，那么你該提高你的注意了。更多的調整你的身體，開始意識到它將告知你時的方式。

    如果你的潛意識告訴你不要那份工作，那就遵從它，聽聽別人的建議。它知道它說的是什么，而且它知道你內心深處的興趣是什么。任何地方都能出現那種很隨意的很朦朧的情感，確定不能有結果的，就不要太在意它，不然自己今后會后悔的。