Last year was a bad one for my intuition. I’m a person who relies a lot on hunches, educated thoughts that should play out a certain way, events that logically should come together to cause an outcome. This approach adds up to intuition.
I rely on intuition. It serves me well. Quite clearly, trusting my instincts in many situations is a critical positive for me to function successfully on multiple fronts.
You may shrug at this. “Who cares? Intuition is a joke.” I get it. You may want the facts and data about every issue you face in your personal, professional or social life.
Facts give you background. They are important. But they also only provide the framework as to what happens next. You still have to coalesce additional variables in your head, look forward, perhaps make an assumption or two on trends or human behavior to effectively project sporting events, political outcomes or what’s the best destination for the next vacation for you and your loved one(s).
Over the years, I’ve honed my intuition abilities, parlaying them into a skill for predicting drive times for car trips, the weather and sporting outcomes. Just after the turn of the century, I remember a drive I took from eastern Nebraska (Columbus) to the far western region (Scottsbluff) and saying to myself, “hmm, that should be about six hours and five minutes to get there?” (about what I remember from my memory banks) and getting there within five minutes of my intuitive prediction. Thought to myself, “wow,” afterwards.
It morphed from there. I got into consistently and effectively using my gut to state how long a trip would take and being very close most of the time.
This skill/talent, if we want to call it that, for having a feel for something, was also applied to sports. Rather than choosing the best teams, I used intuition, feel and chemistry to pick winners in discussions with friends, and found myself more often than not getting it right. The caveat is I stuck to teams, sports and players where I had greater knowledge. It was fun.
Weather also fell into this realm. Having a sense when the weather would change, due to the wind currents, is something I refined over the years, particularly from my bicycle trip across North America in 1982. Stay outside, feel the humidity, gauge the wind currents and you can do well predicting what’s next.
Which is why 2024 was weird for me. My intuition was off. NFL predictions were bad. My college – the University of Illinois – kept playing against my intuition on the basketball court as again and again I got games wrong that I “felt” accurate about.
I messed up predicting snowstorms and thunderstorms, intuition failing miserably. Hard to say what was off. And, I’m not sure what my point is.
Other than sometimes we have bad years. Things go wrong. They don’t turn out the way you think they will. Your intuition stinks. But, you slog on, hoping that your thinking, guessing, feeling, predicting improve and you get back in the rhythm.
I rely on intuition. It serves me well. Quite clearly, trusting my instincts in many situations is a critical positive for me to function successfully on multiple fronts.
You may shrug at this. “Who cares? Intuition is a joke.” I get it. You may want the facts and data about every issue you face in your personal, professional or social life.
Facts give you background. They are important. But they also only provide the framework as to what happens next. You still have to coalesce additional variables in your head, look forward, perhaps make an assumption or two on trends or human behavior to effectively project sporting events, political outcomes or what’s the best destination for the next vacation for you and your loved one(s).
Over the years, I’ve honed my intuition abilities, parlaying them into a skill for predicting drive times for car trips, the weather and sporting outcomes. Just after the turn of the century, I remember a drive I took from eastern Nebraska (Columbus) to the far western region (Scottsbluff) and saying to myself, “hmm, that should be about six hours and five minutes to get there?” (about what I remember from my memory banks) and getting there within five minutes of my intuitive prediction. Thought to myself, “wow,” afterwards.
It morphed from there. I got into consistently and effectively using my gut to state how long a trip would take and being very close most of the time.
This skill/talent, if we want to call it that, for having a feel for something, was also applied to sports. Rather than choosing the best teams, I used intuition, feel and chemistry to pick winners in discussions with friends, and found myself more often than not getting it right. The caveat is I stuck to teams, sports and players where I had greater knowledge. It was fun.
Weather also fell into this realm. Having a sense when the weather would change, due to the wind currents, is something I refined over the years, particularly from my bicycle trip across North America in 1982. Stay outside, feel the humidity, gauge the wind currents and you can do well predicting what’s next.
Which is why 2024 was weird for me. My intuition was off. NFL predictions were bad. My college – the University of Illinois – kept playing against my intuition on the basketball court as again and again I got games wrong that I “felt” accurate about.
I messed up predicting snowstorms and thunderstorms, intuition failing miserably. Hard to say what was off. And, I’m not sure what my point is.
Other than sometimes we have bad years. Things go wrong. They don’t turn out the way you think they will. Your intuition stinks. But, you slog on, hoping that your thinking, guessing, feeling, predicting improve and you get back in the rhythm.
