Traditional decision making processes and models are falling behind the fast pace of this new century, both for individuals and organizations. Many of us are aware of this situation, but are feeling lost without a new approach to make good reliable decisions fast. In this article I will introduce you to a new approach to decision making; all you need is an open mind and a little practice.
A History of Decision Making
Before we go further, let’s review how you or your parents / grandparents made decisions. This is admittedly a big blanket statement, but I think you will get the idea:
19th century: You typically didn’t make decisions yourself. Someone else who was more educated and/or had more authority, such as political or religious leaders, made the decisions and you just followed. Individual thinking and decision making were discouraged for the cause of the groups.
20th century: Mass education made it possible for many of us to think for ourselves and make decisions. While there were many decision making techniques, most were based on logic taught at schools and other educational organizations.
21st century: We start noticing the problems of traditional reasoning methods and decision making techniques based on such logic.
There are two major methods of reasoning: induction and deduction. Induction involves gathering data to come up with the conclusion, or really just the possibility of the conclusion. While no amount of data is enough to ensure the conclusion, we typically spend time gathering lots of data when we try to use inductive reasoning. So it takes time. In this fast paced world, it’s quite likely that the situation has changed already by the time we make decision based on induction.
Deduction doesn’t rely of gathered premises but it relies on logical premises. In short, it assumes certain premises to be true in order for it to work. But the advance of science is now questioning even basic ideas such as linear time.
Intuitive Decision Making – The New Possibility
Is there a better faster way? I think so, and it’s based on intuition. In intuitive decision making, you receive intuition and verify it by logic and data. You are still using your thinking mind and hard facts, but they are secondary and work as backup system.
It can be really fast to receive intuition. The topic of developing intuition is huge and outside the scope of this article, but I can say that we all have intuitive ability, the potential to use intuition. Some of you are already using intuition, consciously or unconsciously.
I don’t think the challenge here is if it is possible to utilize intuition in our decision making. The challenge is if we can be open to its possibility. When I was interviewed by Davina Haisell about intuition, there was a comment that said, “Intuition…sometimes I doubt it. Why? Because, almost without fail – it is right… I guess that’s a hard thing for me to get over, being able to fully trust my intuition.”
I respect the honesty of this commenter. I know it is scary to trust intuition. Our educational system discourages anything that can’t be “proved”.
Learning To Trust Our Intuition
I think the process of learning to make intuitive decisions is analogous to the aforementioned history of decision making.
Early childhood: You didn’t make many decisions. Someone else with authority made them for you, and you were expected to follow.
School age and adulthood, until you realize the problem of logical decision making: You make decisions based on the logical decision making techniques that were approved by schools and most of societal organizations. We may had clear intuitive sense as a child, but most of us stop using it as we get conditioned in the educational system. Change can happen when you realize the limitation of logical decision making.
Intuitive decision making is self-empowering: Look back the time you had to make critical decisions in your life, such as deciding on which job offer to take. Did you have a silent knowing that one option is more desirable even though it didn’t seem so on the logical level? Did you go for your gut feeling or did you ignore it? And what was the consequence?
Making decision intuitively empowers you. When you make decisions based on logic alone, you rely on someone else’s theories, processes, and models. It is you who is making the decision in the doing, but you are always subject to other authorities. So you may keep wondering if you made the right decision, or worry if you had enough data, enough knowledge and skills, enough education, to make the decision. Not so in intuitive decision making. In intuition, you just know, and you are your own authority.
How do you feel about intuitive decision making? If you have any questions, please write in the comment.
About the writer: Akemi Gaines is the Akashic Record Reading specialist who shares both practical and metaphysical tips on her blog, Yes to Me – Spiritual Healing and Growth for Greater Success. You can subscribe to her blog here.
Akemi,
Another thing I would add is that 21st decision making often involves too much information. We have so much information easily accessible that we can often before overwhelmed with information, choices or apparent consequences for our decisions.
Intuition should ultimately win out, and is a great way to combat this information overload.
Sometimes we make the wrong decisions, but if we are intuitive we should feel good that we went with our beliefs, and learn from any wrong decisions. Unless you are a doctor or similar, most decisions don’t have consequences that can’t be reversed anyway.
Nice post, thanks,
Chris
Exactly. Intuition is the efficient way to deal with information overload. I find it interesting that even the medical field is opening up to intuition. There are many medical intuitives helping doctors these days.
Akemi,
Do you think that some people are naturally more intuitive than others? Some of the personality research I’ve been reading lately suggests that some personality types are much more intuitive naturally. Also, society generally views “woman’s intuition” as being more valuable than a man’s. What do you think about this research and these stereotypes?
Are you talking about Myers-Briggs test?
I think we all have intuitive capabilities. Perhaps some are more blessed than others, but we all have them. The main difference comes whether the person develops the intuitive skills further. Like sport skills, the given talent is one thing, and training it to full possibility is another.
I’m not very sure about the gender difference. I think women may be more open to develop their intuitive skills. Women seem to pay more attention to their physical and emotional feelings, which is one of the channel intuition comes through. So they are more likely to notice their intuitive ability.
In my practice, about 65% of the clients are women, but there are solid groups of male clients who are very spiritually developed.
Akemi,
I enjoyed your writing and your argument is cohesive. However, I would like to provide a counter-argument; why intuition should almost universally be suspect.
Human society, including its environment, relationships, and institutions are vastly more complicated than the original conditions that humans evolved in. Evolution is a process of genetically adapting to a particular set of enviromental variables, and a relatively long time span is necessary, especially for complex organisms like people. So intuition, if such a thing exists, would have developed during several millenia in which we didn’t have jobs, spouses, blackberries, mortgages, 401ks, or the complex and subtle societal rules and taboos currently in place. There was almost no change between 7000B.C to 6900B.C – compare that to 1908 to 2008. Life 300 years ago would be unrecognizable to a teenager today. And I think we can all agree that the world in which children inhabit is significantly different from the world that their parents inhabit.
So bottom line, intuition is great for deciding whether or not to climb a tree during a lightening storm, step on a snake, or eat a brightly colored plant that you have never seen before. But it should not be relied upon for making life changing decisions in the 21st century. Doing so is akin to using a sharp stick for performing coronary surgery – the sharp stick helped us in the simplicity of our distant past, but it has no place in the complexity of a modern operating room
Very interesting. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, David.
I think it might help if we differentiate intuition and instinct. Both may be referred to as gut feeling, but I think there is a difference. My understanding of intuition is that it comes from our Higher Self, from the spiritual plane. Instinct comes from — hmm, how can I put it? Our DNA memory?
So I think my Higher Self knows what I know, yet have higher perspective than my conscious mind.
There are, however, times and situations intuition can get messed up. When we are so emotionally invested in certain outcome, we may mistake our wish (or fear) as intuition. There are other cases, too, but I think it will be another post if I go into full details.
Thank you again. Great discussion!
I believe David’s argument is true, but the fallacy is not that intuition is wrong, but that evolution is. If it requires generations to adapt, we are doomed.
Hi Akemi,
It will be great if we got wonderful decision making skills. I believe having a mix of 3 (deduction,induction and intuitive) types of decision making skills will help us to make the best decision.
Cheers
Vincent
Personal Development Blogger
Yes! The point of this article is not about abandoning logical decision making but to add intuition to the menu. How much weight you may want to put on the intuition is up to you.
I guess the “weighting” really is dependent on the level of trust we have for our intuitive factors.
And trusting intuition can be tough when we’ve been programmed to think from the outside world-IN, instead of from the INSIDE-OUT.
Over the past month I’ve placed much more attention on intuition cues. And every time I do it’s startling.
It’s startling because the intuitive avenues that open up are never linear; never logical. This can be exciting and scary at the same time.
Yes! I’m glad to hear you are opening up to your intuition. It may be scary but it’s worth the challenge, isn’t it? And you are so right that it’s non linear. We can have a big breakthrough once we open up to our own intuition.
It may be scary but it’s worth the challenge, isn’t it? ~ Akemi
It’s totally worth it! I like to think that there is a Universal Mind that is all knowing and loving. It wants the best for me. And by following the Universal mind I’m being taken to the next most natural step towards the things I want.
Is intuitive decision making really a new way of making decisions?
Isn’t intuition based on experience, and experience based on past decisions that were made with inductive or deductive logic? How do you “receive” intuition?
My understanding of intuition is that it makes use of the brains ability to do fast pattern matching. Without prior experience there would be no patterns to match against.
While it is always interesting to review how we make decisions, I don’t know if I necessarily think this is a new method. Am I missing something?
I don’t think intuitive decision making is the brand new approach to decision making, it would be more appropriate to say it’s a re-discovered approach.
Is intuition based on past experience? My answer is kind of yes. We certainly use the existing frame of reference when we work with intuition. But there are more to intuition than the logical assembly and analysis of what is already there. And that is the fun part. ^_^
We all have intuition and should tap into it. It does come naturally when you have a decision at hand but you think and may over analyze the solution when it is right there. Intuition is a great way to self empowerment.
I agree. Now one way to get used to the intuitive decision making is to start small. Don’t wait until the life changing event to use intuition.
Hi
I love that you have bought a tool that is often neglected, or even tossed out because of its lack of scientific proof, into an area of life that most of us are battling with regularly i.e. decision making. A great different way of looking at things.
I think that it not only helps make the decision, but it also helps one with life balance and inner strength.
Juliet
Juliet,
“I think that it not only helps make the decision, but it also helps one with life balance and inner strength.” I like this. Intuition is indeed very empowering.
hate to burst your bubble, but intuition IS induction. intuition is a gut reaction based on years and years of acquired experience, you just may not notice it’s induction because a lot of it is subconscious.
if you take someone and put them in an environment that is extremely foreign to them, their intuition will suck because its really induction based on tons of experiences that were acquired in a different environment, where different rules apply
You have a point. Intuition does need a frame of reference, which is built on our experiences and knowledge. But I also think there is far more to intuition than inductive reasoning in the subconscious.
Have you had the experience that you just knew something? And you thought and thought why it was so, but you couldn’t explain — you just knew. That is intuition.
I have to continue the line of thought Steve and Darren started.
Yes, I belive there might be some “universal mind” some people can tap into, however this is not what I see under the term intuition.
Intuition is definitely not about neglecting data and information. There would be no inuition without them.
I would say that intuition is a process running in our subconscious mind that is very good at spotting patterns in the information we receive. Actually, to a certain extend I belive that IQ scores might be well correlated with our inuitive abilities.
IQ tests are usually about verifying intuitively recognized patterns with logic, and therefore I wouldn’t draw a thick line between logic and intuition. At the end of the day, if your intuition was right, it was because it understood the functional logic of this universe, better than your conscious mind, which didn’t consciously grasped all the parts of an argument.
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