Intuition is a hard concept to explain but an incredibly important one to understand. Having had this conversation with almost all of my clients, I can say that it impacts and helps them perform their best. As is the case with all the mental skills, you have to train your brain to listen to your intuition.

What is intuition?

The dictionary defines it as direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension. A thing that one knows or considers likely from instinctive feeling rather than conscious reasoning.

Or, in my words, it’s the 90% of our brain that we don’t use often but holds all of our experiences. Although it’s not conscious, it becomes conscious when we are confronted with a situation. It knows what’s worked and what hasn’t worked and will pop up when we need to make a decision.

I call it our wise being.

Why is intuition so important?

Our intuition knows from experience what we should and shouldn’t do. It’s similar to your phone or computer capturing and retaining information for when we need it. When we need it, it speaks to us about what we should do. It knows if this happens, here’s how you should respond. It knows if you are confronted with this decision, here’s what you should do. If your opponent reacts in this way, do that. There’s no guess-work. There’s no magic. Intuition is an untapped resource that has incredible powers to guide you to go in the best direction.

Intuition is similar to MENTAL muscle memory

Mental muscle memory and intuition both come from experience. They both use stored information. I frequently talk to clients about both at the same time because they work hand-in-hand during competition. For example, in a tennis match there should be very little thinking. Tennis players will have done their physical preparation and on the day of a match need to learn to trust that.

That physical preparation is what builds physical and mental muscle memory. In a good tennis match, intuition and muscle memory are working together to get the player through to the end. On the other hand, when a tennis player is trying to think their way through a match, it’s a recipe for disaster. As I say to my clients, why practice if you are going to think your way through a match. You are not allowing all of that practice to show up and shine.

How do I tap into it?

Our intuition is a small quiet voice but it’s the first voice you’ll hear. Unfortunately hearing it can be difficult because we aren’t used to listening. What we often hear is our logic or ego speaking. While logic and ego are not the first voices, they are so much louder because we are used to over thinking decisions versus going with what we know works.

If you want to learn to tap into your intuition, spend time listening to the first voice that pops up, go in the direction it tells you to and see what happens. I have my clients write this down for one week so they can see the results.

Tapping into the first voice that pops up is hard so I wouldn’t recommend trying it with a major life decision. Try it with small, daily decisions. For example, while out walking the dog another dog off leash started quickly moving in our direction. My intuition said, pick up Teddi until you know it’s safe. I did and while there may not have been cause in this situation, there have been other similar situations that I should have and didn’t. Better to be safe than sorry.

Bottom line, my intuition knew what I should do, I was able to listen to it and it was the right thing to do given the situation.

Logic and ego thinking can get in the way

It’s funny because intuition, logic, and ego thinking all come from our head but we almost don’t want to listen to our intuition because it makes a decision fast, it responds accurately and is positive. Huh? Yeah, as humans we expect ourselves to over think and over analyze and that decision-making should be difficult and time-consuming or it’s not right. None of this is true. In fact the opposite is true. When you learn to tap into your intuition, the best decisions get made and in a timely manner.