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.

    你通常多久会有一次直觉，然后又证实是错误的？通常多久会不理会那直接而去做别的事？我的猜想是，如果你和那些来找我做人生规划的人一样的话，那么答案很难说。

    每个人都直觉的认为他们拥有可靠的直觉。我从没遇到过内行的或是善于交际的人。有这么种说法，“我本能的感觉是可怕的。我总是因为自己的直觉而使自己陷入窘境，我该怎么办？”多么奇怪啊。在我看来这似乎倒是普片存在的真理了。

    尽管在这一点上我不得不承认，我只是认识小部分的人但却从整体观念看这个问题。事实上，我们可能只谈论了人口的0.000005%；但从统计学上说，这就好像失明的棒球投手得了梅尼埃病（又名内耳眩晕病）一样准确。

    不得不说，我敢打赌你一定不会赞成我的观点。事实上，近的不说，如果你能很坦诚的说，你相信你的直觉能让你经常感到沮丧，那么请给我电邮，我会将一份我的书的副本电邮给你，里面有一些如何处理这类情况的用法说明，因为我觉得你会用得到它。

    清醒的人类大脑只能同时处理7（加或减2）条信息。直到你读这个句子，你几乎很肯定你没有意识到你的左脚。但，现在你意识到啦！像禅师一样转移你的注意力。如果你因上星期的意外事件而失去了你的腿，我很抱歉我欠缺考虑。希望你能原谅我并接受我最诚挚的祝福，祝早日康复。

    事实是，你必须坚持不懈的将你潜意识里的想法去除，否则你会感觉超负荷。如果你有任何疑问，现在就试着去做吧。讲你的意识集中在你的右手，现在，也集中到你的左手。 现在将你的意识移到脚上，同时也把意识留在手上。 很简单是么？也许是的，但人只有四肢，所以试着想象一下，在将意识保留在手上的同时，你的后备的感觉是什么？到现在，你会开始奋斗了 ，但如果你不坚持，你又会回到老样子了。

    把你清醒时的意识想象成电脑的随机存储器。它做了很多琐碎的事情，但最后竟然没有硬盘存储！这就好像清醒的意识和潜意识间的差别。

    你的潜意识能在不经意间做很多琐碎的事情。我假装你的心脏正在跳动，你吃的东西正在消化中，你不必记得去眨眼睛或是保持血压，对么？如果不是，那你可能就是死人了，所以停止阅读吧，打电话给救护车或是殡仪馆。

    当你强烈意识到你的潜意识正在试图告诉你某事时，会发生什么？它不能与你交谈，因为它是无意识的，因此才得了这么个名字。它做了很多计算，查看所有的排列，做出严肃的考虑并且现在正在呼喊“那个大个子，用棍子戳破它并不是一个好主意。”当然，“呼喊”可以用多种方式表达。你可能会手心出汗，出现厌恶情绪，或只是感觉什么东西不对劲。

    所以，当有一个强烈的直觉时，大多数人会怎么做？

    对了，人们会置之不理。因为表面上这并没有什么合乎常理的意识。尽管戳破了，它也倾向于被遗忘。感觉就只是感觉，很难用言语说明。当我们不能用逻辑解释我们认为某些东西是坏的或就那事而言是好事，我们更倾向于完全忽视它或是使用错误的逻辑立即将之遗弃。

    有些人发现将他们的感觉协调好是件很容易的事，但真正的这类人只占人口的15%还不到。如果你不够幸运不是他们中的一员，那么你该提高你的注意了。更多的调整你的身体，开始意识到它将告知你时的方式。

    如果你的潜意识告诉你不要那份工作，那就遵从它，听听别人的建议。它知道它说的是什么，而且它知道你内心深处的兴趣是什么。任何地方都能出现那种很随意的很朦胧的情感，确定不能有结果的，就不要太在意它，不然自己今后会后悔的。