OFI 990: You Better Learn To Hear What’s Coming

On last week’s Tuesday episode, episode #984, I told you a story about trying to catch a train in my hometown of Valley Home, California.  That story got me thinking about that train, and that got me thinking about intuition.  Why you ask?  I’m going to tell you in today’s episode.

I talk about intuition or gut instincts quite a bit on this show.   Paying attention to your intuition is pretty important to me, and I try to do so whenever mine crops up.  This probably has something to do with my law enforcement career when I got introduced to the book The Gift of Fear: And Other Survival Signals That Protect Us from Violence by Gavin De Becker and started really paying attention to this aspect of human survival.

The simplest definition of intuition I have ever heard comes from that book, and it is “knowing without knowing why”.  Have you ever experienced this?  I think we all have, but a lot of times we don’t realize we are experiencing it.  Worse yet, a lot of times we don’t believe what our intuition is telling us, and we purposefully ignore it.  Usually we ended up regretting moments like this for one reason or another.  Hopefully, it is not too catastrophic.

Intuition is very important for any of us who are going to be starting businesses as our way of funding our agricultural lifestyles.  You see, the advantage that an entrepreneur has in the market place is that they can be very agile and quick to act.  An entrepreneur doesn’t get bogged down with committees and multiple layers of bureaucracy.  This means while big companies are trying to figure out if they are going devote any time or money to an idea, an entrepreneur is already implementing it and has already figured out whether or not it is going to work.

This can be a very strong attribute and competitive advantage.  However, it can also be the thing that breaks you if you put all of your eggs into that basket.  That is why it is so important for entrepreneurs to bootstrap their businesses and new projects.  We need to test quickly and cheaply to take advantage of this agility without getting way out over our skis.  And sometimes when it comes to whether or not something is working we have to trust our intuition.  Because we don’t have big research and development departments, this is all we are going to have to let us know whether or not we actually have something.

The source of intuition is something that can be argued and can actually be contentious.  Some people say that it is born into you and is the voice of God or the Holy Spirit.  Others say that it is a result of evolution and survival of the fittest.  I say that I don’t know why it can’t be both.  Why can’t intuition be God or the Holy Spirit talking to you?  Perhaps natural selection or survival of the fittest is how intuition has been voiced into your life.

Think about the billions of human beings that have died over the entire history of the human race.  Think way back to when survival meant not getting eaten by a predator or knowing when to throw a spear or release an arrow.  In a situation in which our ancestors were hunting they would have to trust their instincts on when to go for the kill, or even where to devote their time and energy to hunting.  If they were wrong about either, they might not have the calories to make it through the upcoming winter.  Or, if they felt like they were being stalked by a predator and ignored that “feeling” they were likely eaten.

Many millions of humans perished because they did not have the intuition to avoid death prior to procreating and passing along their genetic information.  All of us who are here to listen to this podcast are the progeny of those who did have the intuition needed to survive.  And that intuitive ability improved and improved, millennia after millennia, until it reached us.  We are the latest generation of a line of survivors, of victors.  We shouldn’t throw away the tools that got us here.

So, this begs the question, “is it possible to develop a new intuition in the course of one lifetime?”  Our ancient ancestors were not engaged in small business development and entrepreneurship to survive.  So, whatever intuition that we received from them has nothing to do with business.  If we have intuition that helps us in business, we must have developed it in our lifetime.  How is this possible, or is it?

I believe it is.  I believe that we can develop a new intuition during our lifetime.  And this is why my story last week about the train in my hometown got me thinking of this.  I started knowing something that my ancient ancestors never would have known about when I was a kid in Valley Home, California.  It was something that I did not know why I knew, but I started trusting what my intuition was telling me, and I was always correct.  Let me explain.

As I mentioned in that story, I am able to measure the distance from where the head of my bed sat in my bedroom to the railroad tracks that ran behind my house. That distance was 51 yards, or 153 feet.  I can remember being a kid, maybe 8 years old, and laying in bed trying to fall asleep.  It seems like it used to take me hours to fall asleep, and I would just lay there and lay there.  And, I can remember laying there, somehow knowing that a train was coming without knowing why I knew.

When I realized that a train was coming, I would sit up and try to hear it.  I would feel for the vibration in my bedroom that came with the train.  Anything to help me explain to myself why I new it was approaching.  But there was nothing I could identify that had tipped me off.  And, without fail, about twenty minutes later, I would finally start to hear the engine or the faint whistle of the train going over a crossing, and I would confirm that my intuition had been correct.

It would be easy to chalk this up to to timing.  A skeptic might say, your body got used to anticipating the train as it came through at its scheduled time every night.  This would be similar to a dog that starts to get excited that its owner is going to come home, even though it cannot hear the car coming yet.  The dog knows the approximate time of the owners daily return home, and its internal clock alerts it to that time approaching.

The problem with this explanation is that the train didn’t come by my house every night.  There was no regular schedule.  The schedule for this train coming by was sporadic at best.  So, that could not be the reason I knew, 20 minutes before anything was audible, that it was coming.

I believe that over the course of that first 8 years or so, I developed an intuition that allowed me to know when this train was coming.  I was brought home from the hospital as a brand new baby to this house and this bedroom.  So, I had experienced about 3,000 sleeps in this bedroom by the time I was 8.  For those first few years, as my brain was developing, I was soaking it all in.  And, I mean everything.

One of the things I had been soaking in were the very subtle or undetectable signals that the train was coming.  Probably some very far off, low frequency, vibration that always proceeded the train.  And by the time I was 8 years old I was able to detect this vibration subconsciously and articulate in my mind that it was an approaching train.

This was an intuition that I had developed during my lifetime.  I knew that the train was coming, but I did not know why I knew that.  And, just like all other intuition, it would be easy to dismiss what my intuition was telling me, right up until the time the train passed by my house.  And, I am sure there were times like that in which I was half asleep, thinking the train was coming and then talking myself out of that, thinking I was crazy.  But, after the train came by after I had ignored my intuition enough times, I finally learned to trust it.

This is no different for you in business.  For years you have been doing something.  Perhaps you have been a student, and you are just finishing school.  Or maybe you have been working in one or more career fields for the past 20 years, and you are looking for a new lifestyle.  It doesn’t matter.  Whatever you have been doing, and for however long, your body has been getting signals and learning from them for years now.  Your body has learned to send you an intuitive signal about things such as when somebody is lying to you, when you are right about an idea or when that idea is not going to go anywhere.

You are not crazy.  Your body has a database of danger signals and indicators stored up that you could not notice with your five senses if you tried your best to notice them.  So, listen to your intuition.  Perhaps it is just telling you that on this project you need to do more research.  Or, maybe you need to hurry up and get started.  Who knows how it is trying to help you, but it is there for your benefit.  Learn to to listen to and trust your intuition.

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