Intuition

Have you ever had a moment where you felt as though something wasn’t right? Perhaps stepping into a parking lot late at night, or feeling negative around someone without knowing why? And if you’ve experienced this before, have you shrugged it off, dismissing it as illogical nonsense?

As a culture, we have learned to believe that rationality is what should prevail when making decisions about anything from crucial business mergers to what to eat for lunch. But what of that “inner voice,” that gut feeling, that little something instinctual from within that tells us how we feel beneath those layers of logic?

This is how I define instinct and intuition:

• Instinct is our innate inclination toward a particular behavior (as opposed to a learned response).
• A gut feeling—or a hunch—is a sensation that appears quickly in consciousness (noticeable enough to be acted on if one chooses to) without us being fully aware of the underlying reasons for its occurrence.
• Intuition is a process that gives us the ability to know something directly without analytic reasoning, bridging the gap between the conscious and nonconscious parts of our mind, and also between instinct and reason.

-Francis P Cholle (The Intuitive Compass)