Developing Intuition in Three Steps

By Wale Ewedemi

Developing your intuition can be as simple as watching for it, analysing it to make it more useful, and giving it good information to work with. Developing intuition starts by realizing you have it already. If you’ve ever had a hunch about something, that was intuition. Intuition is just your mind using more than what you are consciously aware of. But can you trust your intuition? How do you improve it?

Developing Intuition In Three Steps

1. Recognize it and encourage it.

2. Study it to make it more trustworthy.

3. Give it good information to work with.

Recognize it and encourage it: Gary Kasparov will admit that a computer can calculate chess positions many moves further ahead than he can. Yet he still beats the best computers out there because of his intuitive grasp of the game. His experience allows him to combine analysis with a “sense” of which move is best. Try to find areas in your own life where you intuitively operate. Of course, intuition is also a warning device. Both my wife and I felt we shouldn’t go into a particular bar on long street, Cape Town, during our holiday in 2007. This is no psychic power. Crowded bars are prime locations for pickpockets. A drunk man was bumping into people repeatedly. We didn’t consciously pay attention, but these things registered in our minds, warning us. We felt “something isn’t right here.” When we ignored our intuition, I was robbed. When I bought a used Nissan Quest from a friend, intuition told me not to but I insisted, 2 years after I sold the car for 1/5 of the cost, not forgetting spending over ½ of the initial cost on repairs. Maybe you’ve had a similar experience. Looking for and recognizing a thing trains your mind to find more of it. The same process will happen if you watch for your intuition – you’ll start to see more of it. Unfortunately, a strong hunch can be for irrelevant reasons too. If you were hit by a yellow taxi as a child, you might have “intuitive” hunches not to get into yellow taxis for the rest of your life. So even learning to recognize your intuition and encourage it may leave you wondering when to trust it.

Study Your Intuition: Start questioning your hunches. If we had asked why we felt bad about that bar, it may have occurred to us, “Oh yeah, crowded bars are a bad idea – we know that, but if everybody is there, it might be the fun place to be.” Study your strong feeling about that taxi, and you might say, “Oh, it’s just my fear of yellow taxis.” Get in the habit of paying attention to and studying your intuitive feelings. Where does your intuition work best? If you’re always right about your intuitive stock picks, give a little credence to them. On the other hand, if your hunches about people are usually wrong, don’t follow them. Just pay attention more, and you’ll be developing intuition about your intuition.

Give Your Intuition Good Information: Your skill, knowledge and experience determine the potential effectiveness of your intuition. No weak chess player will ever intuitively beat that computer, like Kasparov can. Learn enough about a subject, before expecting good hunches about it – or before trusting the hunches. Work in the area you want more intuition in. When enough information is in your mind, it will go to work for you with or without your conscious participation, so feed it well.

Recognize your intuition and you’ll have hunches and ideas more often. Study it and you’ll learn when to trust it. Give it good information and you’ll be repaid with good hunches and ideas. This is the simple formula for developing intuition.

Wale Ewedemi, Founder – Creative Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria. He won the British Council Young Music Creative Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2008. A Radio/ TV Presenter and Producer of note. He was Pioneer CEO of 92.3 Inspirations FM in Lagos Nigeria. Now a Senior Partner at M54 a through the line Marketing Communications agency in Lagos