How’s Your Intellect Doing These Days?

How’s Your Intellect Doing These Days?

If you grew up pretty much anywhere in the world in the last 50 years, you probably received a lot of intellectual training – how to think through things that need to be understood, resolved or created.

For the most part, this is good. We live in a complex world that needs to be understood in order to be navigated well. A few hundred years ago, life was simpler and there was less to think about. The advent of better lighting from the incandescent bulb dramatically increased the amount of time people had available to do things, including learning and thinking intellectually. Life got more complicated.

No doubt, the intellect is a very useful tool, but it is just that – a tool. And as such, it has appropriate and less appropriate uses. Ever try to open a bottle of beer or wine with the wrong tool? You might get it done but it is inefficient, not to mention the risk of spillage and injury!

Unfortunately, we have innocently become habituated to using our intellect for almost everything, including areas where it can’t actually do the job. We once had a dear client who was offered the CEO role in two different companies. Being an engineer (me too), he set up a spreadsheet with a host of criteria and one column for each company. The problem was that many of his criteria, such as “Will my kids like this country?”, “Which has the best culture?”, “How well will I adapt?”, were not easy to assess on his spreadsheet. Nevertheless, he gave everything a score, added it all up and then didn’t like the result of the analysis.

So what do we do? How do we solve life’s dilemmas or tricky questions?

Fortunately, built into the human system is another fabulous tool. I call it intuition or instinctive awareness – the ability to know something without having to think about it. For example, you know you love your spouse or your children (or your pets). Do you have to think that you love them or do you just know it?

Intuition is a direct connection to the intelligence behind life. This “tool” is very powerful, but often quiet and subtle. If you are too busy entertaining lots of thinking, it’s very easy to miss the messages that your intuition sends.

I’m not saying the intellect is bad or that intuition is better, it’s more like the English saying “Horses for courses”. Do I need a horse that can run a long distance, or one that has speed, or one that can jump high fences, or one that does well on soft ground? Would it be good to use my intuition to do my tax return based on how I feel about the government, or should I rely on my intellect to do the calculations that are required?

My point in this newsletter is to alert you to the wonderful capabilities you have inside and recommend that you more consciously choose which one to favor in each moment. You’ve probably done this from time to time, I’m hoping you will make the process and the choice more conscious.

In our next newsletter, we will share more about the nature of intuition and some practical tips on how to tune into this wonderful resource within.

Happy riding!