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Conrad Hilton had a strong desire to win the bid. Although he made a calculated guess at what to bid, it did not feel right and he tossed and turned all night long. In the morning, he upped his bid. His new figure was arbitrary, but it was perfect.
His hunch arose from the wealth of knowledge stored in his subconscious. He had been in the hotel business ever since his purchase of a hotel in Texas as a young man. He had spent many years learning about the field and must have gathered a staggering number of facts.
In bidding for the Chicago hotel, he was consciously aware of the value of the real estate, the owner’s estimate of its value, and his competitor’s ideas about how much to stake. Based on this understanding, he placed his first bid. However, while he slept, his brain probably ruminated over numerous subtle pieces of information—perhaps the personalities of the owner and the other bidders, perhaps a remark heard, perhaps the memory of a offer on another similar property, and so on. This nonspecific and unconscious information forced him to raise his bid by an additional $15,000 when he woke up the next day.
Thus while he made a rational decision based on his conscious knowledge, his subconscious went through its own files during the night, and, upon awakening, prompted him to increase his offer.
In your own life, it is possible for you to go beyond your conscious knowledge of a situation and tap into the remarkable powers of your intuition. Perhaps your intuition will help you move toward a fortune or move away from a disaster.
Dr. Natalie Shaines, a New York psychiatrist, says, “A hunch is only as good as the sum of past experiences that produces it. You can trust a hunch only if you’ve had experience in the situation it deals with. I often do intuitive things in treating patients, for instance. I have hunches about what will or won’t work. I trust these hunches because I’ve had a long experience in this field. I take them to be true perceptions on a non-conscious level. But if I had a hunch about some field I didn’t know—let’s say a hunch about making a killing in soybean futures—I wouldn’t trust it. It couldn’t be a true perception.”
So far, we can deduce two important features to a hunch. One, they must be based on a strong database of past experiences. Two, you must trust them.
Intuitions with a weak database are suspect. For example, intuition about somebody you just met. The feelings you have may be based on unconscious memories of someone similar. Someone, perhaps, who looks similar, wears similar clothes, talks in a similar way, and so on. But all these memories don’t allow for the person’s utter uniqueness.
In romantic relationships, for example, the attraction may be to the person’s shadow side.
A classic story in psychotherapy is that of the co-dependent person who is attracted to the secret alcoholic. While this may seem to have all the enchantment of intuition, it is, in fact, something else entirely.
Another form of pseudo-intuition is wishful thinking. When you want something to happen, you simulate the emotion associated with intuition. This is not intuition; it’s hope. “A lot of bad hunches are just strong wishes in disguise,” notes Dr. Natalie Shainess.
Intuition is a thought followed by a strong feeling. It is available to people who are in touch with their feelings, but it can be confused with emotions of psychological compensation or wishful thinking. Yet, if you don’t trust your intuition, you silence it. Intuition, then, is a tricky issue. You have to trust it to make it work and to keep it active. Yet, when it comes, it has no rational basis for itself.
Basically, the rule of thumb is to ask if you have a strong database for the intuition and to ask if you can afford to risk following the intuition to verify it.
Since intuition appears irrational—you don’t know why you know what you know or why you feel the way that you do—you may be tempted to smother it with reasoning.
But intuition can’t be figured out; it can only be tested out. Excessive reasoning informs your subconscious that you simply don’t trust it. It is like shouting at a shy child to speak up. Inevitably, the child only becomes more withdrawn.
An intuition, according to Dr. Gendlin, represents feeling about a total situation absorbed by the mind. Since the conscious mind can absorb only a limited amount of information and can only think sequentially, most of the information is shunted off to the subconscious mind. It is because of this that analysis is futile. It is like a bank hiring only a single employee to run the whole bank.
Dr. Abraham Weinberg, a New York Psychiatrist, advises, “Keep forcing yourself to perceive more than you see. Keep asking yourself, ‘What are the vibrations here, what do I feel?’”
Also, when you’re learning about something, collect the soft facts along with the hard facts. Soft facts are feelings and impressions, which are subjective. Hard facts are measurable data, which are objective. This way you’re telling your subconscious that you consider it a valuable ally in your total observation.
P.S. Remember, stay the course. If you can keep up with each issue, you'll develop an irresistible momentum toward a life of happiness, success, and contribution. |