How often do you have a really strong gut instinct and it proves to be wrong? How often do you override that instinct and then kick yourself later on? My guess would be that if you’re anything like the people that come to me for life coaching the answers are hardly ever and always.

    Everybody knows intuitively that they have solid instincts. I have never met anybody either professionally or socially that says. “My gut feeling is terrible, I’m always getting in a mess by listening to myself, what can I do about it?” How weird is that? It seems to me it’s a universal truth.

    Although at this point I have to confess I only know a small percentage of people when we look at it from a global perspective. In fact, we are probably talking about 0.000005% of the population; so statistically speaking it’s about as accurate as a blind baseball pitcher with Meniere’s disease.

    Having said that, I’m prepared to bet that you don’t disagree with me. In fact, I’ll go as far to say that if you can honestly say you believe your gut instinct lets you down on a regular basis, drop me an e-mail and I’ll mail you a copy of my book with instructions on how to operate it, because you’re going to need them.

    The conscious human mind can only deal with 7 + or – 2 pieces of information at once. Until you read this sentence you almost certainly aren’t aware of your left foot. But hey, presto, now you are! Way to go on shifting your awareness like a Zen Master. If you lost your foot in a freak fairground accident last week I apologize for my lack of tact. I hope you can forgive me and please accept my best wishes for a speedy recovery hoppy.

    The fact is, you have to constantly delete information from your conscious mind, otherwise you’d go into sensory overload. Try and do it now if you have any doubt. Place your awareness in your right hand, now your left hand too. Now move to your feet and remain aware of your hands. Easy? Maybe, but that’s still only 4, so try thinking about what your lower back feels like without letting your attention move from your hands. By now you will be starting to struggle, but if you’re not keep going and you soon will be.

    Think of your conscious mind as being like the RAM on your computer. It does lots of good stuff and it’s nice to have around and all that, but hey c’mon, it’s no hard drive! That is like the difference between your conscious and unconscious mind.

    Your unconscious mind can do lots of stuff easily without you ever having to intervene. I presume your heart is beating, your food is being digested, and you do not have to remember to blink your eyes or maintain your blood pressure, right? If not you maybe dead, so stop reading now and call for an ambulance and/or an undertaker.

    What happens when you get a strong gut feeling is that your unconscious mind is trying to tell you what it thinks in the only way it knows how, with feelings. It can’t talk to you because it’s unconscious, hence the rather obvious name. It has done lots of calculations, looked at all the permutations, given it serious consideration and is now shouting “Whoa there big fella, it aint a great idea to poke that skunk with a stick” Of course the ‘shout’ can manifest itself in any number of ways. You may get sweaty palms, a nauseous feeling or just a sense of something not being quite right.

    So what do most people do when they get a strong gut feeling?

    That’s right, they override it. Because it doesn’t make logical sense on the surface, skunk poking notwithstanding, it tends to get dismissed. A feeling is just that, a feeling, it can be hard to put into words. When we can’t explain logically why we think something is a bad or even for that matter a good idea, we can tend to either ignore it completely or use faulty logic to dismiss it out of hand.

    Some people (kinesthetics) find to very easy to tune into their feelings, but truly kinesthetic people account for less than 15% of the population. If you’re not one of the lucky few then you’ll have to pay extra special attention. Tune in to your body more often and start to recognize the patterns an when it’s trying to tell you something.

    If your unconscious is saying don’t take that job, go on that date, poke that skunk - take heed. It knows what it’s talking about and it has your best interests at heart. The alternative it to disregard it as some weird nebulous feeling that’s come out of nowhere and almost certainly live to regret it.

    你通常多久會(huì)有一次直覺(jué)，然后又證實(shí)是錯(cuò)誤的？通常多久會(huì)不理會(huì)那直接而去做別的事？我的猜想是，如果你和那些來(lái)找我做人生規(guī)劃的人一樣的話，那么答案很難說(shuō)。

    每個(gè)人都直覺(jué)的認(rèn)為他們擁有可靠的直覺(jué)。我從沒(méi)遇到過(guò)內(nèi)行的或是善于交際的人。有這么種說(shuō)法，“我本能的感覺(jué)是可怕的。我總是因?yàn)樽约旱闹庇X(jué)而使自己陷入窘境，我該怎么辦？”多么奇怪啊。在我看來(lái)這似乎倒是普片存在的真理了。

    盡管在這一點(diǎn)上我不得不承認(rèn)，我只是認(rèn)識(shí)小部分的人但卻從整體觀念看這個(gè)問(wèn)題。事實(shí)上，我們可能只談?wù)摿巳丝诘?.000005%；但從統(tǒng)計(jì)學(xué)上說(shuō)，這就好像失明的棒球投手得了梅尼埃病（又名內(nèi)耳眩暈�。┮粯訙�(zhǔn)確。

    不得不說(shuō)，我敢打賭你一定不會(huì)贊成我的觀點(diǎn)。事實(shí)上，近的不說(shuō)，如果你能很坦誠(chéng)的說(shuō)，你相信你的直覺(jué)能讓你經(jīng)常感到沮喪，那么請(qǐng)給我電郵，我會(huì)將一份我的書的副本電郵給你，里面有一些如何處理這類情況的用法說(shuō)明，因?yàn)槲矣X(jué)得你會(huì)用得到它。

    清醒的人類大腦只能同時(shí)處理7（加或減2）條信息。直到你讀這個(gè)句子，你幾乎很肯定你沒(méi)有意識(shí)到你的左腳。但，現(xiàn)在你意識(shí)到啦！像禪師一樣轉(zhuǎn)移你的注意力。如果你因上星期的意外事件而失去了你的腿，我很抱歉我欠缺考慮。希望你能原諒我并接受我最誠(chéng)摯的祝福，祝早日康復(fù)。

    事實(shí)是，你必須堅(jiān)持不懈的將你潛意識(shí)里的想法去除，否則你會(huì)感覺(jué)超負(fù)荷。如果你有任何疑問(wèn)，現(xiàn)在就試著去做吧。講你的意識(shí)集中在你的右手，現(xiàn)在，也集中到你的左手。 現(xiàn)在將你的意識(shí)移到腳上，同時(shí)也把意識(shí)留在手上。 很簡(jiǎn)單是么？也許是的，但人只有四肢，所以試著想象一下，在將意識(shí)保留在手上的同時(shí)，你的后備的感覺(jué)是什么？到現(xiàn)在，你會(huì)開(kāi)始奮斗了 ，但如果你不堅(jiān)持，你又會(huì)回到老樣子了。

    把你清醒時(shí)的意識(shí)想象成電腦的隨機(jī)存儲(chǔ)器。它做了很多瑣碎的事情，但最后竟然沒(méi)有硬盤存儲(chǔ)！這就好像清醒的意識(shí)和潛意識(shí)間的差別。

    你的潛意識(shí)能在不經(jīng)意間做很多瑣碎的事情。我假裝你的心臟正在跳動(dòng)，你吃的東西正在消化中，你不必記得去眨眼睛或是保持血壓，對(duì)么？如果不是，那你可能就是死人了，所以停止閱讀吧，打電話給救護(hù)車或是殯儀館。

    當(dāng)你強(qiáng)烈意識(shí)到你的潛意識(shí)正在試圖告訴你某事時(shí)，會(huì)發(fā)生什么？它不能與你交談，因?yàn)樗�是無(wú)意識(shí)的，因此才得了這么個(gè)名字。它做了很多計(jì)算，查看所有的排列，做出嚴(yán)肅的考慮并且現(xiàn)在正在呼喊“那個(gè)大個(gè)子，用棍子戳破它并不是一個(gè)好主意。”當(dāng)然，“呼喊”可以用多種方式表達(dá)。你可能會(huì)手心出汗，出現(xiàn)厭惡情緒，或只是感覺(jué)什么東西不對(duì)勁。

    所以，當(dāng)有一個(gè)強(qiáng)烈的直覺(jué)時(shí)，大多數(shù)人會(huì)怎么做？

    對(duì)了，人們會(huì)置之不理。因?yàn)楸砻嫔线@并沒(méi)有什么合乎常理的意識(shí)。盡管戳破了，它也傾向于被遺忘。感覺(jué)就只是感覺(jué)，很難用言語(yǔ)說(shuō)明。當(dāng)我們不能用邏輯解釋我們認(rèn)為某些東西是壞的或就那事而言是好事，我們更傾向于完全忽視它或是使用錯(cuò)誤的邏輯立即將之遺棄。

    有些人發(fā)現(xiàn)將他們的感覺(jué)協(xié)調(diào)好是件很容易的事，但真正的這類人只占人口的15%還不到。如果你不夠幸運(yùn)不是他們中的一員，那么你該提高你的注意了。更多的調(diào)整你的身體，開(kāi)始意識(shí)到它將告知你時(shí)的方式。

    如果你的潛意識(shí)告訴你不要那份工作，那就遵從它，聽(tīng)聽(tīng)別人的建議。它知道它說(shuō)的是什么，而且它知道你內(nèi)心深處的興趣是什么。任何地方都能出現(xiàn)那種很隨意的很朦朧的情感，確定不能有結(jié)果的，就不要太在意它，不然自己今后會(huì)后悔的。