“We need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to
follow that guidance directly and fearlessly.” (Shakti Gawain)

One can wonder if intuition really exists, and?even more?whether it’s a reliable source for basing our decisions on. Haven’t you ever felt that something was the right thing to do, yet, hesitated to do it, because it would be such a drastic step in your life? Well, I’ve been there. The funny, or maybe sad, part of the story is, that it took me years before I dared to follow my intuition, and a few more years after that, before I got the conviction that my intuition had led me in the right direction. In the meantime I had spent a lot of energy struggling with the question whether I had made the correct decision, or whether I had just been paranoid.

The main reason for doubting ourselves is oftentimes simply because others ridicule our intuition. They may even tell us that we are insane for even considering the direction our intuition sends us. However, the only way we can find out is to do what WE think is best.
Definitions and Statements

Intuition is explained by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as, 1) Immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning. 2) Immediate apprehension by a sense. 3) Immediate insight.

Increasingly, we notice that management- and leadership experts recommend us to practice more empathy in our leadership styles. This clearly entails the sensitive issue of feeling rather than thinking, right? It’s an encouragement to act with our hearts instead of our minds; to follow the “hunch,” the little voice within us that tells us what would be the right direction to go. Pollock (2002) suggests, “When you must weigh two or more ideas, the most productive approach is to give them an initial screening. This is usually based on a mixture of common sense, intuition, good judgment, imagination and, yes, some luck.”

Referring to the need for meaning at work among the workers of today, Whitehead (2002) exclaims, “? The trend towards imagination and creativity is more than the latest hype from the management consultancies. [?] It reflects a growing realization of how the world actually works. It’s a world [?], not only of facts and figures, but of intuition, hunch and gut instinct.” Whitehead continues, “A huge amount of decision-making is not about weighing up the facts and figures, but following a hunch about what you think will happen.”

In an article about successful investors, Sykes (2002) pulls the intuition issue even further by stating, “Intuition. It’s what separates the men from the boys, or shall I say, the women from the girls? Either way, intuition is vital in decision [-making]?”

A good example of this philosophy is given by Tazzia (2001) when he discusses his findings about “the skills that top marketing officers of the future will need,” thereby listing them as follows, “1. Strategic vision and strategic process, 2. Intuition and the ability to react, 3. Creative development and innovation, 4. Desire for accountability, and 5. An action orientation.” When elaborating on point 2, Tazzia concludes, “The world is too complex and moving too fast for classic analytical tools to cope. You can’t wait to gather all the data, and even if you could, the data would change before you could react.” He then continues, “Can intuition be taught? Not in the opinion of our panel. But it can be killed early in a young manager’s career. Intuition demands that people trust their judgment, take risks. If companies hammer a young manager for a market failure, will he or she ever take a risk again? What you can teach these young people is how to mitigate risks, how to cover their bets. That would be valuable.”

This is exactly what Michael Burke may have meant when he stated, “Good instincts usually tell you what to do before your head has figured it out.” Embroidering on this theme, it may very well be that we are using our intuition all the time, and in everything we do, especially if we consider the following statement: “Practical observation commonly consists of collecting a few facts and loading them with guesses.” (Unknown Source) An interesting development these days is that not only people are using intuition as a strategic management tool. Entire organizations do so as well. Murphy (2002), for instance, sums up the successful approach of a business by stating, “With the right tools and a little intuition, organizations can increase profitability by leveraging customer information to anticipate customers’ needs and influence their behavior.”

Nevertheless, not everybody perceives intuition as a reliable source for decision-making. Suutari (2001), for example, allots it a fairly ambivalent status by asserting, “Time constraints, among other factors, force [a] manager to make a plethora of decisions based primarily on an existing knowledge base, experience and even intuition.” Suutari continues somewhat further in his article, “Experience, (and its cousin, intuition) provide a basis of reference as to what has or has not worked before. However, experience is only valid if the fundamental circumstances are similar. Experience can play a role in decisions in all modes, resulting in a tendency to repeat a specific action until it fails.”

Now this is exactly the part where I don’t agree with this author’s point of view, because I find it hard to see experience and intuition as two related subjects. On the contrary! While experience is based on past occurrences, intuition is more of a guiding sensation into taking the most viable “leap in the dark,” whereby “the dark” is obviously the unknown. But then again, there’s a quote by Dr. Joyce Brothers that says, “Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.” So, who knows, maybe intuition IS based on experiences, if not from this life, perhaps from previous ones?if you believe in reincarnation??

Interestingly?and seemingly contradicting?McDonalds (2002) comes up with a broad, lyrical range of definitions in which he clearly detaches intuition from any sort of experience: “Intuition. The ability to see any event, any object from a viewpoint of the cosmic whole, from it’s culmination - the seed, the flower, the fruit in relation to the whole. The knowing of something without prior knowledge or the use of reason.” McDonalds (2002) emphasizes the increasing recognition given to intuition by citing the following statement from Intuition Magazine Online, “In recent years, the subject of intuition has emerged from obscurity. Intuition is increasingly recognized as a natural mental faculty, a key element in the creative process, a means of discovery, problem solving, and decision-making. Once considered the province of a gifted few, it is now recognized as an innate capacity available to everyone not a rare, accidental talent, but a natural skill anyone can cultivate. A key ingredient in what we call genius, it is also an important tool when applied to everyday life.”
Personal Thoughts and Suggestions

Having done some reflective thinking, I came up with the following cycle:

The more we eliminate confusing rustle in our lives, the more we become focused. The more we become focused, the better we understand ourselves. The better we understand ourselves, the more intense we live. The more intense we live, the better we hear our inner voice. The better we hear our inner voice, the more empathic we can listen to it. The more empathic we can listen to our inner voice, the more determined we become, for it’s then that we know we hear the right thing? and do it.

Here’s some other food for thought:

1. Use all the knowledge you gained through school- and street education, but never underestimate the feeling you get when making a certain decision. If it doesn’t feel good, reconsider, for if you don’t, 9 times out of 10 the outcome will be unfavorable.
2. No matter how convincing others’ arguments toward the opposite are, if your intuition has been pushing you in a certain direction for quite a while, and you have given it sufficient consideration, go for it. In the end you’ll find you did the right thing. Remember, you’ll never fully fathom others’ motives, but you DO know yours.
3. Once you’ve taken a decision based on your gut feeling, work on it! Even the most excellent project or the most blissful idea can go wrong if you don’t invest time and effort in it. And how easy will it then be for the negativists around you to rub “the failure of your intuition” in your face?

Finalizing: Intuition is a powerful guiding tool in every area of our life if we just care to give it a chance. The value of following one’s intuition can be concluded from Albert Einstein’s proclamation, “I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” And finally, it may very well be the immortal Ralph Waldo Emerson, who stated the most dynamic conviction about the power of intuition when he said, “If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”

References:

Diverse. (1999). Intuition, [Internet]. Cyber Nation [2002, April 6].

Higher Awareness, I. (1999). Intuition and Awareness. Higher
Awareness, Inc. Available: http://www.higherawareness.com/awarenessandintuition.shtml [2002, April 6].

Macdonald, I. A. (2002, February 27, 2002). Intuition…Awaken the Journey Within, [Internet]. Iain A. Macdonald. Available: http://intuition2vishnu.homestead.com/ [2002, April 6].

Murphy, D. (2002). Predictive analytics as the proverbial early bird. Customer Inter@Ction Solutions, 20(7), 26-27.

Pollock, T. (2002). Mind your own business. Supervision, 63(3), 17-19.

Suutari, R. (2001). Playing the decision-making game. CMA Management, 75(7), 14-17.

Sykes, T. A. (2002). Investing 301: Part 3. Black Enterprise, 32(6), 65-67.

Tazzia, E. (2001). Nurturing your natural talents. Advertising Age, 72(44), 20.

Whitehead, M. (2002). Passion at a premium. Supply Management, 7(4), 20-24.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking casualties of recent stock market performance are the 20 state-sponsored college tuition pre-payment plans throughout the country. With college costs continuing to grow at a pace of about 9% per year and investment returns on plan assets being flat or negative, the sponsors of the various prepaid tuition programs now project long-term cash shortages.

Investors in the program thought that they had purchased paid up tuition credits under the program, regardless of the future rise in tuition costs. But now states anticipate notifying investors hat the plan cannot meet its projections, and so the investors must pay up by making additional investments or bail out of the program. Colorado has already notified investors of the default and other states anticipate similar actions in the future. Other states are considering more creative options. Most plans agree that the growth of plan assets will not keep pace with college tuition inflation over the next decade.

Investors are irked because they thought that these plans represented a guarantee backed up by the sponsoring state and are shocked to learn that this is not the case.

Of course, a recovery of the financial markets will greatly help ease the burden, but many investment advisers do not expect that to happen in the near future.

Tony Novak is an independent writer and financial adviser in Narberth PA who provides OnlineAdviser services through MedSave.com and FreedomBenefits.org.

Tags: Tuition Research

“We need to be willing to let our intuition guide us, and then be willing to
follow that guidance directly and fearlessly.” (Shakti Gawain)

One can wonder if intuition really exists, and?even more?whether it’s a reliable source for basing our decisions on. Haven’t you ever felt that something was the right thing to do, yet, hesitated to do it, because it would be such a drastic step in your life? Well, I’ve been there. The funny, or maybe sad, part of the story is, that it took me years before I dared to follow my intuition, and a few more years after that, before I got the conviction that my intuition had led me in the right direction. In the meantime I had spent a lot of energy struggling with the question whether I had made the correct decision, or whether I had just been paranoid.

The main reason for doubting ourselves is oftentimes simply because others ridicule our intuition. They may even tell us that we are insane for even considering the direction our intuition sends us. However, the only way we can find out is to do what WE think is best.
Definitions and Statements

Intuition is explained by the Concise Oxford Dictionary as, 1) Immediate apprehension by the mind without reasoning. 2) Immediate apprehension by a sense. 3) Immediate insight.

Increasingly, we notice that management- and leadership experts recommend us to practice more empathy in our leadership styles. This clearly entails the sensitive issue of feeling rather than thinking, right? It’s an encouragement to act with our hearts instead of our minds; to follow the “hunch,” the little voice within us that tells us what would be the right direction to go. Pollock (2002) suggests, “When you must weigh two or more ideas, the most productive approach is to give them an initial screening. This is usually based on a mixture of common sense, intuition, good judgment, imagination and, yes, some luck.”

Referring to the need for meaning at work among the workers of today, Whitehead (2002) exclaims, “? The trend towards imagination and creativity is more than the latest hype from the management consultancies. [?] It reflects a growing realization of how the world actually works. It’s a world [?], not only of facts and figures, but of intuition, hunch and gut instinct.” Whitehead continues, “A huge amount of decision-making is not about weighing up the facts and figures, but following a hunch about what you think will happen.”

In an article about successful investors, Sykes (2002) pulls the intuition issue even further by stating, “Intuition. It’s what separates the men from the boys, or shall I say, the women from the girls? Either way, intuition is vital in decision [-making]?”

A good example of this philosophy is given by Tazzia (2001) when he discusses his findings about “the skills that top marketing officers of the future will need,” thereby listing them as follows, “1. Strategic vision and strategic process, 2. Intuition and the ability to react, 3. Creative development and innovation, 4. Desire for accountability, and 5. An action orientation.” When elaborating on point 2, Tazzia concludes, “The world is too complex and moving too fast for classic analytical tools to cope. You can’t wait to gather all the data, and even if you could, the data would change before you could react.” He then continues, “Can intuition be taught? Not in the opinion of our panel. But it can be killed early in a young manager’s career. Intuition demands that people trust their judgment, take risks. If companies hammer a young manager for a market failure, will he or she ever take a risk again? What you can teach these young people is how to mitigate risks, how to cover their bets. That would be valuable.”

This is exactly what Michael Burke may have meant when he stated, “Good instincts usually tell you what to do before your head has figured it out.” Embroidering on this theme, it may very well be that we are using our intuition all the time, and in everything we do, especially if we consider the following statement: “Practical observation commonly consists of collecting a few facts and loading them with guesses.” (Unknown Source) An interesting development these days is that not only people are using intuition as a strategic management tool. Entire organizations do so as well. Murphy (2002), for instance, sums up the successful approach of a business by stating, “With the right tools and a little intuition, organizations can increase profitability by leveraging customer information to anticipate customers’ needs and influence their behavior.”

Nevertheless, not everybody perceives intuition as a reliable source for decision-making. Suutari (2001), for example, allots it a fairly ambivalent status by asserting, “Time constraints, among other factors, force [a] manager to make a plethora of decisions based primarily on an existing knowledge base, experience and even intuition.” Suutari continues somewhat further in his article, “Experience, (and its cousin, intuition) provide a basis of reference as to what has or has not worked before. However, experience is only valid if the fundamental circumstances are similar. Experience can play a role in decisions in all modes, resulting in a tendency to repeat a specific action until it fails.”

Now this is exactly the part where I don’t agree with this author’s point of view, because I find it hard to see experience and intuition as two related subjects. On the contrary! While experience is based on past occurrences, intuition is more of a guiding sensation into taking the most viable “leap in the dark,” whereby “the dark” is obviously the unknown. But then again, there’s a quote by Dr. Joyce Brothers that says, “Trust your hunches. They’re usually based on facts filed away just below the conscious level.” So, who knows, maybe intuition IS based on experiences, if not from this life, perhaps from previous ones?if you believe in reincarnation??

Interestingly?and seemingly contradicting?McDonalds (2002) comes up with a broad, lyrical range of definitions in which he clearly detaches intuition from any sort of experience: “Intuition. The ability to see any event, any object from a viewpoint of the cosmic whole, from it’s culmination - the seed, the flower, the fruit in relation to the whole. The knowing of something without prior knowledge or the use of reason.” McDonalds (2002) emphasizes the increasing recognition given to intuition by citing the following statement from Intuition Magazine Online, “In recent years, the subject of intuition has emerged from obscurity. Intuition is increasingly recognized as a natural mental faculty, a key element in the creative process, a means of discovery, problem solving, and decision-making. Once considered the province of a gifted few, it is now recognized as an innate capacity available to everyone not a rare, accidental talent, but a natural skill anyone can cultivate. A key ingredient in what we call genius, it is also an important tool when applied to everyday life.”
Personal Thoughts and Suggestions

Having done some reflective thinking, I came up with the following cycle:

The more we eliminate confusing rustle in our lives, the more we become focused. The more we become focused, the better we understand ourselves. The better we understand ourselves, the more intense we live. The more intense we live, the better we hear our inner voice. The better we hear our inner voice, the more empathic we can listen to it. The more empathic we can listen to our inner voice, the more determined we become, for it’s then that we know we hear the right thing? and do it.

Here’s some other food for thought:

1. Use all the knowledge you gained through school- and street education, but never underestimate the feeling you get when making a certain decision. If it doesn’t feel good, reconsider, for if you don’t, 9 times out of 10 the outcome will be unfavorable.
2. No matter how convincing others’ arguments toward the opposite are, if your intuition has been pushing you in a certain direction for quite a while, and you have given it sufficient consideration, go for it. In the end you’ll find you did the right thing. Remember, you’ll never fully fathom others’ motives, but you DO know yours.
3. Once you’ve taken a decision based on your gut feeling, work on it! Even the most excellent project or the most blissful idea can go wrong if you don’t invest time and effort in it. And how easy will it then be for the negativists around you to rub “the failure of your intuition” in your face?

Finalizing: Intuition is a powerful guiding tool in every area of our life if we just care to give it a chance. The value of following one’s intuition can be concluded from Albert Einstein’s proclamation, “I never came upon any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.” And finally, it may very well be the immortal Ralph Waldo Emerson, who stated the most dynamic conviction about the power of intuition when he said, “If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.”

References:

Diverse. (1999). Intuition, [Internet]. Cyber Nation [2002, April 6].

Higher Awareness, I. (1999). Intuition and Awareness. Higher
Awareness, Inc. Available: http://www.higherawareness.com/awarenessandintuition.shtml [2002, April 6].

Macdonald, I. A. (2002, February 27, 2002). Intuition…Awaken the Journey Within, [Internet]. Iain A. Macdonald. Available: http://intuition2vishnu.homestead.com/ [2002, April 6].

Murphy, D. (2002). Predictive analytics as the proverbial early bird. Customer Inter@Ction Solutions, 20(7), 26-27.

Pollock, T. (2002). Mind your own business. Supervision, 63(3), 17-19.

Suutari, R. (2001). Playing the decision-making game. CMA Management, 75(7), 14-17.

Sykes, T. A. (2002). Investing 301: Part 3. Black Enterprise, 32(6), 65-67.

Tazzia, E. (2001). Nurturing your natural talents. Advertising Age, 72(44), 20.

Whitehead, M. (2002). Passion at a premium. Supply Management, 7(4), 20-24.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking casualties of recent stock market performance are the 20 state-sponsored college tuition pre-payment plans throughout the country. With college costs continuing to grow at a pace of about 9% per year and investment returns on plan assets being flat or negative, the sponsors of the various prepaid tuition programs now project long-term cash shortages.

Investors in the program thought that they had purchased paid up tuition credits under the program, regardless of the future rise in tuition costs. But now states anticipate notifying investors hat the plan cannot meet its projections, and so the investors must pay up by making additional investments or bail out of the program. Colorado has already notified investors of the default and other states anticipate similar actions in the future. Other states are considering more creative options. Most plans agree that the growth of plan assets will not keep pace with college tuition inflation over the next decade.

Investors are irked because they thought that these plans represented a guarantee backed up by the sponsoring state and are shocked to learn that this is not the case.

Of course, a recovery of the financial markets will greatly help ease the burden, but many investment advisers do not expect that to happen in the near future.

Tony Novak is an independent writer and financial adviser in Narberth PA who provides OnlineAdviser services through MedSave.com and FreedomBenefits.org.

Tags: Tuition Research