Intuition was a wonderful gift. It was also an awful curse. By instantly recognizing patterns, intuition was nature’s vital tool for survival. Life ceaselessly faced a train of unlimited choices and, often, baffling problems. These demanded instant decisions. An animal could not remain undecided, whether to drink water, or to eat grass. Should it be aggressive and fight, run away, or relax and accept the situation? It was intuition, which interpreted events to trigger emotions. Anger made them aggressive. Fear made them retreat. And familiarity supported relaxation. Each emotion eliminated groups of thoughts. If fighting was the option, amicable thoughts did not fit. If the decision was to cut and run, it was useless to marshal one’s militant strengths. The intuitive process eliminated mental activity, which did not fit the chosen course of action. Sadly, this elimination process was also the biggest weakness of the system.

Each emotion set off a focused drive seeking solutions. Anger, fear, or friendliness triggered competing drives. Intuition focused each drive by eliminating views that did not fit its compulsive focus. Anger eliminated amicable memories. Fear lost sight of fighting strengths. As any situation evolved, the emotional strengths of these partisan drives varied. Opposing emotions competed for control. Intuition acted in the emotional center, the limbic system, to select the most powerful emotion, which then ruled. If it was anger, it pulled the trigger. When the choice was made, the process inhibited competing drives, with contrary feelings. Opposing views were largely lost to consciousness.

Across species, fear dictated an escape drive, which sought safety. A deer bounded away. A bird took flight. A fish swam off. While the activities of running, flying and swimming differed, it was the drive, which achieved the objective of escaping. Each drive evaluated experience and the environment. Escape was hardly possible by heading into the predator. Getting away demanded evaluation of many escape routes, including slipping into a safe sanctuary, inaccessible to the predator. Like the underside of a rock. Drives involved a search of multiple contexts to uncover the right answer. While intuitive drives usually delivered the answer instantly, some drives failed to uncover solutions.

Modern life offered few speedy answers. Senior positions had added problems. The higher the position, more the solutions needed for the myriad problems faced by a venture. Intuition, driven by emotions, was the creative force, which delivered answers. Hidden from view, drives constantly sought solutions. While one problem was consciously evaluated, subconscious drives continued search processes to solve other issues. Since, anger, fear or jealousy powered such searches, they often sought to achieve conflicting objectives. These hidden emotions troubled the mind, creating distressing internal conflicts. Sadly, this was the negative face of intuition, standing in the way of achieving peace of mind.

Conflicting viewpoints surged in the subconscious. How could they be integrated? In a harsh and unforgiving world, how could a multitude of clashing drives be graciously focused? How could the mind be stilled? Across the ages, many solutions were offered to focus the mind and still conflicts. Meditation, chanting and breathing routines were found to be beneficial. But, those practices treated the symptom, not the problem. The long term solution was to quiet the internal battles of these competing drives. All knowledge and experience lived within. These same drives were powerful search processes, which could delve deep, to deliver answers. Unique new insights and solutions waited to be discovered.

Drives provided windows into the mind. It was a drive, which assisted in the preparation of a simple shopping list. It searched memory and current context to deliver, line by line, a list of all the items you needed to buy. By contextually searching the mind, drives could be made to play a valuable, creative role. When particularly burdened by a problem, drives could draw out a list of one’s deepest concerns. With its sort facility, a spreadsheet could be used to list and comprehend the turmoils of the mind. The routine could begin by listing, line by line, different aspects of a problem, as it came to mind. Each, a short entry in a single cell of the spread sheet. It may have just begun with, say, “Feel awful” and gone on down. That was the first thought. Many conflicting emotions surged in the background. Each line would sum up a single feeling and its concern. It could be “Negative departmental report” Or, it could be just a hunch. “David will support me.” The worst fears were noted down. “Mortgage payments.” And the common sense thoughts. “This too will pass.”

Writing a list was a calming process. The questioning drive helped still the mind. Differing viewpoints were noted down. These views would arrive in conspicuous sequence. Each entry brought one viewpoint into consciousness - into the general view of isolated and competing drives. Sensible viewpoints would normally have been eliminated from view by angry emotions. Typically, about 60 odd entries would empty the mind of every related thought. Entering opposing viewpoints usually brought balance. The inquiry process stilled background turmoil. The most critical part of this process came next.

A label was entered for each line in an adjacent cell on the spreadsheet. “Fear,” “Opportunity”, or even “Unlikely” could be the labels. With every aspect already considered, it was easier to label an entry. Each label fitted a few more entries. The picture slowly cleared. Underground fears surfaced. Solutions emerged. The closing of one door usually opened another. Those 60 entries would fit a dozen or so categories. A “sort” of the labels column would arrange similar ones together, in alphabetic order. Listing similarly labeled ideas together would bring clarity. They became groups of consistent, allied thoughts. The sorted spreadsheet list integrated the mind.

Isolated drives were forced into the open and a balanced view emerged. Viewed together, “Unlikely” put a label on needless worries. The less likely outcomes could be ignored. The inevitable ones had to be accepted. That left you with the actions you could take. “Opportunities” formed the basis for a future plan. The rest of the list just climbed off your chest. Another threatening issue would have been acknowledged, accepted and foreseen. The spreadsheet evaluation balanced the mind and stilled hidden anxieties and conflicts. Lifted burdens. Anger and fear, love and altruism cooperated to search for solutions which met all the concerns of the mind. With the power of intuition, an integrated mind became the most creative force in the world.

About the Author

Abraham Thomas is the author of The Intuitive Algorithm, a book, which suggests that intuition is a pattern recognition algorithm. The ebook version is available at www.intuition.co.in. The book may be purchased only in India. The website, provides a free movie and a walk through to explain the ideas.

Everyone has intuition; it’s hard-wired in us. Everybody wants more intution; it’s a great lifeskill for problem-solving, generating solutions, and making good decisions. It can be developed, but you have to have a certain mindset to develop and strengthen it. These are things NOT to do if you want to become more intuitive.

1. Be in a hurry

2. Have no symbolic ability. Dont participate in or enjoy any of the arts.

3. Be unconcerned about your integrity or purposes in wanting to use intuition.

4. Let your ego run away with you, having to be right, controlling and in charge.

5. Not learn how to differentiate between intuition, fear, and wishful thinking.

6. Hang out with people who don’t believe in intuition, know about it, or use it. Intuition is contagious and so is lack of intuition.

7. Try and invoke your intuition with willpower or force it in any way.

8. Believing that logic, analysis and rational thinking are the only way or best way to solve problems, make decisions and generate solutions.

9. Not being able to still the executive function of your brain–the part that scans, is alert, worries and analyzes.

10. Not getting coaching or teaching so you get feedback on your skills as they develop, learn how to manage your ego, and keep yourself off overload as you learn.

Susan Dunn is a personal and professional development coach, speaker, writer and author and head of a distance learning school. Email her for FREE ezine.

You have permission to publish this article in your ezine or on your website, free of charge, as long as the resource box is included. Please send a courtesy copy of your publication to claudette@metavoice.org.

Word Count: 499 words

Thanks,
Claudette Rowley
============

Trust the Power of Your Intuition Claudette Rowley
Copyright 2004

Trust the Power of Your Intuition

“Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.” - Shakti Gawain

You have an important decision to make…your intuition is telling you one thing and your mind is advising another direction. You may have read about intuition or, heard people talk about the importance of following it, but still you hedge at taking the leap. What’s missing can be summed up in one word: TRUST.

What stops you from trusting your intuition?

- The Logical Mind - It’s not uncommon for logic to say “If it can’t be proven, seen, felt or heard, it’s hogwash. Give me facts, give me proof.”

- Social conditioning - Most of us aren’t raised in environments where our caretakers say, “Use that intuition! Really listen to it.”

- Doubt - Until we become attuned to the voice of our own intuition, we may harbor doubt. People often say to me, “I’m not sure if it’s my intuition or something else.”

- Inner critic/self-sabotage - Whenever you hear your inner wisdom, the inner critic is bound to pop up and offer its sabotaging opinion.

- You don’t like what your intuition tells you - Sometimes our intuition rings clear as a bell, and we don’t like what it says. For example: “You need to leave this job NOW.” Unless you have another job lined up or money in the bank, most of us would feel fear upon hearing that statement.

You might be thinking “I know I need to trust my intuition. But how do I do that?” Try out the steps below, in the order that intuitively feels right to you.

T - Talk to your intuition. Ask your intuition a question. Get in touch with it.
R - Rest your mind. Your mind can get in the way of hearing an intuitive insight. Give your self the space to clear your mind and listen to your inner messages. Spend time in nature, meditate, do yoga or something with a rhythm to it, like taking a shower, going for a walk, or listening to peaceful music.
U - Un-know. Let go of the need to know. You may understand your intuitive message, or it may ask you to leap into the unknown. It’s not important to understand the “why” or the result you’ll gain by taking action on your intuition. S - Suspend judgment. Intuition isn’t good or bad. It’s purely a message from your own inner wisdom. T - Take action. Until you take action on the messages you receive, your intuition can’t work its magic in your life.

Using your intuition will lead you in new directions and open a door that you might not have otherwise opened. Trusting your intuition is the key that unlocks the door, and acting on it allows you to walk through the doorway to a new opportunity. Trust your intuition and watch its power unfold.

Claudette Rowley, coach and author, helps professionals identify and pursue their true purpose and calling in life.
Contact her today for a complimentary consultation at 781-676-5633 or claudette@metavoice.org. Sign up for her free newsletter “Insights for the Savvy” at http://www.metavoice.org.

“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.

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“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.

K-12th grade Internet schools are low-cost, quality private schools that make life easier for parents. Home-schooling normally requires parents to personally teach their children at home, using a wide variety of educational teaching materials, including books, the Internet, and computer learning software.

However, for those parents who have little time to spare, or dont yet feel confident in home-schooling their children, Internet private schools are a wonderful new alternative. These schools take most of the home-schooling burden off parents backs, yet can give children a low-cost, quality education at home.

An Internet private school for children is similar to the Internet college-degree programs that many universities around the country now offer adults. There are many good Internet schools parents can choose from. Some schools only offer high-school programs while others offer a complete, 1st through 12th grade education.

Many Internet private schools give a course of study similar to traditional private schools. They take children thorough a progressive curriculum in math, science, reading and writing, social studies, and many other subjects.

This structured, comprehensive program is like having a personal teacher and private school in a parents own living room. As a result, these schools can relieve parents of most of the home-schooling burden, while giving children a high-quality education.

This setup is especially helpful for single-working moms, or families where both mother and father work. Since Internet-school teachers supervise the childs education, its less likely that parents will have to take time from work or quit their job to homeschool their kids.

Many Internet private schools charge much lower tuition rates than brick-and-mortar, secular private schools, and sometimes thousands of dollars a year less than Catholic or Protestant-affiliated schools. Tuition costs vary with each school, from as low as $350 a year to $2000 or more a year. Many quality Internet private schools charge less than $850 a year.

Internet schools are a great resource for parents with a limited budget who also want to escape the public schools and give their kids a great education.

Our book, “Public Schools, Public Menace” has a whole Resource section devoted to Internet private schools and other education options for parents.

About the author:
Joel Turtel is the author of Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children.”
Website: www.mykidsdeservebetter.com,
Email: lbooksusa@aol.com,
Phone: 718-447-7348.
Article Copyrighted 2005 by Joel Turtel.
NOTE: You may post this Article on another website only if you set up a hyperlink to Joel Turtels email address and website URL, www.mykidsdeservebetter.com

Foreign students planning to study in Britain will have to meet stricter criteria under new rules introduced by the Home Office in a crackdown on bogus students and colleges. The Home Office published proposals for much tighter rules for foreign
Source: www.hindustantimes.com

Tuition, fees set for all Mich public universities - Chicago Tribune
DETROIT - Tuition and fees are now set for all of Michigan ’s 15 public universities entering next academic year. Wayne State University was the last to set its tuition and fee rates. The university’s governing board on Wednesday approved a 5.9
Source: www.chicagotribune.com

FAU weighs 6% tuition boost for sought-after nonresidents - Palm Beach Post
Florida Atlantic University trustees vote today on whether to hike tuition for nonresident undergraduate students by 6 percent - an increase that would make the school thousands of dollars more expensive than the average U.S. university. If the
Source: www.palmbeachpost.com

Urban students will be free from tuition, other fees - China Economic Net
China will make all urban students free from tuition and other incidental fees as of the coming Autumn term to promote the nine-year compulsory education, according to a State Council decision made Wednesday. The decision was taken at a State Council
Source: en.ce.cn

Starting tomorrow, homeowners can appeal assessment - ksl.com
and I thought mine was bad going up another $10K in value this year. They say the housing market is depressed. They say home values are down and that’s why the Fed. Gov. is stepping in. Then someone please tell the County Assessor the facts! The only
Source: www.ksl.com

YPSILANTI, Mich. Tuition and mandatory fees at Eastern Michigan University will increase 7.7% in the upcoming academic year. The increase was approved by the university’s governing board today. Full-time, in-state undergraduates will pay $8,069
Source: www.freep.com

Ohio Tuition Trust Authority to Add Investment Options in Ohio’s 529 - Forbes
COLUMBUS, Ohio, July 29 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Ohio Tuition Trust Authority will make a series of changes to the investment product line for Ohio’s 529 college savings plan, CollegeAdvantage. The purpose of the changes is to diversify
Source: www.forbes.com

Bill Aims To Address Rising College Costs Save Email Print - KAKE TV
Congress wants to blow the whistle on colleges that raise tuition sharply. Lawmakers also want to help students pay less for textbooks and make Pell grants available year-round. A vote could come within days on a wide-ranging bill designed to address
Source: www.kake.com

Have you ever used your intuition to solve problems? Can you trust your intuition? Can you improve it?

Have you ever used your intuition to solve problems? Can you trust your intuition? Can you improve it?

What Is Intuition?

Intuition is simply a feeling , sense, or hunch based on information not available to your conscious mind. Some say this comes from the ether or wherever, but I’m content to believe that our minds have a lot more going on in there than we know.

How can Gary Kasparov win a chess game against a computer that can calculate positions many moves further ahead than he can? By using his intuitive grasp of the game. His experience allows him to combine analysis with a “sense” of which move is best.

Intuition can also warn us. My wife and I felt we shoudn’t get on that bus in South America. We knew crowded busses were prime hunting grounds for pickpockets, and we saw the drunk man bumping into people. We didn’t think about these things consciously, but they registered in our minds, and warned us. We ignored our intuition, and I was robbed.

Of course, you can have a hunch for irrelevant reasons too. If you were hit by a taxi as a child, you might have “intuitive” hunches not to get into taxis for the rest of your life. So how do you know when to trust your intuition?

Three Simple Steps To Better Intuition

1. Watch for it. You’ll have hunches and ideas more often. I bought a conversion van, and now I see them all over. Have you had a similar experience? The same process will happen if you watch for your intuition - you’ll start to see more of it.

2. Question it. If I had asked myself why I felt bad about that bus, I might have thought, “Oh yeah, crowded busses are a bad idea. I know that.” Try to see in which areas your intuition works best, or not at all. If, for example, your hunches about people are always wrong, don’t follow them.

3. Give it good information. Your skill, knowledge and experience determine the potential effectiveness of your intuition. A weak chess player will never intuitively beat that computer. So learn enough about a subject, before you expect any good hunches. Remember the programmer’s maxim: garbage in - garbage out.

Do these three things and you’ll have more useful intuition more often.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

If you recognize the value of having a post secondary education but are having a hard time coming up with the funds to get yourself through. A financial grant is one way that you can get yourself up to several thousand dollars in aid money. Grants, unlike other forms of financial aid, come with the added stipulation that you do not have to pay them back!

Grants are funds given to tax-exempt nonprofit organizations or local governments by foundations, corporations, governments, small business and individuals. Most grants are made to fund a specific project and require some level of reporting. The process involves an applicant submitting a proposal to a potential funder, either on the applicant’s own initiative or in response to a Request for Proposals from the funder. Other grants can be given to individuals, such as victims of natural disasters or individuals who seek to open a small business.

1. Educational Grants

There are conditions that apply to grants, of course. You didn’t think you were going to get something for nothing did you? First of all, you must prove that you are in financial need. Grants are awarded only to those students that have demonstrated their family income level is below a certain level. There are also grants offered by corporations to benefit certain minorities and disadvantaged groups of individuals.

2. Apply Early Also, Apply Often

It never hurts to apply for an educational grant. Who knows, you just might get it! Of coruse, you can’t just phone a school up and apply, you will be required to fill out several complex application forms. Some grant applications also require a written essay.

3. Grant Application Forms

Most of the time, you can find application forms posted online so there is no need for you to visit the institutions yourself in person. This form is more commonly known as FAFSA form or the Free Application for Federal Student Aid form. You just have to fill up the FAFSA form and this form is consequently evaluated by the government. With education becoming more and more expensive, it makes the most sense for you to try and lower the costs as much as possible.

About the Author:

For more great education grant related articles and resources check out http://123grants.info

Accurate predictions of the future are rare. Many examples exist where misguided intuition of the brightest and most qualified individuals prevented them from foreseeing the future. Consider examples from the arts (see part I), business (see part II), and science (see part III).

Misguided intuition in the arts
D. W. Griffith is regarded by many as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. More than anyone of the silent era, he recognized the potential of movies as an expressive medium. During that time, his achievements were momentous. In 1915 he finished the feature “Birth of a Nation,” regarded as the first masterpiece of cinema. In 1919 he finished the movie “Intolerance” (1919), which marked a new standard in filmmaking. His next two movies, “Broken Blossoms” (1919) and “Way Down East” (1920), sealed his reputation as America’s preeminent director. According to James Agee, “To watch his work is like being a witness to the beginning of melody, or the first conscious use of the lever or the wheel; the emergence, coordination, and first eloquence of language; the birth of an art: and to realize that this is all the work of one man.” The great silent movie actor Lillian Gish called him “the father of film” and Charlie Chaplin called him “the teacher of us all.” During the same time, D. W. Griffith also exhibited superb business instincts by founding the United Artist production company together with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and Mary Pickford, the three greatest performers of the day.

However, from the mid to late 1920s things began to change. His intuitive powers started to wane. In 1924, at the age of 49, Griffith wrote in an article published by the Saturday Evening Post, “We do not want now and we shall never want the human voice with our films.” Only three years later, in 1927 the first talking movie, “The Jazz Singer” with Al Jolson was released. The reaction of the public to the movie was astounding. The picture was a sellout, one of the big box office hits of all time. In October 1930, the Fortune magazine wrote, “The advent of American talking movies is beyond comparison the fastest and most amazing revolution the whole history of industrial revolutions.” Griffith’s failed prediction was only an early sign of his now chronic misguided intuition. From the late 1920s, Griffith’s movies were slowly sinking into oblivion. In the glitter of the Jazz Age, his filmmaking was considered hopelessly old-fashioned. His last picture, “The Struggle,” was made in 1931 and played in theaters for merely a week before being withdrawn. On July 23, 1948, Griffith died in a small Los Angeles hotel virtually forgotten by the industry he helped build.

What was the cause of Griffith’s transition from great intuition to misguided intuition? One of the most common causes of misguided intuition, and therefore, the limited success of experts in predicting the future, is the “situation bias.” Experts, like all humans, tend to imagine future technologies as an extension of current technologies. The bias grows stronger when the individual has a vested interest in the current technology and is concerned that the new technology will diminish the popularity of his or her prized, older technology. Griffith was a master of the silent movie. His skill in eliciting powerful reactions from the audience without resorting to spoken dialogue was legendary. This unique skill was the reason for his downfall. It distorted his intuition and prevented him from foreseeing the potential of the human voice in movies.

How is this example related to misguided intuition in market research? The situation bias is especially strong in manual interpretation of qualitative data. During such interpretation, the analyst shows a strong tendency to look for the familiar. Pat Bentley from Apple emphasizes this point: “When you analyze the respondents’ answers manually you look for repeats, things that sound important either because you heard them before or you’re looking for them yourself; therefore, they make sense to you.”

Do you want to observe your own situational bias? Go to http://www.computerintuition.com/Question1.htm and follow the instructions.

About the Author

Mike T. Davis, Ph.D., SCI, Rochester NY
We are the inventors of Computer Intuition?, a psycholinguistics based program that analyzes the language that people use. The program calculates the psychological intensity, or psytensity, of every idea found in the input, and “converts what people say into what people do”?. SCI’s clients include many Fortune 500 and smaller companies.

You have permission to publish this article in your ezine or on your website, free of charge, as long as the resource box is included. Please send a courtesy copy of your publication to claudette@metavoice.org.

Word Count: 499 words

Thanks,
Claudette Rowley
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Trust the Power of Your Intuition Claudette Rowley
Copyright 2004

Trust the Power of Your Intuition

“Every time you don’t follow your inner guidance, you feel a loss of energy, loss of power, a sense of spiritual deadness.” - Shakti Gawain

You have an important decision to make…your intuition is telling you one thing and your mind is advising another direction. You may have read about intuition or, heard people talk about the importance of following it, but still you hedge at taking the leap. What’s missing can be summed up in one word: TRUST.

What stops you from trusting your intuition?

- The Logical Mind - It’s not uncommon for logic to say “If it can’t be proven, seen, felt or heard, it’s hogwash. Give me facts, give me proof.”

- Social conditioning - Most of us aren’t raised in environments where our caretakers say, “Use that intuition! Really listen to it.”

- Doubt - Until we become attuned to the voice of our own intuition, we may harbor doubt. People often say to me, “I’m not sure if it’s my intuition or something else.”

- Inner critic/self-sabotage - Whenever you hear your inner wisdom, the inner critic is bound to pop up and offer its sabotaging opinion.

- You don’t like what your intuition tells you - Sometimes our intuition rings clear as a bell, and we don’t like what it says. For example: “You need to leave this job NOW.” Unless you have another job lined up or money in the bank, most of us would feel fear upon hearing that statement.

You might be thinking “I know I need to trust my intuition. But how do I do that?” Try out the steps below, in the order that intuitively feels right to you.

T - Talk to your intuition. Ask your intuition a question. Get in touch with it.
R - Rest your mind. Your mind can get in the way of hearing an intuitive insight. Give your self the space to clear your mind and listen to your inner messages. Spend time in nature, meditate, do yoga or something with a rhythm to it, like taking a shower, going for a walk, or listening to peaceful music.
U - Un-know. Let go of the need to know. You may understand your intuitive message, or it may ask you to leap into the unknown. It’s not important to understand the “why” or the result you’ll gain by taking action on your intuition. S - Suspend judgment. Intuition isn’t good or bad. It’s purely a message from your own inner wisdom. T - Take action. Until you take action on the messages you receive, your intuition can’t work its magic in your life.

Using your intuition will lead you in new directions and open a door that you might not have otherwise opened. Trusting your intuition is the key that unlocks the door, and acting on it allows you to walk through the doorway to a new opportunity. Trust your intuition and watch its power unfold.

Claudette Rowley, coach and author, helps professionals identify and pursue their true purpose and calling in life.
Contact her today for a complimentary consultation at 781-676-5633 or claudette@metavoice.org. Sign up for her free newsletter “Insights for the Savvy” at http://www.metavoice.org.