I N T U I T I O N

WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT NOT? HOW DOES IT HELP US TO MAKE SNAP DECISIONS? 

“Sometimes our unconscious intelligence is smarter than our conscious intelligence.”

Intuition can be defined as an instinctive ability to know what to do in dire situations without thinking and without being consciously aware of your knowledge. We often do not know what we know.

As I see it, intuition (as claimed by some) is not an emotion because intuitive decisions are not associated with human emotions. Emotional decisions, which are devoid of reasoning, are completely different types of decisions. To me, intuition is more like a sense, an inner voice, aninsight, or a gut feeling.

I further believe that intuition is a very necessary, evolution acquired, subconscious intelligencefor self-care and survival.

Our primitive hunter–gatherer ancestors’ life was full of instant dangers. They had to constantly face dangers that needed immediate, snap “ fight or flight” decisions in order to survive. Some of them acquired this ability through evolutionary genetic mutations and passed it to their offspring. That is why we are all born with intuition- it is innate and hard-wired. It subconsciously leads us towards a particular decision and behavior.

Unfortunately, not many of us posses a strong intuition. I believe it is closely related to our IQ level.

Many behavioral scientists believe that our behaviors happen automatically, without thinking and is guided by genetics, emotions and habits, rather than conscious deliberation and reasoning. Because thinking is much more difficult, tiring, energy consuming and require the involvement of higher mental faculties. Studies have shown that 20% of the brain’s energy is spent for thinking. 

Nobel laureate Dr. Kahneman in his famous book Thinking Fast and Slow brilliantly answered these important questions about decision making. According to Kahneman, our brain possesses two completely different and independent decision making systems: System I and System II.

System I decisions are intuitive, sudden, unconscious and automatic. 

System II decisions,on the other hand, are conscious, deliberate, slow and require analytics, facts, data and step-by-step processesto come to a decision. System II does not interfere and is not even aware of system I decisions, unless it’s asked by System I to help.

Intuitive System I decisionsare not haphazardly made decisions. They are the products ofunconscious intelligence, knowledge and wisdom. They are correct most of the time. But we do not know whether they are right or wrong decisions until we act on them.

Intuitive System I decisions are very important in medical practice, especially in emergency situations because there is no time to think. Snap decisions are necessary to save life.

Doctors are not born with medical intuitions. The only way to acquire them is hard work, medical practice and experience, practical associated knowledge and mentoring. It takes a long time and much experience until medical knowledge enters our subconscious mind and become medical intuitions.