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Blink & Build Your Intuition

What are your thoughts on intuition? A hunch, an insight, instinctive knowledge, immediately apprehending some truth, these are all ways of obtaining knowledge neither by reason nor by perception. Researching a bit on intuition, I came across the book Blink:The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell , the wild-haired, best selling author of The Tipping Point:How Little Things Make A Big Difference  and Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell’s hair actually inspired Blink, as sharing the same lid as a criminal in New York City had him accosted by cops & lead him to consider the weird power of first impressions.

The real story behind Blink is the tale of how the human subconscious takes cues and leads people to make informed discernments in a flash. Studying how a Cleveland firefighter made up his mind to have his men flee a building just prior to its collapse, the author highlights the fire lieutenant’s  inability to  explain how he knew to order his men out, thinking it was ESP. From what Gladwell calls “the locked door” in our brains, the fireman just “blinked” and made the right choice. In fact, if the fireman had deliberated on the facts he was seeing, he would have likely lost his life and the lives of his men. Gladwell calls this “thin slicing” or our ability to judge surroundings very quickly.

If you trust rather than analyze when you have an intuitive knowing, it will take you exactly where you need to go. If the fireman deliberated, he’d be dead. Over examination might lead you down an equally lifeless road. Of course, finding the balance between making snap decisions and choices more carefully weighed can be clarified by meditation and other practices of spiritual purification. While intuition is a skill set natural to everyone, mind training harnesses the power of instinct so that seconds of unconscious thought become more logical and comprehensive. Meditation also influences our constant barrage of thoughts to be less judgmental and instead more constructive.