Episode 13: Intuition

Over the past 8 months (maybe my whole life, really), I’ve spent a lot of time contemplating intuition - what is it, what does it mean, when does it show up. Am I feeling anxiety? Or is it my intuition telling me something is wrong?

I’ve thought about this over and over again - did I “know” something was wrong with Nora? Should we have made a different choice? When I feel like something bad is going to happen is it my anxiety or my intuition? When do I listen to it and when do I take a deep breath and let it go?

If this applies to you - I hope the following resonates. When we feel like something bad is going to happen and it does, we take it as evidence - we assign meaning to it, and it reinforces the idea that we knew. If we feel like something bad is going to happen and it doesn’t, we take it as our anxiety. That’s some sneaky selective attribution, if you ask me.

The definition of intuition is the ability to acquire knowledge without recourse to conscious reasoning or needing an explanation. According to Wikipedia, the word intuition comes from the Latin verb intueri, which means "to consider" or "to contemplate". It refers to the immediate, non-rational understanding of a situation or problem, as well as sudden insights or inspirations.

Intuition often gets associated with an ability to know the future. My perspective, in this current moment, is that this is another way we as human beings trick ourselves into believing we have more control than we do.

I’ve realized, in my own contemplation and reflection, that the power of intuition and being able to access our intuition applies when there is a decision to be made or an action to take. When making a decision, we can rely on our intuition, trusting that a sense or a feeling does not require conscious reasoning in order for it to be a valid factor in a decision-making process. Without a decision or an ability to take an action as a result, intuition is kind of pointless. It spins us into a state of mind, for better or worse, convincing ourselves that we know the future, as we wait to see what unfolds.

When it comes to what happened with Nora, I know there are choices that may have resulted in different outcomes. The fact is, though, we will never know what those outcomes would have been or how things would have played out in the countless scenarios and possibilities in our minds…..queue acceptance.

And when it comes to the circling question of was it intuition or anxiety that morning? Either way, we did what we could in that moment, which is we factored in the feeling or sense into our decision, and we took the action to go to the hospital. The truth is, I left the hospital feeling like we were going to meet our baby girl later that day. In reality, we did. It was just different than we thought.

So the next time I’m asking myself - is this my anxiety or my intuition? The next question I will ask myself is this - is there a decision I can make or an action I can take? If yes, then it is reasonable to integrate the feelings into my decision-making on what to do next. If there is not a decision to make or an action to take, then I have to open myself up to the uncertainty of what will be and know that if I convince myself things are going to work out or that things are not, the reality is I’ll just have to wait and see.