Why pros and cons aren’t enough: developing your intuition 

[00:00:00] There are people who think intuition is something you either have, or don't have. And I am not one of those people. I think intuition is something that you can develop and nurture. So today, we'll talk about how to start developing your intuition more so you can make better, more aligned decisions for yourself. And also why that can feel really hard sometimes. We will talk about what intuition is. Also how to help your anxious mind get a little more comfortable with it. And why just weighing the pros and cons. Often isn't enough when you're trying to make a decision. Are you with me? Let's go.

Welcome to Careergasm. This is a place to help you find your [00:01:00] way to feel good work. I'm Sarah Vermnt and I help people navigate their careers. I'm a career coach, a bestselling author. And my work has been featured at places like Forbes, fortune. Inc entrepreneur and fast company. On this show, we talk about career navigation and career change, and specifically the human side of work, where the professional is personal. We have heartfelt nuanced conversations about navigating your career. Including all of the squishy feelings that come along with being a human at work. Thanks for listening. I'm glad you're here.

You might hear a little bit of rain. From my skylight today. I've decided that is terming an atmospheric instead of annoying. Because I usually think it sounds charming except what I'm trying to record a [00:02:00] podcast. Uh, last episode, we talked about noticing your intuition and why that can feel so darn hard. And today we're continuing that conversation and we're going to continue this conversation about intuition for a few episodes. But today I really want to talk about. Developing. And nurturing your intuition. So a great place to start is just talking a little bit about what intuition actually is. Cause it kind of has this sort of like. Nebulous, not quite definable thing about it, right. I like to think of intuition as your inner knowing. That's separate from logic, kind of like your own personal inner wisdom around like a sense of what's right and wrong for you. Almost like a, like a little factory installed [00:03:00] compass inside of you. It's kind of a quiet. Knowing a quiet part. 

And it's a part of you that exists. Beyond your mind. 

And I happen to think that we were all born with intuition. It's like it was factory installed the day you were born. I think everybody's born with it. And very often why we have to. 

I don't know, revisit intuition or take a look at it again or develop it again. Is because we go through life and in childhood, in our teenage years, There's a lot of conditioning that happens that sort of strips us of our intuition. Or really. A better analogy is like it piles all of this extra shit on top of our intuition. 

It's like the intuition is still there, but we've got all of this sort of societal conditioning on top of it. [00:04:00] That sort of dampens it and clamps it down. So I like to think of. Developing your intuition as sort of resetting the factory settings. You know, how would you have a piece of tech, like a, like a phone or a laptop or something? If things go really sideways, sometimes you have to reset to the factory settings. I think when things go sideways with our intuition. And what I mean by that is like, we can't connect with it anymore. 

Sometimes what we have to do is reset the factory settings. And so that means wiping all of that extraneous shit away, all of that conditioning so that we can have a more clear. A simplified. Operating system. Now. If intuition is something you want to develop more something you want to nurture more. Here's something that's important to keep in mind. [00:05:00] I have found that intuition doesn't require concentration. It's not something that requires thinking harder. Usually when we're really concentrating on something really thinking harder about something, there's kind of like a, like a forcing energy to that. And forcing energy is not a quality of intuition. 

They're not like compatible. What intuition requires instead of concentration, it, it just requires space. And attention. Room to notice. And like, that's not something you flip like a light switch. It's something you develop over time. So it needs a little space. It needs a little bit of stillness, so that. It can actually come through because like I mentioned in last episode, if your life [00:06:00] is crazy and you're moving at a hundred miles a minute, You're not going to notice your intuition because there's no space for it. There's no stillness in your life. 

And by the way, you don't have to have some sort of intense monastic life in order to have a bit of stillness. You can create moments of stillness. And importantly, it doesn't have to be physical stillness sometimes when people think about stillness, they think about like, oh my God, I'm going to have to start a meditation practice. 

Or how the hell am I supposed to have stillness? I've got these young kids, like. It doesn't have to be a really intense physical stillness, like stillness for some people. And we're talking about mental stillness here. I should say. Mental stillness for some people is. A quiet drive to work. Without listening. To something. On the radio without listening to a podcast or music, like just you alone with your [00:07:00] thoughts. Mental stillness for some people. Is. Just go in for a walk. Mental stillness for some people is going for a really intense run. Or doing some sort of really intense exercise. 

It's something that gets you out of the mind. And that's what intuition needs. It needs us to move a little left of the mind. 

So you can't think your way to intuition. Unfortunately for all of my fellow analytical friends out there. Dammit. We just can't think our way there. And the reason why we can't think our way to intuition is it's an entirely different skillset. And some of you might think it's strange that I'm using the word skillset when I talk about intuition, but yeah, I do think it's a skill that we can develop. It's kind of like. [00:08:00] Ah, it's kind of like someone who has athletic skill. 

Sure. You might be born with a little bit of extra talent with athletics, but anyone can develop some. Athletic skill. It's something that you can nurture and work on and develop over time. It's not just bestowed on special people. Uh, everybody has it. , for a lot of people, it's just less practiced. , and you can't be good at intuition right away in the same way that you can't be good. Out of sport. Before you try it and your practice with it. Right. It's um, it's like a dimmer, not a light switch. It's something that's on a continuum. So that's what I mean, when I say it's a skill set. And it's something that you can develop. 

Now here's why that's hard. 

[00:09:00] It's hard because most of us are used to. Developing things. Growing things and learning from the perspective of the mind. And as we've just established. Intuition is something you can't think your way to. It's not something that just requires thinking and concentration. It's not a tool of the mind. And so. If you're a very thinky person. This is going to be a struggle for you. And because intuition, isn't a tool of the mind. The conscious mind. Sometimes. The mind doesn't want to share the mic. If, you know what I mean? Intuition is more of like a, an innate wisdom. In the body. You know, like I was saying earlier, it's your inner knowing separate from logic, separate from your [00:10:00] rational mind. That's why you need stillness. 

And stillness. Is how you pass the mic that mind that doesn't want to share the mic, that space and that stillness that I was talking about is how you pass the mic. It's kind of like. Developing intuition and like making it okay for your mind. It's almost like we have to be like, we have to be a little slow about it. We have to be a little bit. Sneaky. About it. So here's what I mean when I say. There's sort of that push pull feeling sometimes between intuition and the mind, the more. , thinky part of you. So let me give you like a little example. 

Very often when you're faced with a decision, what you probably do. 

And I do this too. Is you decide you're going to weigh the pros and cons. Okay. Now weighing [00:11:00] pros and cons is. A decision tool of the mind. And it's a great thing to use. It's not all we should use when we're making decisions. But very often weighing the pros and cons of something isn't enough. Because it is a tool exclusively using the mind. And when we're making decisions, we have to let the gut weigh in. Do you ever notice when you make some sort of pros and cons list about something? 

Not all of the items on the list are equally weighted. Like you'll notice that some of the things on that list, whether it's a pro or a con really sort of rise to the top, like they really matter to you more than some of the others. 

I remember years ago, having a conversation. With a friend about whether or not she wanted to have a third child. [00:12:00] And she was trying to figure this out. She told me that her and her partner had weighed all the pros and cons and they just weren't able to come to a decision. And I remember asking her, I was like, Well, are any of the pros and cons? Stronger. Than the others. 

Like, even if you have the same number of pros and cons, are there some that just feel a little stronger? And she was like, well, fuck. Yeah, actually she's like, there's all others, like a whole bunch of cons on this list around having a third kid. Though the work that the money required, the, you know, they had a smallest home, there were all sorts of. You know, hurdles. Around that decision. But there was one pro that sort of trumped everything else and it was just. That her and her partner felt really strongly that they wanted. A third child, even though it didn't necessarily feel [00:13:00] logical. So that's what I mean when I say sometimes weighing the pros and cons isn't enough. 

Actually what's coming to mind right now. 

And, uh, this might be a reference that's a little too old for some of you. But I used to really love the show sex in the city. And I always related to Miranda the most. , it's funny because Miranda realized she was gay later in life. And that was true for me too. Anyway at the time in this series, Miranda was still with her, her partner, Steve. We all love Steve didn't. 

We. And at a point in the show, they had broken up and they were trying to figure out if they should get back together. And so Miranda and typical Miranda style decided she was going to do. A list. Of pros and cons. And she made her list of pros and cons. And. It wasn't enough for her. Instead [00:14:00] of doing her regular rational mind driven decision-making process. 

She went ahead and did that, did the pros and cons list? And then at the end of the day, decided that her intuition needed to trumpet and she decided that she wanted to get back together with Steve. And that's a perfect example. Another example of why sometimes weighing the pros and cons isn't enough. We need to let the gut weigh in. 

And often I think it's the gut that will tell you it's our intuition. That will tell us. Which pros and cons feel the strongest, even if it doesn't make sense. So. Because we know. Pros and cons aren't enough. I want to share a little exercise. That you can do. To help your [00:15:00] anxious mind become a little bit more comfortable with intuition. And I like to call this exercise. The intuition autopsy. Sometimes I call it the decision autopsy. And basically it's. It's a simple exercise that you can do today. And it's just reviewing times. Where you did. And you didn't follow your intuition. So maybe for simplicity, try and think of three times in your life. Where you did follow your intuition perhaps in a direction that didn't even fully make sense to you, but it was something that you were willing to follow. The little nudge on it was something that you decided to sort of listen to that gut on, and then maybe think of three examples where you did feel a gut nudge. 

You did feel your intuition, but for whatever reason, you decided not to follow it. [00:16:00] 

So you come up with those three things for each right. Uh, yes, for intuition and the no examples for intuition. Then you want to ask yourself? Okay. What happened? When I followed my intuition. What happened? When I didn't follow my intuition.

Basically, you're making an inventory of what happens when you repress or ignore your intuition and what happens when you follow your intuition. 

 And here's, what's probably going to happen when you do this. You are probably going to start to notice some themes emerge. It won't be completely black and white because nothing is, but you will probably notice. That when you follow your intuition. Good things tend to happen. Even if it's maybe not the easiest path. Or there were a couple of [00:17:00] hurdles, particularly right around the time of that decision point, like right after you followed your intuition, but you're probably able to look back and see that. Oh, yeah. 

Like, even though that didn't make sense to me, Following that little nudge, that little whisper was actually good for me in the end. I'm glad I did that. Not always. Right. Because sometimes we, we get intuition confused. For impulsivity. They're not the same thing. So we're just talking about intuitive nudges. Here. Like intuition, the quiet, still voice that gives you a little bit of guidance. And you will probably notice if you're like most people. 

And certainly if you're like me, That when you didn't follow your intuition. Things got a little harder. Things felt a little more constrained. , things, just started. Uh, not going so well for you. And if [00:18:00] you really ignored you tuition for a long period of time. Maybe you find that it starts to impact your mental health. Maybe you're like me. 

And if you've had a period of ignoring your intuition, it even starts to impact your physical health. And so going through and doing this little intuition autopsy. Can be helpful to just give you a little inventory. In a macro way, in a way that's zoomed out. So you can notice. The sort of recurring theme about what happens when you do. And don't follow your intuition. And here's why this is helpful for your rational mind. 

Your rational mind needs to have, a body of evidence to work with. It needs to see some concrete, examples of intuition, feeling safe. And it needs [00:19:00] to see some concrete examples of, things going off the rails when you don't follow your intuition. And just seeing that, just doing this exercise again, it's not like flipping a switch, but it's more like softening the edges of any fear that your rational mind has about letting you bring intuition to the table. 

So. That's a fun exercise that you can do. Two day. Highly recommend. There's also a really cool, simple exercise that you can just keep doing on an ongoing basis. Try try this next thing for a week or a month. Just go through your day. And maybe at the end of the day, ask yourself, okay, where did I follow my intuition today? 

Where did I not follow my intuition today? And how did the rest of my day go based on that? What's happening when I do and don't follow those little nudges and whispers and guys like, we're [00:20:00] not talking about big things here. We're just talking about following a feeling you have about something on a day to day basis. This doesn't have to be about big decisions, especially when you're first trying to nurture your intuition. We got to start small with this stuff. So try these little exercises, try these experiments and see what happens. See if your rational mind gets just 1% calmer. Around intuition. On the next episode, we're going to talk about. 

The part of you, that's scared. Of intuition, the part of you that feels like it's not safe. To use your intuition. And the reason we need to talk about that is because the part of you that is afraid. Needs your help. And so on the next episode, we'll be [00:21:00] talking about. How to soften some of the edges around that fear. And how to get to a place where you do develop some more self-trust so that you can make better, more aligned decisions. 

Thanks for listening. I'll see you next time.

Hey, Hey. Still here. I wanted to let you know, I'm hosting a program to help people follow up on their intuitive nudges. To help people develop. A half-baked idea that they have, that's been pulling on their heartstrings. And that they don't want to ignore anymore. So maybe it's an idea for a business or a book. 

Maybe it's about making something. It's called the half-baked ideas lab and it starts very soon. I'm going to put a link in the show notes so that you can check it out. If you want to. Thanks for joining me in this conversation about intuition. [00:22:00] I'll see you next time.