The BOLD (I’ve Got a Feeling)
There are seasons when it is easier to believe that we are living in certainty. Routines flow, plans unfold, and outcomes are predictable. This is not one of those seasons. We are unsure about the future, concerned about the economic impact of the pandemic, confused about conflicting messages of safety. At the same time, many of us are experiencing the unrelenting sameness of days in lockdown, separated from the resources and activities that brought us variety.
This is a season of uncertainty. In order to build resilience, to make good choices, to pivot, we need good data. Sometimes, before we have anything concrete, we have that itchy feeling. How can we utilize our intuition to begin to navigate uncertainty?
The Whisper (Intuition as a Mirror)
We were on a zoom call. There were seven of us. The conversation was flowing with purpose and rich with fellow feeling. It was a good conversation. After the call ended, one of the participants texted me a request to meet.
Suddenly, I knew she was struggling. There was almost no data to support that stab of intuition. Perhaps there was one moment when I caught sight of shift in her body language, but it was fleeting and not supported by her positive words. Perhaps it was her request for a side conversation, though that was not an unusual action for us to take. She and I have often spoken one on one between meetings.
Somehow, I just knew.
That is how intuition works. We take in data we don’t know we’re gathering. We are tuned in in ways we don’t understand. And we receive hints about events, people and situations that that we have not yet received from our other ways of understanding.
An article recently published by Harvard Business Review suggested that there are three kinds of uncertainty: probability, ambiguity, and complexity. In addition, there is a fourth kind of uncertainty—intuitive uncertainty. It’s that itchy feeling that something is wrong or missing or possible that we sense before we have the data to back it up. And it is the key to curing our blindness to blindness.
We know what we don’t know. You can probably make a list of skills you don’t have and knowledge you haven’t acquired. I can’t play the bassoon and I don’t know anything about Jimmy Carter’s cabinet. What about the list of skills, knowledge, and wisdom that you aren’t aware you don’t have? Sometimes we don’t know enough to know what question to ask.
Our intuition provides a glimpse of what we cannot yet fully see. Intuition is not the only way that we know but it is a powerful tool for uncovering a way forward. Because of that, it can help us begin to build awareness, to open up possibilities, to determine our first actions.
When we feel that prickle of intuition, it can leave us feeling uneasy. It can be as uncomfortable as any other form of uncertainty. After all, uncertainty describes a state when we know enough to know that we don’t know enough. Intuition uncertainty, however, brings an opportunity.
By following our intuition, we can open up the first little hole in the obscuring haze. We can begin to design clarity. The things that we don’t know float around us, transparent as air. Our intuition allows us to pierce the transparency.
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