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acting on feeling do what you feel intuition listen to your gut

The value of intuition

I have to admit, one of the most challenging lessons for me to learn has been to listen to my gut.  It’s taken me years to get to the point of doing something when my intellect hasn’t yet rationalized it.  I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had hunches telling me to try something, everything from calling someone to stock picks, to just saying something to the random person next to me.  The root of this challenge has been balancing my left and right sides of my brain but in the last few years I’ve been blessed with lessons in going with intuition.

For example, when I saw Amy Clover of Strong Inside Out was doing a national tour to raise money for the non-profit, To Write Love On Her Arms, something drew me to look at that.  I’ve been a fan of Strong Inside Out for about a year now and it didn’t surprise me that a fundraiser like this would take place.  When I looked closer there was a call for contacts in numerous cities as about 20 were scheduled and 10 more were needed for her 30X30 project.  Chicago was listed as a tour stop and contacts were needed in the west coast and east, but something stopped me.  A feeling said, “What about Milwaukee?  Why not ask?”

It really made no sense.  Most of the tour stops were being held at Lululemon locations, and I had no connections to the organization.  I had never spoken to Amy before and she didn’t have connections in Milwaukee.  I hadn’t even heard of anyone in my network talk about 30X30.  And I even wondered, how would this benefit me?  I had no reason to reach out, nothing made sense.

So then I decided to try anyway, there was a hunch and I had a feeling prompt me to take action.  Not knowing why I typed a message on the Facebook page for the organization I simply asked if Milwaukee would be a possibility since Chicago was so close and what would it take to make sense to have another point on the tour?  The simple reply was, “yes if there was interest.”

So not knowing how to totally gauge interest or how to quantify it to a solid number I reached out to 2 people that I knew would be interested and could help.  Berni Xiong and Ambrose WB were more connected in that arena than I was so I sent the message, “I have something for you.”  We were able to come up with a list of partners and strategy for getting the word out and really did a good job at assessing the interest level.

Here’s the kicker with this, action and inaction will both produce consequences.  And sometimes people are in the right place at the right times to do something that needs to be done.