Introverts and Intuition
Both introverts and extroverts can have the ability we call “intuition.” With that said, here are some tips specifically for introverts on how to nourish one’s intuitive abilities.
When the topic of intuition comes up, many people picture someone having a mysterious flash of psychic insight. The phenomenon of intuition actually encompasses much more than that. If we define intuition as knowing without knowing how you know, then it also includes situations like these:
At a neighborhood picnic, someone instinctively steers conversation away from a topic she senses might upset the group.
A salesperson meets a new customer and heads straightaway for the unlikely option that will please this customer the most.
A martial artist blocks an opponent’s moves because some part of him other than his conscious mind perceives the next kick or punch when it has barely begun.
According to researchers such as Gary Klein and Daniel Kahneman, intuition is our label for a near-instantaneous process of pattern recognition based on information we’ve stored from past experiences. No one’s intuition has 100 percent accuracy. But it’s a faculty that can be nurtured by life experiences or developed through training.
Kara Quinn, a fictional detective in a series by Allison Brennan, had a talent for spotting lies because she grew up with parents who were always running one con or another. She called them out at age nine when her father was headed to prison and her parents claimed he was off to a resort in Bora Bora. “Reading people was as much about survival as about getting them to do what I wanted,” Quinn noted in The Wrong Victim. “When I worked undercover, those skills finally became useful to someone else.”
Likewise, I had a friend who attributed her strong intuitive abilities to having had erratically alcoholic parents and needing to know as a child walking home from school whether she’d be encountering the alert, caring parents or the drunk, oblivious ones. In such instances, attunement to others develops because it helps smooth the way amidst a chaotic environment.
As for intuition developing through training, I had a window on this process when I was mentoring copywriters. I noticed that while I went over homework assignments with my protégés, when I pointed out something they had apparently missed, they sometimes said, “You know, I thought about that.” I would then prompt then with “And…?” Over time, my reminders that they should pay attention to inner ideas that they heard but dismissed turned them into better marketers. They became more confident making effective wording choices that they couldn’t quite explain.
Improve Your Intuition
Both extroverts and introverts can have fine-tuned intuition, but they may take different forms. If you’re an introvert and want to improve your can’t-explain-it knowing, here are some suggestions that take advantage of introverts’ natural leanings toward self-observation and introspection.
1. Let yourself guess. My favorite question for eliciting intuitions is, “If you did know, what would the answer be?” Ignore the feeling that you’re simply guessing and go with your hunch. A California judge named Charles W. McCoy, Jr. who taught the art of jury selection to law students found that simply instructing them to trust their gut dramatically improved the accuracy of their insights about possible jurors.
2. Track your hunches. Make notes on irrational feelings you have about people, dangerous situations, books or art you’re attracted to, and so on. Which ones turned out to be reliable, and which not? Look for patterns. Over time, you may be able to identify differences between wishful thinking or fears and trustworthy intuitions. The US military expects research into intuition to shed light on good decision-making in uncertain life-or-death situations. Your self-study might similarly illuminate your own idiosyncratic paths to success or failure.
3. Note your channel of insight. When unexplainable knowledge comes to you, does it arrive as a mental voice, an inner picture, a sensation like goosebumps or some other kind of manifestation? Do you see or hear others’ emotions or situational details that flit by? Are you sensitive to the enigmatic energy of “vibes”?
4. Recall your intuitive misses. When you look back and realize that you didn’t pay attention to an intuitive warning or pull, remember as much as you can about the circumstances. What motivated you to override that “spidey sense” or the “alarm bells” in your head? Do you have outsized prejudices against “woo-woo” signals? What convinced you not to act on “just a feeling”?
5. Reflect on your lucky events and disasters. When things go wonderfully right or horribly wrong for you, was there any element of intuition involved? Studies show that the more complex the set of factors involved in a decision and the larger the experience base one has, the more reliable intuition tends to be.
Learn more
My book, Inspired! How to Be More Original, Insightful and Productive in Your Work, contains several chapters on intuition. It’s available as a Kindle ebook, paperback, audiobook or PDF download.