What we call intuition isn’t… but WHAT do we call intuition?
The state of the current humanity is chaos. Everyone has an opinion, just like everyone has an a-hole.
So far so good, Sophie… you groan. But from this, honoring one’s opinion as important, comes the mischief: everyone insists that their version of reality… aka their opinion, is the real reality. 1
Same way about what words mean… words like intuition.
There are courses on awakening your intuition that completely ignore the fact that you’ll have your individual, unique opinion about reality, and that will be your source of “intuition”, not something independent of it… coming from the unknown unknown… what I call the “divine”.
In the famous pie chart of all possible knowledge you, personally, have a slice of things that you know that you know, and an equal size of things you know that you don’t know. The size of that slice is the size of your possible curiosity for knowledge.
That leaves the rest of the pie, the unknown unknowns… That is accessed only by curiosity. This is the territory of the “divine” where all “miracles” come from. Unexpected benefits… and unexpected trouble.
The size of your curiosity is limited by the size of your knowledge, or more strictly speaking, the size of the area that you know that you don’t know that you see that you could learn… and benefit from.
It is a very interesting fact that thus far I haven’t met a student/client who knew much of anything about digestion, and therefore they don’t have any desire, any curiosity to learn about it.
So when they pay me to set them up on a path to better health, they consider everything as my good idea, they don’t EVER consider that I know something that they could know as well… no desire to know.
When something doesn’t work the way you think it should, your money situation, “manifesting”, your health, your diet, your relationship, your children, there is something that you don’t know. But… but you don’t know that you don’t know it.
So you don’t know to ask questions, you don’t know to crack a book open, you don’t know to get curious, because you don’t know enough of the topic to know that you don’t know.
So you are left to play in the small sandbox that is defined by your knowledge, as if it were everything that could be known, and, by definition, your results are going to be little or not much.
If you read, or watch science movies, you may encounter information that you can say “I didn’t know that!” and if you do that a lot, then you’ll expand the size of what you know you know and also the size of what you know you don’t know. what you don’t expect is that you have now expanded the size of your curiosity: your god-given tool to become more effective in life, to do better.
When I muscletest how many people read regularly books that open up their world, watch stuff that open up their world, I get a very small number.
The number of people who read and watch stuff that merely entertains, excites, is a lot higher. They do not get curious because they learned nothing from what they consumed.
Same with conversation with others, reading the newspaper, sports, politics, Facebook, Instagram, texting. They allow you to fill your time, satisfy your diversion seeking idle curiosity, but do not expand your knowledge and do not expand your world.
Ultimately they do not increase your ability to succeed in life.
As you can see, I have returned to writing my article, even though my wrist still hurts like hell.
Why? You liked my audios!
Yes. But you consumed my audios like you consume candy: goes down effortlessly, and goes out on the other and fast.
All learning involves effort. Why? Because all learning involves a new vocabulary AND a different way of looking at things than you want to look, you like to look, you intuitively look.
Audio goes faster than your brain can adjust, so it gives you an illusion of learning, but it isn’t.
Your mind is like the dog that grabs onto a bone and runs away with it, not seeing, not hearing anything more after the bone.
The mind takes what it heard, takes it back into the little box, and there you go… nothing will change, nothing CAN change, because only consciousness can change things, and consciousness didn’t get a chance to see and digest the new knowledge.
The TED talk I watched yesterday about our complete lack of knowledge what causes our planet to fast become a desert was a great teaching experience.
2.4 million people have watched it before me. My guess is: none of them were in the position to change anything, what made them watch it is idle curiosity, diversive curiosity. 2
But the scientists, the farmers, the biologists didn’t watch it, with maybe the exception of Joel Salatin, who was already doing it (I think).
You don’t make more money because you’ll watch it, won’t be more effective with your children, won’t get healthier because you watch it, unless you look beyond the subject matter, and look at your own life and start seeing how you desertified your life, how most of your brain now can’t be used for anything.
If your solution to being ineffective in life, to hating work, effort, and escaping into fun, cleaning the house… again, fixing stuff, or other non-brain intensive activity, you have the most to gain from watching that TED talk.
Your mistakes in thinking have been making you less and less able to grow, and making you less and less able to enjoy life… making your life and your brain effectively a desert.
In my programs you have a chance to reverse that, just like re-introducing herd animals reverses the desertification on the land.
You are asked to do what is unpleasant, effortful, reading, having conversations with your partner where you feel you are not up to par with the other person, or are forced to think. In the 67 step coaching you are forced to find the principle in the step and let me know what you found. It’s a b-i-t-c-h!
If you are not willing to do it, I’ll let you go. If you come back and still are unwilling to do what is asked of you… I’ll let you go again.
If you can see yourself in this article, whether you are a student of mine or not, you may see that you need an outside force to keep your nose to the grindstone: will power won’t be enough.
So you’ll go out and look for structures that have the chance to help you through the year-long difficult part, until you can, maybe, trust yourself to continue on your own motive power.
I offer several structures, the 67 steps coaching, the accountability partnerships, the Playground, and private coaching coupled with a less intense program.
Every person is able… but not every person is willing.
The most effective element is the peer-to-peer support, by the way. It’s synergistic and causes flying much faster than any other form of support. And, of course, reading.
If the books you read each manage to land a few pieces of knowledge, each causes you to become a tiny bit more ready to connect the dots, to allow consciousness to see what knowledge you can start to get curious about.
Consciousness, I said. Not your so-called intuition that just wants you to continue doing the ineffective things the exact same way you have been doing it.
The most frequent “how” of staying in the little box is impulsiveness… having a good idea and acting on it.
Your good idea has no chance to succeed because it is an escape valve: a way for you do avoid the nose-grind.
The second most frequent how of staying in your little desert is chit-chat, wanting to do what comes easy, not what is asked of you. Most women have that how, and some men.
This is why I have a separate playground for men and women, how I change the pairing when I do, to avoid the “how” to take over.
Pairing, partnering, is to cause synergy, not to have fun. No effort, no synergy. Bummer, eh?
Summary: your intuition, what you think your intuition is, keeps you in your small desert, and unhappy.
Your small life is the result of the small knowledge you have.
The only way to gain new and useful knowledge is through effort: an investment of time and attention over time.
Without a structure that forces you to put in the effort, you won’t put in the effort consistently and you will have wasted all the work you have done… it is like a little rain here and there won’t make an arid area lush. A cow grazing here and there won’t poop and trample the “brain” enough to fertility. (if you didn’t watch the TED talk, this last sentence won’t make sense!)
You need to catch your tendency to want to avoid effort… and have a partner, a class, a teacher to catch you.
The more time you spend with people who don’t grow, the less you’ll grow… and most likely you’ll grow backwards… I have proof positive that this is exactly what happens. 3
A year of intense effort can make up for the time you wasted in school. Every interruption restarts the clock. Every wedding you attend, every family gathering has 90% chance to cause an interruption.
It’s your life… learn to protect it.
You want lush… You want to be Joel Salatin who tap dances to work. Don’t you?
If this article and this method talks to you, I may want to talk to you too.
If you have recently got your starting point measurements, just email me and we can schedule a call to see how I can help you. This is not a sales call.
If you haven’t had your starting point measurements, or it’s old, then the way to get a call with me is offered as an option when you buy your starting point measurements.
- Your “intuitive” actions will be a conclusion of some mental process, that is most likely based on some certainty that is wrong, sometimes dead wrong, rendering you, your projects, the planet dead.
- quoting from Jack Malcolm’s article
curiosity is not all good. While it may not kill you, it can certainly kill your productivity. The form of curiosity that fills your otherwise productive time is diversive curiosity, and unfortunately it’s probably the most common. It’s what attracts us to novelty; it’s shallow and strives for instant gratification. Unlike epistemic curiosity, diversive curiosity controls you. As Leslie tells us, imagine what you would tell someone from fifty years ago about the future:“I possess a device, in my pocket, that is capable of accessing the entirety of information known to man. I use it to look at pictures of cats and get into arguments with strangers.”
It doesn’t have to be that way. The internet can make you smarter or dumber, depending on how you use it. Be careful what you put in your mind. Just as you are what you eat; you are what you read.
- The tree in the picture is what inspired my new name. On a car trip through the Negev desert I fell in love with that solitary tree that generously gives of itself to all comers-by, without losing anything. Shitta is the Hebrew name for that tree.
