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Make Intuition Your Best Friend in Small Business

Copyright 2001 by Arupa Tesolin

No single personal skill aside from knowing your business is as valuable as being able to use your intuition to sort out what information and fact can’t tell you. Not one of us has been taught how to use this useful knowledge, it doesn’t appear in our educational system which is designed to favour

intellectual development. We know certain people in business who appear to have this ability in spades. Most of us recognize it as primarily a fleeting experience - one you’re either born with or not. I aim to change your mind about this.

 

First, intuition is not a gift among certain people. It is your birthright, the link that keeps your mind aligned with your heart and spirit. It is more intelligent than the intellect and faster too, drawing from fields of information and events that the intellectual mind is not aware of.

 

Second, it is developable and able to be cultivated as a skill. In fact as you face more unprecedented change and uncertainly every year in the business environment it has become a luxury to dismiss intuition. It is now a vital competency for every business person, particularly in small business where

all stakes, decisions and actions emanate from you.

 

The biggest problem we all have about our intuition is a lack of trust. But almost every "tempest" in business life was preceded by the "small voice" and just as typically ignored in the beginning but evidently there in hindsight. We all know that there is no future in hindsight except the

learning to be attentive to foresight.

 

The third thing is to know when to use intuition. Here are the typical situations where you will want to call on your intuitive expertise.  There are probably many more you can think of.

  • Checking out a potential partner or employee.

  • Identifying any warning signs or potential conflicts,

  • Whether you can trust them to deliver what they say they will.

  • Raising your knowledge about differences in communication.

  • Checking to see whether your clients will pay your bills on time.

  • Anticipating changes to your service or product needed by your client.

  • Anticipating ways to deliver better value to your client.

  • Checking real estate property, acquisitions, new equipment.

  • Finding better ways to do things.

  • Reducing the business cycle, streamlining effectiveness.

  • Reducing time waste.

  • Making sure you’re spending your time worthily.

And now comes the big question. How?

 

Developing intuition skills is easy. It’s the trust building, commitment and

confidence with results that is more challenging. You have to be willing to

change your "thought habits" to one that involves and acknowledges

intuitive intelligence.

 

1. Consider your intuitive cognition important and worthy of your attention

on an on-going basis. When you are serious about your intuition your

intuition will become serious about you.

 

2. Any good self-awareness practice, like meditation, zen, should be an

everyday thing. Side benefits like reducing stress will help you be more

attentive.

 

3. Be willing to change your habits. Notice how you typically solve

problems and handle things. Consider and start practising an intuitive

approach alongside this. Here’s one way.

 

Shut off the intellectual "program" and start sensing from the heart, what do

you "know"? How do you feel about it? What are the quiet, niggling

issues? Then create some quiet space for intuition to fill in some of the

details. Notice the added knowledge and certainty intuitive approaches

bring you.

 

4. Consider "intuition-on-demand" practices like Intuita MindWare as part of your

development repertoire. Intuita also has a useful Self-Assessment

Instrument that can help you align your awareness and learning goals.

 

5. Share insights with your close friends, try and find a learning buddy who

is willing to invest in their intuitive awareness, someone who you can trust

with revealing your deeper feelings and who is not skeptical. Most of us

have an abundance of skepticism to begin with, don’t make it harder on you.

 

6.  Every once in a while take stock of your intuitive achievements from the last few months and notice your accomplishments and growth. Keep extending your abilities by setting new goals.


The "Inner Game" of Business

Copyright by Arupa Tesolin, Aug. 28, 2001, www.intuita.com

The path of business & entrepreneurship for most actuated people is the sport of choice. To achieve this successfully in Canada is Olympian.

The game is all about investing resources to achieve outcomes that are greater, often to do something with a skill or new equipment that hasn’t been done before. It is a large ecocosm with room for large sophisticated players, small niche players and just about everything in between.

Just what is it that so tantalizes the spirit about business and entrepreneurship? It is the seductive possibility of creating something that didn’t exist before you touched it, of bringing a dream from the unimaginable to the imagined, the conceivable and the created. The ultimate quest is to be a creator - to achieve the impossible, amid challenges that the less than hopeful don’t dare face.

Those who are inventors, producers, authors, composers, some scientists, artists, and business entrepreneurs stand tallest among us. Why do we hold such people in such high regard? Quite simply, it is because they have proven themselves to be worthy guardians of creative power. Their creations speak for themselves.

But once we write all the books, make all the movies, invent all the equipment, write all the music and poetry, we will discover that the ability to create our own life is highest and most precious endeavor.

When the game is capital it’s about squeezing commitment and game moves from your staff, partners, investors. When your game is cash flow and profit in the absence of capital it’s often the inner resources that bring the most breakthroughs. An opportunity that didn’t exist yesterday suddenly appears, a consequence dissolves into a choice of sharpening your focus or losing it. Distraction is the enemy.

It takes more than courage, more than attitude, more than commitment. It takes a soul who is willing to endure the crucible of his or her Self, where you know what is temporal will be burned off by the challenges. What endures will be gold.

Of all the inner resources the most under-estimated is intuition - the subtle knowing beyond time, space, events, and current knowledge. If you’re attentive it guides your footing and where and when you place your stakes. Trusting your intuition is a problem we all have, even those of us who make it our life work.

Sometimes we have to circumvent our own limited knowledge of what is "good" for us. I say this lightly because often the lessons brought by intuition cause short term pain, in light of our overall goals. Only through time it becomes self-evident that only those things aligned with our "inner game" are really important - the life created, the character developed, the awareness gained, our true acting values. Everything else, the defeatest attitudes, tests of worthiness that showed us up as clinging to a limited ego must be surrendered or they will be cleaned up.

Nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the sweetness of walking free in your own shoes.


Arupa Tesolin is the founder of Intuita, a strategic learning company and "The Intuita 3-MINUTE SOLUTIONSTM" for INTUITION, INNOVATION, VISION, & STRESS. The Intuita On-Line Learning Institute offers management & employee training programs thru your desktop. She is the recognized author of numerous international articles on intuition in business, a trainer, speaker and consultant. 905.271.7272, http://www.intuita.com or email.