Choice by Intuition

When I hear a phrase such as “follow your instinct” or “go with your gut,” I am frequently reminded through personal experience what they are referring to. When taking a test, for  example, I would sometimes agonize over whether I should change my first answer to a question—and then learning later when I received the scored test back that my first choice had been correct. I’m sure you can imagine my frustration at having been right the first time—why hadn’t I let my first answer stand and “gone with my gut”?  Over time, I have found that my tendency to doubt my instincts hasn’t changed much. I have often caught myself making decisions or taking on tasks that I had to talk myself into because I knew that they were against my better judgment. At times I have avoided pursuing interests and situations that have felt instinctively right because they did not seem practical or predictable enough. Do you ask yourself these questions? Maybe not with every decision you make, but when it really matters—the important, possibly life changing choices. Are you like Tweedle Dum, do you go with your gut? Or possibly like Tweedle Dee who may make decisions based on someone else’s choice?   Could it be that you rationalize your way into making decisions and continue to follow paths that ignore your inner voice? I believe that many of us lose out on major opportunities in life because we do not follow our intuition. How about that promotion that Tweedle Dum didn’t get because he rationalized himself out of voicing an idea he had to his boss? Or the time and energy Tweedle Dee spent on a relationship that, deep down, knew was over?  In my own case, I’ve spent years of effort and thousands of dollars cultivating a career that, in hindsight, I knew was somehow not right for me. I’ve underused talents and ignored opportunities for other vocations because they weren’t a part of a plan I had envisioned for myself.

There are a number of conscious and unconscious limitations that affect the decisions we and the Tweedles make. These limitations would be anything of perceived value that is given up in order to implement the choice, such as time or lost opportunities.

Let’s now look at an example of the kind of trade-offs that are required in decision-making.  These trades-offs frequently hinder how Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee make choices.  Oftentimes in the process of getting all the best information—Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee can end up spending too much time pondering the choice. Tweedle Dum once spent so much effort collecting and weighing alternatives that he ran out of both time and money, so that many of the benefits of his careful decision-making were lost.

Many times the choice we all call “common sense” turns out to be the best choice, and when you think about it, simple common sense usually has solid decision-making behind it. The thing that both Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee struggle to understand is that in the Tweedles process of making choices… the choice they ultimately make…is not risk free.  Following your “gut” instinct necessarily involves taking some kind of risk. If you go with your intuition, you could be wrong; you could make a mistake or fail miserably. If you risk attempting something other than the career path you’ve planned for yourself, risk ending a relationship or risk never marrying or having children, you risk the possibility of failure. For those who truly desire these things, the possible result of choice, no matter how dissatisfied, seems to be the real gamble. (Simpson, 2004)