Intuition vs Instinct! Which do you use?
Jun 27, 2024
One of the rules for stoicism is "Train your Instincts"? But what does this actually mean?
Instinct is the natural tendency that a person or animal has to behave or react in a particular way. (Collins Dictionary).
Intuition is unexplained feelings you have that something is true even when you have no evidence or proof of it. (Collins Dictionary).
Or, from a psychology viewpoint: intuition is a form of knowledge that appears in consciousness without obvious deliberation (intuition definition, Psychology Today).
Your intuition is your subliminal processing of information that goes beyond rational thought. It is valuable for deciding and judging what’s best in today’s world of rapid change and complexity. So ultimately, it’s to do with your brain recognising patterns (as we spoke about last week!).
In terms of intuition vs instinct feeling, as an experience, intuition feels like a ‘just knowing’ out of the blue, whereas instinct is a physical reaction to a trigger. So maybe what we want to do is train our intuition, noticing when our intuition serves us well and what could have led to that subliminal processing, i.e. notice the patterns that have helped us come to those decisions.
Have a look at the image below to see if you can start to recognise the difference between instinct and intuition... What are your thoughts on this topic? In a fast moving sport like riding, what impact can this information have?