Trusting one’s instinct without abandoning reason
Intuition and reason are often set against each other, as though one had to choose between them.
I believe rather that they work better together.
Listening to one’s instinct does not dispense one from thinking. And thinking does not oblige one to ignore what one feels.
Felt sense: one piece of information among others
When something makes me uneasy, I have learned not to brush that sensation aside too quickly.
Often, it is signalling a detail I have not yet formulated.
But a felt sense is not proof. It is a starting point, not a conclusion.
The risk of both extremes
Betting everything on intuition exposes one to being wrong whilst believing one “senses” correctly.
Betting everything on cold reason sometimes means missing what the body had understood before us.
The error, in my view, is not to rely on one or the other. It is to rely on only one, all the time.
A way of proceeding
Faced with a decision that matters, I try to do both:
- listen to my first reaction, without judging it
- then test it against the facts, calmly
- and accept to change my mind if reality does not follow
Keeping the mind clear
Trusting one’s instinct does not mean believing anything at all.
It requires, I find, a certain rigour: that of distinguishing a useful intuition from a simple fear or a passing desire.
Reason remains there to verify. It is what prevents felt sense from becoming an excuse.
Conclusion
I do not seek to choose between the mind and felt sense.
I seek to let them enter into dialogue, without one silencing the other.
That is no doubt, for me, a simple form of good judgement.
Yannick Costechareyre