John Adair's 100 Greatest Ideas for Personal Success

Idea 93: Intuition

Intuition is the power or faculty of immediately apprehending that something is the case. It seems to occur without any conscious reasoning.

There is plenty of evidence that effective decision makers do listen to their intuition.

Where strong emotions are in play, intuition can be highly unreliable. Equally, physical states such as tiredness or stress can distort the mind's natural workings. But in general, decision making in such low states or conditions of mind should, if possible, be avoided.

Instinct, flair and intuition are cut from the same cloth. Flair is an instinctive power of discernment in a certain field. You can ‘smell’ an opportunity or the direction of the path to success.

At its best, intuition works because ...