Should you trust your intuition?

One dictionary definition of intuition is "the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.

We've all had many situations where something just didn't feel right about a place or a person. We've all also heard the expression, "Trust your intuition."

But should you trust your intuition?

Instead of just a "yes" or "no" answer, RVers are inquisitive and also want to know "why" or "why not."

As an RVer, you are constantly having to make decisions, like where to camp, should I buy a different RV, is this a good place to eat, and on and on. You make decisions all day long.

A lot of times you have a gut-feel or intuition about a decision you are about to make, but should you trust that gut-feeling? If trusting your intuition really worked, that would be a valuable tool or skill, or whatever you want to call it. But does it really work and if so, why and how?

What is intuition?

Is intuition some super-power that some people have or is it like reading tarot cards or tea leaves?

The simple answer is no. Intuition is not some superpower, it's not magic, and it's not the universe looking out for us as one person told me.

You've probably heard of or experienced situations like the following two. "Now that I'm pregnant, I see pregnant women everywhere." Or "After I bought an Airstream, I see them on the road all the time."

In both cases, the pregnant women and the Airstreams were there before, but your conscious mind ignored them. But you better believe that your subconscious mind saw all these things and filed the information away in case it might be useful in the future.

There's a scientific explanation for how and why intuition works

Look at it this way. If you were the CEO of some big company (or even of a small company), you wouldn't want your employees to bring every little thing to your attention. You don't want somebody telling you that the commode is stopped up in the men's room, or that the trash can is full in the break area. Your employees know not to bother you with this information.

But if your vice president had a heart attack, or your biggest customer just canceled all of his orders, for sure you would want to know these things. Your employees know to bring these facts to your attention immediately.

That's the way your conscious and subconscious minds work. Your subconscious mind has a database of facts and observations that would make Google jealous.

Here's another example

Suppose you went to Walmart and had to park a long way from the front door. After walking all the way across the parking lot, when you got to the front door, if someone asked if you remembered the words on any bumper stickers you saw, there's a good chance that you won't even remember seeing any bumper stickers.

If a video camera had been strapped to your head recording everything you looked at, and you went back and reviewed the video, you would likely see a dozen or more bumper stickers. You saw the bumper stickers, but that information was not recorded in your conscious mind, because it was not considered to be important.

However, if you had a business selling bumper stickers or your job was to come up with phrases to put on bumper stickers, it's very likely that you would remember a lot about the bumper stickers you saw while walking across the parking lot, because this information would have been brought to your conscious mind.

When you're RVing, pay attention and make good use of your gut-feel and intuition. By all means don't dismiss it as not valid information. Make good use of it.

I don't know of any case where following my institution ever caused me a problem, but I can think of some cases where I ignored intuition (or my gut-feeling) and later regretted it.

Bottom line: Your subconscious mind is making use of hundreds or thousands of facts and observations to come up with a conclusion. This conclusion is sent to your conscious mind without ever revealing all of the data that was analyzed to reach that conclusion.