Like A Fine Wine, Instinct Develops With Age

In your twenties, going with your gut instinct had you dirty-dancing with your boss, drunk-dialing your ex and cutting your own fringe. Turns out, like a fine wine, your instincts get better with age. Sometimes it’s easy to act on impulse. Imagine you’re crossing the road and a car swerves towards you… You’re not going to question the ‘Run!’ urge, are you? But in everyday life when we’re trying to make a decision, it’s all too easy for your gut instinct to be drowned out by dithering.

Instinct is a powerful thing but often we don’t trust it - we feel we have to have a sound explanation for out beliefs, so our instinct argue with our sensible side. But that ‘feeling in your bones’ could be just the tool you need to help you make your mind up. A lot of it is about recognising familiar or comparable situations and your instinct is more reliable as you get older, because it’s based on more experience so from which dress to wear, to more important choices like whether to buy a house, make your intuition work for you.

Recall Your First Reaction - Do you stand in the shop, agonizing over those Kurt Geigers like it’s a life or death call? Well, trust your very first impulse on small decisions. In recent study, volunteers asked to pick the odd out from rows of indicial images were right 95 when the pondered for longer. It shows that falling back on our inbuilt, subconscious processes for certain tasks is more effective.

Use Speed-Psycology - You’re not the only one who gets in a knot trying to counter your instinct with factual info. Most people are rubbish at keeping comparative detail in their heads. They find it much easier to see pros and cons visually. So when deciding which new car ‘wins’, write a time-limited brainstorm. Setting yourself just 10 minutes of writing down the essential ‘fors’ and ’against’ will really focus your mind and lead to a better decision.

Road-Test Your Rationale - With bigger decisions, like whether to buy a house that you love, has money-pit potential. It’s good to combine instinct with some nuts-and-bolts back-up . This has big consequences and it’s likely to be something you’ve done too many times before. Because it’s unfamiliar, it’s likely your instinct won’t be a good guide. If it feels like somewhere you’ll be happy, test out your intuition with a practical steps such as drawing up a list of which features matter most to you and whether it ticks enough most to you and whether it ticks enough practical – as well as emotional – boxes.

The Two-Minute Face Saver - The snap decision we often get wrong is what kind of ‘advice’ to let tumble from our unzipped lips. So take the two-minute offence test. Whether it’s a colleague presenting a flawed project or a friend wearing a fright of an outfit, there’s a good test of whether it’s right to chime In with device . If toy feel your sentence should start with,’ I know I shouldn’t say this, but..’ then your gut is telling you to keep schtum. So do.

Fake Complete Confidence - Knowing how to use your instincts at work means understanding the kind of person you are. Are you letting worry get in the way? Optimists will just give something a go and assume it’ll be all right, while pessimists think being right is more important then he outcome. We tend to think getting something absolutely right is more important than it really is. So in a meeting or when directing stuff, it’s often more important to simply take a decision and work with it than foster an atmosphere of uncertainty where no one can get on. If you trust instincts, so will they.