Expert Quotes on Intuition and Gut Feeling

Expert Insights

There's a fascinating dialogue happening between our gut and our mind, and the microbiota may be one of the reasons these gut feelings are more than just a figure of speech.

People have relied on intuition and instinct for centuries, but neuroscience and gut health research are only now giving us a better understanding of how they work.

That's why experts can offer a more practical perspective on intuition and help us use it more intentionally.

I found some interesting and insightful quotes that make a great introduction to intuition and gut feelings.

Intuition vs Intense Emotions

I chose this quote first for a reason. When we think about intuition, we often think about emotions: something feels right or wrong, even when we can't explain why.

But emotions, both positive and negative, can send us in the wrong direction. A rush of emotions can easily cloud our judgement.

Joel Pearson - Neuroscientist

You should never use your intuition if you're emotional, that includes positive emotion or negative emotion.

A Whole Body Yes!

Another interesting perspective on intuition comes from Tim Ferris. This time, we're not talking about gut feeling alone, but about the whole body responding positively to an idea, decision, or person.

I must say, it sounds like a gut feeling taken to the next level.

Tim Ferriss - Entrepreneur

You're considering a decision, and you scan head, heart, chest, gut. There are other ways to do this - you could go to your loins too - but let's just say you're going with head, chest area, heart, and gut. You look for a yes signal, a go signal, in all three areas. That is the only situation in which you should say yes.

Now, what I find a little challenging is identifying what a yes feels like. So what I do instead is I look for no signals. What that means is, if I feel any contraction or grinding of the gears in my head, it's a no.

Intuition and Life Lessons

Tara Swart says intuition is the wisdom we collect from all our life experiences.

This definition makes a lot of sense to me, although I've been wondering how past trauma can influence the way we interpret people and situations. Is it intuition or generalization?

And I think the final quote in this article, from Lisa Feldman Barrett, explains this really well.

Tara Swart - Neuroscientist

Intuition is wisdom and the ability to use your judgement that's based on patterns that you've picked up through life lessons and these are stored deeply in the limbic system all the way down to the gut neurons.

Just a Guess

If intuition is just a guess, who makes the best ones?

Lisa Feldman Barrett - Neuroscientist

Intuition is just your brain making a guess based on your past experience. So if your past experience is well calibrated to the situation you're in, your intuition is going to do well for you. If your past experience is not well calibrated to the current situation, you're going to make a big mistake.

This is quite similar to what Joel Pearson says:

Only use your intuition in familiar contexts. The way intuition works is it's based on learning and learning is context specific. So if you've developed intuition, let's say in the office, and you try and use that intuition at home, it's not going to work. So only use your intuition in familiar contexts.

The Bottom Line

It seems there's much more to intuition than I thought. And I really like Joel Pearson's approach because he treats intuition as something that can be measured and studied. It makes the topic much more grounded.