Intuition is a colleague of Conscience and Experience, members of the Advisory Committee that meets in the Executive Suite on the top floor of our bodily Temple. There are others at the table as well, all of whom are confident of their contributions to our well-being--continuously debating our worth and fortunes; accusing and redeeming; warning and encouraging. Argh. So many voices. So loud. So persistent.

Many among our Advisory Committee, frankly, overvalue their wisdom; some of them, in fact, long ago outlived their usefulness and ought to be encouraged to retire.

Intuition is the Bohemian of the lot. He rarely attends the penthouse meetings, preferring to speak from the interior gut of the Temple with more proddings than words. His subtlety of expression can make it difficult to distinguish his ideas from a sudden chill in the room or a reaction to the chili you ate at lunch. Intuition's observations are not always on the mark; even at his best, it can be difficult to accurately interpret his promptings.

I've found it helpful though to listen to Intuition when he stirs, to give voice--however imprecise--to his pokes. He's quite creative. He often identifies connections and initiates conversations, leading to new discoveries. And Intuition's occasional warnings of impending peril have at times proven eerily prophetic and preemptive.  

Sigmund Freud--in spite of his other issues, including his mother miscues--offered a simple suggestion to proactively call forth, with clarity, the muse of Intuition. When confronted with two possible solutions to a problem, he'd take a coin from his pocket. He'd assign "Yes" and "No" to "Heads" and "Tails." He'd flip the coin. If his instinctive reaction to the coin flip was, "Let's try two out of three," then his intuition had revealed itself!

Call it the Freudian Flip.

How aware are you of your intuition? How does it show up?

Are you currently confronting a problem with multiple solutions? What would it look like to employ the "Freudian Flip"?