A big reason for the success of some of the biggest entrepreneurs in the world like Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and Steve Jobs is that they have followed their intuition and they all agree that you should trust your gut. This is something that comes naturally to almost everyone. What is intuition? It is the ability to understand something without the need for conscious reasoning.
Considering the role intuition has played in the success of the above-mentioned people, new entrepreneurs should take heart when it comes to following their gut feeling. If you’re still not convinced about following your intuition, then scientific reasoning should convince you otherwise.
The Scientific Reasoning to Trust Your Gut
Explicit memory and implicit memory are the two types of memory associated with the human brain. The force that drives our intuition or gut feeling is our implicit memory.
The knowledge that you feed to your brain consciously and with a focused, determined effort is your explicit memory. For example, studying to gain knowledge and pass a test is your explicit memory at work.
On the other hand, your implicit memory works without any intentional or conscious effort on your part. When you can recall the lyrics of a song you like or quote a line of dialogue from a movie after watching it, that’s your implicit memory at work. You didn’t make any conscious effort to remember this kind of information; instead, your brain just absorbed it.
You develop skills that eventually become second nature when you let your explicit and implicit memory work together. For example, you need to make a conscious effort to learn how to ride a bike or drive a car. However, once you’ve learned the skill and have a bit of practice, you can do these tasks without any guidance. This is your implicit memory at work.
It is your implicit memory that tells you that touching a hot stove is not a good idea or to be cautious when developing feelings for someone about them not being reciprocated. These implicit prompts or “gut feelings” guide us towards better decision-making that minimizes risks in our lives and make it better.
The Importance of Paying Attention to Your Gut as an Entrepreneur
Although a lot of their decisions are based on logical reasoning, successful entrepreneurs never shy away from acting on their intuition when needed. If a project no longer feels good or necessary and their gut tells them to drop it, seasoned entrepreneurs choose to follow their gut rather than persisting with something for a ‘logical reason’.
Trust your gut! Learning when to listen to your inner voice or act on your gut feeling is much more difficult than developing the skills to collect and analyze metric to make logical decisions. However, your gut can guide you to a place you’ve never been before if you’re willing to turn inwards and pay attention to your intuition.
Tuning into your intuition when things are rough can be hard. However, you need to isolate yourself from the situation and be honest; the cues you get from your body should get all your attention; if you pay attention to these cues, then you are likely to find all the answers you seek at the time.
Look to Achieve ‘Entrepreneurial Independence’
One of the things that all entrepreneurs should strive for is ‘entrepreneurial independence’; this is s mindset that tells you to take full responsibility for your actions. When you have this mindset, you make decisions that are not influenced by outside factors. Instead, they can be traced directly back to you.
You own your decisions and your company’s fate is decided by you. What this does is give you the freedom to refuse advice from people, even the ones you trust the most, so that you may choose what feels right to you. Yes, some people’s feelings may get hurt. Others may even return to you taunting you with an ‘I told you so’ when your decision backfires. However, this is also part of your training to be self-reliant and make decisions based on your best judgment.
Give Your Gut Time and Space to Improve
This may sound absurd but you need to give your intuition some time and space to get better. This means that you need to work on your intuition or trust your gut before you use it. To get in touch with your intuition better, try mental workouts such as meditation, yoga, and mindfulness exercises.
Another thing that you should do to get better attuned with your intuition is to buy some time before making important decisions. Immediacy is encouraged in today’s world; however, you will gain the respect of your clients and other people if you ask them for some time such 24 to 48 hours to consider a key proposition.
Although many people will tell you that waiting too long in business can create a lot of problems, you should know that making on-the-spot decisions won’t get you far, especially if you’re dealing with complex issues.
While the above-mentioned process to improve your gut decision isn’t perfect, it will allow you to be more in tune with your intuition than you are now and, consequently, make better decisions in business and other areas of your life.
by Bobby J Davidson
We love our company and we love what we do. Check out the ‘Why Percento‘ page to learn more: Love of Technology and Business! As the President of Percento Technologies International, I provide day-to-day leadership to the company’s senior management and I am personally involved in the strategy, business development and sales activities of the firm.
The company was founded in 1999 with the purpose of providing a one call source for organizations in need of Enterprise IT Consulting and Management. We also provide a line of products in the boutique Cloud Server space with a touch of high-end website strategy consulting and design services. We personalizes the IT Service experience with a team approach, working with clients from diverse sectors of industry, including energy services, financial, legal, entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, retail and general and/or corporate business. percentotech.com/contact