Everything about this research process has pushed me in ways that I never imagined. This is
especially true when it comes to topics like faith, intuition, and spirituality. When the importance of
intuition and faith first emerged as key patterns in Wholehearted living, I winced a little bit. Once
again, I felt like my good friends—logic and reason—were under attack. I remember telling Steve,
“Now it’s intuition and faith! Can you believe it?”
He replied, “I’m surprised that you’re surprised. You work off of faith and your gut all of the
time.”
He took me off guard with his comment.
I sat down next to him and said, “Yeah, I know I’m a gut and faith kinda girl, but I guess I’m not
very intuitive. Read this definition from the dictionary: ‘Intuition is direct perception of truth or fact,
independent of any reasoning process.’”^1
Steve chuckled, “So, maybe the definition doesn’t match what you’re learning from the data. You’ll
write a new one. It won’t be the first time.”
I spent a year focusing on intuition and faith. I interviewed and collected stories so that I could get
my head and heart around what it means to cultivate intuition and trust faith. I was surprised by what I
learned.
IntuitionIntuition is not independent of any reasoning process. In fact, psychologists believe that intuition is a
rapid-fire, unconscious associating process—like a mental puzzle.^2 The brain makes an observation,
scans its files, and matches the observation with existing memories, knowledge, and experiences.
Once it puts together a series of matches, we get a “gut” on what we’ve observed.
Sometimes our intuition or our gut tells us what we need to know; other times it actually steers us
toward fact-finding and reasoning. As it turns out, intuition may be the quiet voice within, but that
voice is not limited to one message. Sometimes our intuition whispers, “Follow your instincts.” Other
times it shouts, “You need to check this out; we don’t have enough information!”
In my research, I found that what silences our intuitive voice is our need for certainty. Most of us
are not very good at not knowing. We like sure things and guarantees so much that we don’t pay
attention to the outcomes of our brain’s matching process.
For example, rather than respecting a strong internal instinct, we become fearful and look for