The contemporary business world encourages people to make decisions based on measurable data, and rewards them for their measurable achievements. But even as we consume an overwhelming amount of data, we don’t necessarily feel better prepared to make good decisions. There is still a lingering feeling of anxiety, and the fear that there is one right answer we are supposed to find. Our reliance on data and experts and tools has become so exhausting because we have lost our most important of of intelligence in the process: intuition. By looking for answers solely from the outside world instead of looking within, we invalidate out innermost voice.

Intuition is that “gut feeling” we tend to regret ignoring after we have gone another way. But if you practice listening enough, it is there to help guide you toward the right decisions in your business. Learning to listen to your gut is a deceivingly difficult process, mostly because it is so easy to let our egos and emotions get in the way.

The amazing power of using intuition as part of the decision making process is that it picks up where our emotions and egos leave off. Our egos are designed to keep us safe, often instilling the fear of change that so many people are nagged by as they try to move their businesses forward. Emotions are usually temporary, reflecting an ever changing landscape of wants. It’s easy to see how relying on either of these can lead to poor decision making. But our intuition is the voice of our values and experience, unswayed by what is scary or what sounds good right now, but more concerned with providing solutions that resonate with who we are. In the face of uncertainty, it allows us to make profound and ground-breaking decisions.

In business, such a “touchy feely” concept can be easily written off, but the reasoning usually has more to do with the face that people aren’t practiced enough at knowing how and when to use their intuition to their advantage. Here area few suggestions for exercising intuition in your decision making:

Click here to read the entire article in the latest issue of Smart Tan Magazine online.