From the author: Top Manager Magazine, 2009How to tame your intuition? What is “intuition”? This is what Osho says: “Intuition is a leap, it is something that comes to you without any reason. Reason is an attempt to know the unknown, and intuition is the occurrence of the unknown. It is possible to penetrate into the unknowable, but it is impossible to explain it.” Such definitions smack of mysticism and one gets the impression that this has nothing to do with real life, doesn’t it? Meanwhile, intuition allows a person to perceive information beyond the boundaries of his experience. Any rational action is accompanied by focusing attention on the object, its tension, concentration. This provides boundaries of perception. Access to intuition, on the contrary, is facilitated by defocusing attention, complete relaxation, and entering the position of an observer. The opportunity to use “supernatural” intuition from Osho in such an ordinary matter as business and work smacks of mysticism and unreality. After all, if this is real, then why does economics completely ignore these “mystical” possibilities of intuition and none of the MBA programs contain a course like “The Conscious Use and Development of Intuition in Business”? What exactly confuses us so much when combining the words “intuition” and “making money”? And why do we so stubbornly deny the possibility of using intuition when making professional and business decisions? Among the main reasons preventing the use of intuition, researchers name limiting beliefs that are firmly entrenched in a person’s mind. People are afraid to go beyond the boundaries of their usual rational experience. The main limiting beliefs include the following: 1. Intuition is useful in life, but not in business relationships, especially when dealing with big money. A business decision cannot be made on the basis of intuition.3. Intuition will not always predict 100% correctly, and the cost of error is very high.4. It is impossible to reconcile intuition and risk control systems in decision making. Moreover, the topic of intuition in business decision making is TABOO for conversation and discussion among financiers and business partners. One of the traders said about this: “How to experiment with intuition? You can’t lose money and tell your manager “your intuition failed you”! We need to justify it! You need to explain that you have the opinion that the fundamentals are bad. Of course, you can get fired for saying: I had an impulse or a vision. Well, if you make money, then no one will ask. However, sooner or later the moment will come when intuition is wrong. And sometimes, by the way, this happens. Then it will be difficult to convey to management the motives for your actions.” Money and the fear of losing it prevail over trust in what is alive, happening here and now, and this fear forces you to act rationally and justify your every action with conviction or opinion. And this is accepted not only at the trader level, but at the level of the entire business management system. At the same time, the use of intuition in business can already now be based on the concepts of fundamental science. There are alternative decision-making concepts to rational thinking. Thus, the concept of behavioral finance states that when making decisions, people take into account not only expectations and rational information, but also their feelings and emotions. A person tends to make decisions with a significant deviation from a rational approach. That is, he tends to behave irrationally. As a result, the psychological characteristics of decision-making, especially the influence of emotions, cannot be ignored when describing human behavior. Another approach to decision-making, the theory of nonlinear dynamic systems, is based on the following effects. The first of them was identified by Poincaré in 1908: “A minor cause, hidden from our attention, gives rise to a significant effect that we cannot foresee. And then we say that this effect is random. It may happen that a small difference in the initialconditions creates a big difference in the end of the phenomenon. A small mistake at an earlier stage creates a huge mistake later. Prediction becomes impossible." Thus, dynamic systems are characterized by unpredictability in the long term. A second effect of complex systems involves the concept of critical levels. The classic example is “the straw that broke the camel’s back.” If you add loads to the camel's back, eventually there comes a point when the camel cannot bear any more weight. And then the straw kills him. This sudden collapse is a non-linear reaction, since there is no direct connection between the death of the camel and this straw. The accumulated weight effect ultimately exceeds the camel's endurance (its critical level) and leads to collapse. A system built on the basis of the above effects is not predictable. In relation to it, the concept of a reliable forecasting horizon can be introduced, beyond which it is pointless to form a forecast, because the initial existing error increases many times over, which leads to the meaninglessness of forecasting. Thus, the Theory of Nonlinear Dynamic Systems introduces systems that are unpredictable in advance into the consideration of science, that is, systems in which it is impossible to build rational expectations. In business, such systems include industrial markets. It is almost impossible to predict exactly how a competitive market will develop. At the company level, such systems include the company’s strategic development plans, which have to be rewritten and adjusted every year. After all, the company’s development goals are influenced by countless unpredictable factors. Meanwhile, it is the company’s strategic choice that determines its fate! Therefore, developing intuition in making business decisions may well become an applied task for a manager. Moreover, there is an opinion that achieving a pre-ambitious goal “on the edge of the possible” in a highly competitive market, getting ahead of the market, is possible only by recognizing, revealing and allowing the irrational energies within oneself to manifest themselves, freely following their manifestation. Every person, to one degree or another, draws information from the future. Intuition is essentially a manifestation of this. Is it possible to develop intuition? Intuition is not a gift available to few: it is an integral part of any mental, emotional or mental process. The development of intuition is inextricably linked with the training of attention - it is a constant manifestation of irrational energies given to us by nature . Charles Tart recommends regularly doing practical exercises to develop mindfulness. Mindfulness in daily life is important in order to perceive the world in all its subtleties and act more correctly towards others and towards oneself. Attention training helps you to be more aware, to be “here and now,” which helps you enter an intuitive state and better capture intuitive information. It should be remembered that for the development of intuition, it is not so much the hypersensitive qualities of a person and intuitive techniques that are important, but the ability and ability to consciously go beyond boundaries of the ego and work (awareness, living) with irrational energies. And this is facilitated, first of all, by awareness of one’s goals in life, flexibility, fluidity, and constant growth of oneself in accordance with them. One of the world’s leading researchers of intuition, Laura Day, writes: “Intuitive information is always objective and correct, errors appear only when interpreting intuitive data. In order to reduce the likelihood of errors, intuitive data must be initially separated from logical or emotional data, so that these different sources complement each other. Therefore, when developing intuition, it is necessary to monitor which emotions and beliefs contradict my goals and values ​​and lead me away from them. It is through action in accordance with his inner core that a person learns to separate what is brought from the outside and his inner intention,the cause of which is precisely he himself. The decision should not be influenced by anything external, including your own experience acquired in the past. This is how we gain the experience of recognizing the aspirations of the ego and irrational energies within ourselves. What exactly prevents the manifestation of the intuition inherent in each of us? Researchers call intuition primarily: A sense of self-importance, dizziness from success, conceit. Lack of self-confidence. Avoidance of responsibility for one’s decisions. Insufficient internal volitional effort: I use intuition only to get out of a crisis, but at the moment when everything is successful, I weaken my attention and let go your life to chance. Temptations to do as others say, but your inner instinct suggests otherwise. In his book “Intuition,” Osho reveals the importance of the interaction of instinct, intellect and intuition: “A wise person is the one who creates harmony between the head (intellect), heart (intuition ) and body (instincts). In this harmony, a person comes to the revelation of the source of his life, its very center, soul. Intelligence is a function of the head, instinct is a function of the body, and intuition is a function of the heart. Intuition more often visits a person who has a pure consciousness, not burdened by the exhausting cud of internal dialogue. This state can be described as entering a state of presence, an observer, when you walk “through the air”, are in the flow, and do unreal things. You follow the path of constant change, accept what happens, without ideas and beliefs about yourself and the world around you. You are following the path of constant awareness of yourself and your goals. Intuitive techniques are extremely effective when you are walking “on air.” In the state of “moving through the air,” the conscious use of intuitive techniques and exercises is extremely effective. It is in this state that efficiency tends to infinity and, due to this, any goal becomes achievable. If you want to get an answer to a question that worries you from your own intuition, you must comply with three requirements for a good question. It should be remembered that a correctly posed question is half the answer. First, each question must be specific and unambiguous so that it can be answered accurately. Secondly, each question should be simple, not compound. Intuition is easily confused by a compound question if the first half is false and the second half is true. (Usually, when your intuition is faced with a compound question, it will typically go to the first half of the question.) Don't ask, "Is X Corporation a good company?" if what you really want to know is whether that company's stock is a good investment. Or even more precisely, you probably want to know whether this stock will be a good investment over a given period of time. Stocks that are great short-term investments can be poor long-term investments. How does intuition work? Intuition manifests itself and makes itself felt in different ways. Here are some of its most famous forms: Inner voice. Many people describe it as a "quiet, calm, inner voice." Intuition always communicates with us in a compassionate, loving manner, and this is how it differs from our inner monologue. Dreams. We can receive clear instructions in dreams if we learn to ask our intuition for answers to our questions. Emotions. Intuitive information often comes through feelings or emotions. We can simply “correctly feel” the path to solving a problem, or we can feel an intuitive mistrust of a person or situation. Physical sensations. The Japanese call intuition “the art of the belly.” We call this “gut feeling.” If the wrong decision is made, you may suddenly feel heaviness throughout your body (“your legs won’t move”), chills, or trembling. Instant insight. We may be struck by a sudden flash of understanding. Archimedes in such a situation exclaimed: “Eureka!” Signs. Intuition often gives us signs. They say that “a picture is worth a thousand descriptions.” It is only important to learn to notice them.Coincidences in time and space. Someone said that coincidences are God's way of remaining an anonymous helper. Explaining the essence of intuition, Osho cites a famous haiku by Basho, a Zen mystic and master. To the Western mind this haiku will not seem like great poetry. To feel this poetry you have to be very subtle. It is impossible to understand it intellectually, only intuitively. Here is this haiku: When I look carefully, I see a plantain blooming by the fence! A plantain grows by itself by the road, it is an ordinary grass. She is so ordinary that no one ever looks at her. He has no obvious beauty, his beauty is deep. Its beauty is the beauty of the very ordinary, but the ordinary itself contains the unusual - even the plantain flower. Basho looks at the plant without mind, without clouds of thoughts in the sky of consciousness, without passing memories, without persistent desires. This is a plantain seen with love, with care, heart, cloudless consciousness, in a state of no-mind - and the person is amazed, the person is in awe in awe. A great surprise arises: how is this possible? This plantain... if plantain is possible, everything is possible! If a plantain can be so beautiful, Basho can be a Buddha. If a plantain can contain such poetry, then every stone can become a sermon. Exercises to develop intuition: 1) You need to close your eyes and listen to everything that sounds. This could be the sound of a car passing on the street, people's voices, birds singing, the ticking of a clock in an apartment, the noise of a working computer. In this exercise, it is important to focus as much as possible on the sounds and try to hear all the sounds at the same time, hear them all at once, without highlighting any of them. At first glance, this exercise may seem quite simple. But after just one, maximum, 2 minutes, a person begins to be distracted by his thoughts, connects emotions, in general, leaves the process. Here, efforts are required in order to return oneself to the state of hearing. 2) “Becoming a mirror.” The purpose of this exercise is to let go of head control and allow thoughts, feelings and images to flow. The point is to talk about everything you notice—talk it out loud. Don't forget to talk about the thoughts, feelings, and memories that come to mind. If you remember that you forgot to pay a bill, say so. If the advertising text is annoyingly spinning around in your head, say so. If you feel like you are “not feeling anything,” say so. If you think this is a stupid exercise, say so. As you do this, you will be tempted to edit out sensations that seem trivial or that confuse you. And first of all, you will try to ignore sensations that “don’t make sense.” Resist this temptation. Make every effort to speak or write continuously. This will force you to speak carefully, without interference or censorship from the mind. Remember that you are not “intending” to have any particular impressions, images, or sensations—remember, the disturbances that disturb you may turn out to be valuable data. Stop after a few minutes or at any time when you feel that your impressions are flowing. naturally ended.3) “Maps”. This exercise allows you to capture the feeling that appears as a result of the correct answer. For this exercise you need a deck of cards. Turn the deck face down. Mentally ask yourself the question: “What color is the card?”, but do not look at the card. Your task now is to find the answer within yourself. Namely: direct attention to introspection. It is important to capture each of the sensations. The answers will come not in the form of words, not in the form of tingling or tickling, but in the form of a feeling, in the form of a spiritual impulse. In this exercise, it is important not to be afraid of making mistakes, not to expect a right or wrong result. There is no need to rejoice at instant success, or be upset by failure. It is important to “catch” the very feeling that tells the truth. Over time you will succeed. You need to do it every day for 15-20 minutes. Article