In a recent interview on Hidden Brain, University of Missouri psychologist Ken Sheldon explores how intuition (i.e. accessing information that gets processed beyond the awareness of day-to-day consciousness) is often the doorway to problem solving. (link at bottom of this post)
The interview focuses on how you can build a life that incorporates more of your intrinsic motivations. He says the best way to find what motivates you intrinsically is to create a moment of calm, ask yourself a series of open questions, then go about your life. The questions prime your mind to engage in a search for answers below the level of conscious action, and you often find that images, ideas, memories, emotions and even physical sensations start emerging into your sphere of awareness. As you engage with the unprocessed data that bubbles up to the surface, you often find clues that help you distinguish what you really care about from what you have “learned to” care about as you try to please your parents and friends or survive/succeed in other social contexts, such as work.
Our intuitions aren’t always right, but when we open ourselves up to and describe them, we make them available for conscious analysis and validation through additional reflection, research or experimentation. The core point is that when you ask the sources of your intuition a question (create a frame for your non-conscious mental processes), your intuition will fish around for information to answer that question. (On the other hand, if you don’t give your intuition something to focus on, it can end up just running around in circles, creating confusion or even gathering data on questions that undermine your well-being.)
This interview reminded me a bit of Eugene Gendlin’s 1970s book “Focusing” in which he explored how giving attention to physical feelings and emotions often leads to the articulation of intuitions into concrete data we can use in solving problems.
There are various lines of scientific research supporting the use of physical sensations, emotions and intuition as hints to guide you through the early stages of finding problems worth solving and opportunities worth pursuing. Gerd Gigerenzer’s “Gut Feelings – The Intelligence of the Unconscious” explores heuristics and how we should can them to improve our decision-making. Bessel Van Der Kolk’s “The Body Keeps the Score” explores how trauma stores itself in the body until we address it, articulate and process it as memory. In a more oblique way, this also reminds me of the rider and elephant metaphor; our conscious mind frames the quest that gives the non-conscious mind something to focus on.
Sheldon brings intuition to bear on that never-ending challenge we all face of trying to figure out who we want to be when we (finally) grow up:)
Sheldon, who teaches at the University of Missouri, provides a fresh angle on what it means to be from The Show Me State;)
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Agency (主体性) + Purpose (志) + Growth (成長) + Connection (繋がり) + Contribution (貢献) = Meaning (意義)
Link to the Hidden Brain interview:
https://podcasts.apple.com/jp/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000683832117
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