Transcriber: Steffi Medrano Reviewer: Emma Gon
Two weeks ago, I had my TEDx talk crisis.
I'd been crafting a talk for you about climate change and good business.
But I was really struggling to find my single focus.
So I called my husband Tom and I did the talk for him,
thinking he'll have a great insight.
But he was just standing there at the end, completely blank.
And then he said the one thing that you do not want to hear
when you are two weeks out from speaking at TED.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to say.”
(Laughter)
And the truth is,
after two months, I wasn’t either.
And what he said next changed everything.
“I know you’re passionate about climate action,” he said,
“but I’m just surprised you’re not talking about intuition.”
It’s the most interesting thing about what you do.
So, you know, when someone who knows you really well
has just nailed you and you’re objecting back with your mouth,
but you know the moment you stop speaking,
you’ll have accepted that truth.
So that happened.
And now this niggling feeling that I’ve had for weeks is amplified.
The next feeling’s like panic.
I’m walking around the room,
“I can’t change my talk two weeks out from the event!”
But I did.
And I found the courage somehow to get out that blank piece of paper
and listen to the voice that had been trying to get my attention for weeks.
And I assure you, the irony is not lost on me,
because today I’m going to talk to you about intuition
and why it is the most powerful tool that every single one of us have
for our own personal development and for our resilience as a global community.
You see, I’ve been cultivating intuition for over three decades,
and I use it to help people find their highest potential.
By doing that, I believe I’m serving the highest potential
for humanity and our planet.
And here’s the thing about intuition.
It’s free.
(Laughter)
You were born with it.
It’s our inner compass,
it will guide you through good times and bad times,
but you cannot quantify it.
You cannot touch it, see it, but you can feel it.
And I’m not suggesting that we throw out empirical evidence.
My academic brain knows the value of that as well.
But I believe that when we combine knowledge and intuition,
that is the greatest and most powerful force
we have for change and innovation and creativity.
Albert Einstein said that intuition is a sacred gift
and that our rational mind should be its servant.
But he also noticed that our society was valuing the servant
and we'd forgotten the gift.
So let me introduce you to the three levels of intuition.
The first you'll recognize straight away.
You think of someone you haven't seen for a really long time,
and suddenly they message you.
Or you just feel pulled to go somewhere,
and something significant happens.
Or the opposite, “I knew I shouldn’t have done that.”
And sometimes you’ll use words like instinct or hunch
or you’ll talk about having a gut feeling.
Sometimes you’ll get physical symptoms
like hair standing on the back of your neck or goose bumps.
And we share this with the people around us and it feels really signficant.
And we’re like, ooh, yeah, that must be important. Yeah.
And this where most of us think intuition ends.
But there is so much more.
Level two I call inspiration because that is how it feels.
And inspiration, what’s important is
that you learn to ask questions and listen to the answers.
Which is a bit more complicated than it sounds,
because when you first start cultivating this,
the answers come in milliseconds
and you can lose them with thoughts overriding them straight away.
“Oh, I should go for that job.”
Intuition. Yes.
Thought, I’ll go, but am I good enough? And should I do it?
And what will people think? And bang, intuition is gone.
But when you cultivate this space,
you can learn to amplify and trust that.
And at this stage, it’s very exciting
when you start making life decisions from this place,
you’re given the evidence that it works
and it can feel very creative and inspiring.
I love that story when Paul McCartney talks about how he wrote Yesterday.
He heard the tune in a dream.
But when he woke, he immediately went to the piano right by his bed,
and he searched for those notes until he found the tune.
That’s intuition in action and he was probably in a theta state.
That happens in REM sleep.
Thomas Edison famously used to cultivate this state on purpose
because that’s where his best ideas came.
And then there’s level three.
Trust.
Complete trust that intuition is a valid methodology in your life.
You know exactly what is conscious and subconscious thoughts
and you can bring them together effortlessly.
Sometimes people are called pioneers or innovators or geniuses in this state.
But those words, they can make us feel like someone was born with that.
But you can get there, too. You can cultivate this space,
and be at any level you want to be at.
But if intuition is this powerful,
why hasn't it been more prevalent in our society until now?
Three historical clues. First, we travel back to 4000 BC,
Plato and Socrates discussing, does the soul exist?
Which led to this centuries long argument of logic versus emotion.
I don’t know why it was a competition, but logic won in our institutions.
Secondly, the patriarchal nature of our society identified
that emotions and intuition were feminine qualities.
That was evidence of our inferiority.
So men couldn’t really use them then.
And science.
Francis Bacon, the father of modern science, clearly stated:
That the purpose of knowledge was to control nature.
Nature has no purpose.
The body politic took that one.
They exploited and tamed nature and in the process,
it increased our disconnection not just from our environment
but from ourselves.
So if we are to cultivate intuition, how can we do that?
Any breath-based practice,
meditation being the most well known.
Even more powerful when you combine it with yoga or tai chi.
If you’re creative, play an instrument, dance, make art.
Nature.
Nature immersion, the most powerful one that we all have access to,
not walking in nature and chatting with your friends
about the weekend although please do that, that’s good fun.
But going in purposely and sitting in the presence of utter beauty
and seeing what that does to you.
There’s a practice formalized called forest bathing
that originated in Japan and is now widely practiced.
It's emerging in the U.K. as well.
And this is a facilitated process where you can be taken into nature
and learn how to connect.
It first started when there was a pandemic
of suicide in Japanese executives.
They got taken into the forest.
Their breath slowed down, they became calmer.
And then they could return to life and be better leaders.
This practice is now encouraged acrosss the whole of society in Japan.
Nature connection leads us back to our intuition
And if this is sounding a little bit far out, let me ask you,
how do you think social media algorithms work?
You watch content and based on the emotions
you experience in that content, you’re delivered more content.
Intuition is no different, except intuition is your internal algorithm.
And if you like empirical evidence like me,
look to neuroscience, psychology and quantum physics
where it is definitively proven,
the connection between feelings and thoughts and our actions.
So what I’m saying is intuition helps us think differently.
It helps us be different.
And if logic got us into this mess where we’re in a climate crisis
and we have a mental health pandemic,
surely we need to look to new paradigms.
Ones that are more restorative and regenerative.
Ones that embrace intuition as a bridge to discovering a new way to be.
I promise you, intuition will make you calmer and feel so empowered.
You will be a better leader,
a better parent and we will all be better ancestors.
So I'm going to leave you with the question.
Do you want to reach your highest potential?
Because intuition is your internal guidance system
and it’s waiting to be accessed whenever you’re ready.
Thank you.
(Applause)