Many refute intuition, mindfulness and prescience as playing a meaningful role in business or life.  Conversations often dry up when I mention I also believe that manifestation, spirituality and strategic intent are part of the same process.

Intuition is defined as when you instinctively know that something you are doing is right or wrong.

The dictionary says it works by drawing on patterns we have collected that lets us make quick decisions. Its a gut feeling, it is immediate, do this or that.  My son told me today that he had an accident on the weekend when the wheels of his Ute locked and he hit a pole. He ignored the intuition he had, that he should not take the Ute. We all experience intuition because it is a felt, recognised force and has been a source of fascination since Ancient Times.(1)  Many famous leaders have relied on intuition to navigate uncertainty and make choices. Albert Einstein famously remarked that ‘The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind a faithful servant’.

Mindfulness is being aware;  of yourself, your context and subtle harbingers calling for your attention.

For example, I lived in Warrandyte in Victoria, a rustic little village outside Melbourne. How I ended up choosing Melbourne is relevant.  I am an entrepreneur and I just setting up my first business in Australia.  Melbourne seemed easier; I had been introduced to a new network of consultants in that city, who seemed keen to work with me.  They offered infrastructure. However, I ignored two emphatic warning signs against settling in Melbourne.  Melbourne later turned out to be a terrible choice.

Firstly, I burnt my leg very badly on the train from Sydney to Melbourne. It was so bad that I cancelled the city tour my future teammates had organized. I could hardly walk.  Secondly, in Sydney, my friend and I were walking down the street of Eastern Valley Way, discussing where to base the company, when we saw carved into the concrete pavement, my name in huge letters.^(2]  I remember Sanjeet saying;   “What more do you need?” he pointed, “you should set up base here, in Sydney.”

Big words from a mathematician and atheist, who had no belief in ‘signs”.  But I was neither mindful nor responsive.  I ignored these portents, direct warnings on steroids.  Years later realisation and wisdom came with hindsight.  Energetic forces tried to guide me, but sadly, I was closed. Mindfulness is still superficially understood.  Most health professionals talk up its benefits.  I think it opens up another dimension,  a portal to the Big Networks. (3)

Prescience is sudden insight into what has not happened yet, what may not even yet exist. It is about knowing the future.

It’s future sense. You don’t know why you should feel that way about something; it’s a sense of certainty about an endgame.  Prescience for me ranges from an awareness about a bigger context, to receiving direct information about an event, person, or outcome.

I have many examples but let me share this personal example. – Warrandyte as I said, is a picturesque  little village, about an hour and half commute from the CBD.  Now walking home from the train station my heart was heavy. I had almost nothing to show after three months of frenetic business development activity.   I was working 14-hour days, yet there was no response to my efforts.  Was this going to be another slow, painful startup; like our software company, selling concepts 20 years ahead of their time? Who had heard of a dashboard?

Initially so confident, brimming with energy, buoyed by successes.  I had left on a high, our Southern African company humming, having taken over the client base and functions of our only competitor, the consulting wing of mining giant Anglo American.  A real case of David and Goliath. We now had some 35 consultants and associates, operating across five Southern African countries.

But that energy was not here.  I had zero client prospects.  It was a silent spring, shaping up to be a long hard winter.   I was just not sure I had the energy to do it again.  I sat down on the bank of the big brown Yarra River. After a while I stood up, continuing my homeward plod.  Up ahead, I spied a small wooden alcove nestled among the trees.  I felt a sudden urge to go inside, just to sit quietly, nurse the despondency I was feeling.

Next minute, I was sitting on a hard bench, eyes closed. For some inexplicable reason, I said; “Dear Spirit or God, if you exist, please listen, hear my prayer.  I don’t want to do this start up pain all over again.”  I stopped, feeling silly.  I sat silently, watching the late afternoon sunlight rimming the leaves.

Then I heard a soft, clear, firm voice in my ear, saying; “It will not be the same, it will be new.” I had a prescience that the business would fly, it would be successful, there would be no start up grind again.  This knowledge flooded in.  I just knew. It was a felt force and uncertainty and worry left.

Two days later a senior member of Westpac Banking Corporation phoned.  We never looked back. Two years later, when the income clicked for the first time into healthy seven digits, I remembered with thanks, that moment in the little wooden alcove in Warrandyte, when the prescience was so strong, telling me it’s all OK, let go, this business will fly.

Now three years later I looked back, ruing that I did not more clearly define what I meant, when I had asked so fervently, “Dear Spirit or God, please let this business fly’’. It flew, it flew too high.(3)

Next part of this series deals with manifestation, spirituality and its link to business strategic strategy and intent.

References

(1) Where Does Intuition Comes From According To Ancient Books And Philosophers? – Learning Supernatural

[2] I was never able to find this tag again.  Maybe the concrete walkway had been redone.  Sanjeet was my witness it existed.

(3)  Olivier, A. .So Long We Slept Apart. Unpublished manuscript