We’ve all had occasions where something happens or is said that “just doesn’t add up”. It’s a weird sinking sensation, an air of puzzlement that seeps through your whole body as your brain tries (and tries, and tries!) to figure it out. Tries to make sense of something but failing, unable to shake the vague notion that some of the jigsaw pieces are missing. That somehow there is more to this than meets the eye.
It’s all very…. vague, though isn’t it? Just having a “feeling” that something doesn’t add up? And sometimes the situations it’s applying to are VERY big and VERY real. The consequences of trusting this sensation can be huge. So – should we? When do we know how to trust that creeping prickle of unrest? And how do we know when it’s way off base and we should just ignore it and carry on rather than jump to conclusions? When is it right? When is it wrong? How do we know if things are really not adding up, or is it just that we are imagining it?
We can ask questions of course, and that’s a good place to start. The rational brain wants to understand. To make sense of stuff. Find the missing piece that makes the picture come clear. So Ask Ask Ask. Research. Dig Dig Dig. Can you find the missing puzzle pieces? If you can of course the true picture comes into view – either we were mistaken, and everything does add up perfectly, we just didn’t have all the facts…or…however hard you look you just can’t find that missing piece. That nagging feeling that something that doesn’t add up remains. What then?
Well the solution is to take a decision away from the logical place of the mind. The mind needs all the information and data to make a complete picture. And – for whatever reason, whether you are being lied to or something is being withheld, hidden or omitted, that bit of data isn’t available. Your mind is unable to do its job, it doesn’t have all the data. So – take the problem to the part of you that does not rely on logic to get a complete picture – but get’s a complete picture nonetheless. Take the issue to the wisdom of your body.
Our conscious mind operates with less than 10% of our processing power. Our subconscious with over 90%. It’s picking up on waaaay more data and information than you consciously realise, and it’s speaking to you through your body. Your body knows for sure what your mind is yet to figure out.
I am talking about your Intuition. Your intuition isn’t some sort of airy-fairy thing to be dismissed because it doesn’t register data on a fitbit or an app you can track. It’s actually a data collection mechanism that’s far more sophisticated than anything your mind can conceive of.
Break it down: Intuition – “IN Tuition”. Tuition – it’s learning. Teaching you something it’s important to know. “In” – it comes from the INSIDE of you. Your subconscious speaking through your body. Intuition is quite literally Inner Teaching. And you’d be remiss not to take the lesson it’s trying so hard to share.
In an external data driven world we give less and less credence to any information that cannot be triangulated and analysed to within 6 decimal points. To live that way is to disconnect ourselves from our inner GPS. To excommunicate our inner wisdom. It is to do ourselves a great disservice and ignore the warning signals of a subtle yet wholly beneficent guidance system that is always watching over us and communicating to us for our highest good.
So – when the mind can’t figure out why it doesn’t seem to add up –turn it over to the wisdom of your body. Your intuition speaks through your body. Back in corporate days, in a galaxy far, far away, I had this weird feeling that one of my colleagues was up to no good. It wasn’t something I could put my finger on, his paperwork was immaculate, he was a nice bloke, he sold lots of ads… it was just…just something didn’t add up. He had many miraculous last minute sales…. but then…we all had last minute miraculous sales, that was part of the media buzz. I had them. Everyone else had them. What was it about his that felt somehow “off”? Why did my spidey senses get tingling whenever he would real out his sales results in the weekly meeting? Why would my skin prickle and my shoulders rise? I just couldn’t shake that feeling that something didn’t add up.
One night I stayed late, and in the filling cabinet next to his desk I found dozens and dozens of hidden credit requests from clients saying they had never bought the ad. Dozens! Going back months. Fistfuls of them. Meanwhile – he had been collecting commission on all those “sales”. Turned out over half his sales were fraudulent. And I knew that way before I found the stash of credit notes. My body told me, even though logically it made no sense my body knew way ahead of time. Another time, a personal situation, I felt I was being lied to, I didn’t want to believe it, but despite continual reassurances that it was “all in my head” my body went into overdrive. Spontaneous vomiting and retching whenever I had extended time around that person. Complete inability to sleep. Real extreme body reactions. Extreme. I felt I was going mad. They helpfully told me I was going mad. Finally the truth came out, as it always does, and they had indeed been lying their absolute face off. I had chosen to believe them and their lies rather than my sweet and honest body who intuitively knew things in no way added up, and was warning me the best way it knew how with every weapon at it’s disposal. The body already knows what the mind doesn’t know or want to know. Our intuition is gathering information at such a speed and depth it has a far more complete picture than our logical mind can ever complete.
This, of course, is particularly hard when things don’t add up but the truth might be something that we neither want to believe, accept or face. We actually don’t want things to add up if the equation is massively life altering. We can work hard at burying this intuition with our conscious mind, keeping distracted, busy, in denial, escaping with booze, or overeating or gossiping about trivia or whatever our usual MO. But the knowledge is still there, that data collection of internal knowing is still happening, the body still knows what it knows. It’s wiser than the conscious part of us, and is always looking out for our highest good. It’s an early warning system designed for our survival, it’s trying to warn us of danger. It’s doing its job when it alerts us that something doesn’t add up. In prehistoric times this could have been the difference between death and survival – the feeling that we were being subtly ousted by the tribe – those subtle non-verbal cues that we needed to pick up on in order to survive. Mother Nature is so clever, She built in this incredible guidance system that could serve us to well if only we listened more closely and trusted what it had to say.
Your mind can manufacture ridiculous stories that believing can lead to dire consequences as you find that there was not a grain of truth, or the motivations you assumed were sinister were no such thing. The mind, in short, can play helluva load of tricks. We need to accept the stories of the mind with caution, and fact check fact check fact check.
The body however? Well the faithful old body does no such thing. It always, but always, tells you the truth. It’s the faith trusty old guide dog, who pads along silently at our side, always looking out for our good, and who is able to clearly see the way even when we are surrounded by fog and darkness. It’s a world away from the trickster monkey mind who will say anything just to get a reaction, true or no.
Your body is a wise guide that will give you the truth – always. That phrase “I just knew it in my bones”. Well it turns out that – you do. So, if you have the subtle sensation that something doesn’t add up, consider that what’s often being subtracted is the truth.
