Can You Go With The Intuitive Flow?

Pablo Picasso, like any true artist, always stayed open to the possibilities of the moment, so in 1907, some intuitive brushstrokes led to the interlocking geometrical figures in Les Demoiselles d’ Avignon, the signal form of Cubism and the strongest influence in 20th century art. Nostradamus is not enough, especially in the office. “You need better intuition, a clearer and more trustworthy inner voice,” say Robert Cooper and Ayman Sawaf in Executive EQ (Orion), their bestseller on how to increase the intuitive flow in the workplace. Here are some of their hints. Totally Experience The Moment Dennis Gabor of Hungary got his ideas while shaving in front of the mirror, including his breakthrough innovations on holography, for which he was honored the 1971 Nobel Prize for Physics. Stretch Your Abilities Robert Ballard was a marine scientist who knew, like most people, that the Titanic had sank on her maiden voyage; but unlike everyone else, he had his certainty that he would find it, and he did – with the help of his deep sub Alvin – 12,000 ft. below the freezing waters of the Atlantic. Stretch Your Senses Don Foster is a mild-mannered professor of literature at Vassar; but his extraordinary connection with words and how they are written has solved some of the FBI’s most dangerous cases, such as the identity of the Unabomber – Theodore Kaczynski – using only the latter’s handwriting samples. A less-threatening achievement is his positive ID on the anonymous author of Primary Colors – the sensational political novel than sent Washington into a guess-who frenzy – Joe Klein. Pay Attention To Your First Response Dr. Emanuel Libman remains a legend because of the inexplicable accuracy of his diagnoses even without the use of medical instruments. He possessed “Secret-divining eyes,” said his good friend and patient Albert Einstein. Another friend, Nobel Prizewinning physiologist Alexis Carrel, writes: “Often it seems as though Libman has the power to apprehend reality by pure intuition. In fact, though, he is analyzing and reasoning – but with the speed of a thunderbolt.”