Developing Intuition: A Simple 3-Step Formula to Trust Your Gut

Developing Intuition: Have you ever had a hunch that turned out to be spot-on? That’s your intuition at work—and yes, you can make it sharper, more reliable, and incredibly useful.

Intuition isn’t some mystical superpower. It’s your brain processing information faster than your conscious mind can keep up. The good news? You already have it. The better news? You can develop it with a straightforward, three-step process:

  1. Recognize and encourage it
  2. Study it to make it trustworthy
  3. Give it good information to work with

Let’s break it down—with real-world examples, including a costly lesson I learned on a crowded bus in Ecuador.

Step 1 Developing Intuition: Recognize and Encourage Your Intuition

You’ve felt it before: a gut feeling, a sudden hunch, or that quiet voice saying, “Something’s off.”

That’s intuition.

Example: World chess champion Gary Kasparov admits computers can calculate dozens of moves ahead. Yet he still defeats them—why? Because his decades of experience give him an intuitive feel for the board that raw computation can’t match.

Start paying attention to where you operate intuitively. Do you just know when a deal feels right? Can you sense when someone’s hiding something?

Here’s the trick: What you look for, you’ll find.

When I bought a conversion van, suddenly I saw them everywhere. The same happens with intuition. The more you watch for hunches, the more they appear.

Action: Keep a small journal. Jot down every intuitive hit—no matter how small. You’ll be amazed how often you’re already right.

Step 2 Developing Intuition: Study Your Intuition (Yes, Question Your Gut)

Not every hunch is golden. Sometimes it’s just fear in disguise.

Example: Imagine you were hit by a yellow taxi as a child. Now, every time you see one, you feel dread. That’s not intuition—it’s trauma dressed up as a gut feeling.

The fix? Interrogate your hunches.

Ask:

  • Why do I feel this way?
  • Is this based on real patterns or old baggage?
  • Where has my intuition been right—or wrong—before?

Pro tip: Track your accuracy by domain.

AreaIntuitive Accuracy
Stock picksUsually right ✅
Judging peopleOften wrong ❌
Safety decisionsSpot-on ✅

Over time, you’ll develop intuition about your intuition—knowing when to trust it and when to double-check.

Step 3 Developing Intuition: Feed Your Intuition High-Quality Fuel

Your intuition is only as good as the data it’s built on.

Hard truth: A beginner chess player will never intuitively beat a supercomputer. But Kasparov can—because he’s logged tens of thousands of hours.

Want better hunches about marketing? Study campaigns. Want sharper people-reading skills? Observe body language, practice empathy, learn psychology.

Your brain works in the background—but only if you give it raw materials.

Action: Pick one area you want stronger intuition in. Commit to 30 minutes a day of deliberate learning or practice. In a month, your gut will thank you.

A Real-Life Warning (That I Ignored)

My wife and I were in Ecuador. A bus pulled up—packed tight. A drunk guy kept bumping into people. We both felt it: “Don’t get on.”

We ignored it. I got pickpocketed.

That wasn’t psychic power. Our brains registered:

  • Crowded bus = high theft risk
  • Drunk man = unpredictable behavior
  • Uneasy vibe = danger

We just didn’t listen.

Your Intuition Development Formula

  1. Watch for hunches → You’ll see more
  2. Question them → You’ll trust the right ones
  3. Feed your mind expertise → You’ll get better ones

Do this, and intuition stops being a mystery. It becomes a superpower you control.

What’s one area of your life where you’d love sharper intuition?
Drop it in the comments—I’ll help you build a 30-day plan to train it.

This post is based on timeless principles of subconscious pattern recognition and deliberate practice. No woo-woo. Just results.

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