Email Service Notes (Tony)

Your Original Email

Relying on our intuition generally has a bad reputation, especially when analytic thinking has been steadily promoted over the past decades. Gradually, many have come to think that humans have progressed from relying on primitive, magical and religious thinking to analytic and scientific thinking. As a result, they view emotions and intuition as fallible reactions. However, such kind of thoughts may ignore the fact that in most cases, such seems unconscious reactions also based our past experience. To make it more clearly, that means that our brains store some useful information at ordinary times and instruct our behaviors when they believe that we are under the same or similar situations. So such reactions can also be objective and reliable.

Therefore, for every situation that involves a decision based on your assessment, you may have to consider: is it a new situation? Do you have any experience for the current situation or do you have any relevant expertise? In the event that you just meet a new situation and you do not have any expertise for that, it would be better to rely on your analytic thinking. Otherwise, you can feel free to trust your gut feelings. The most important thing is you may have to accept that the analytic thinking and gut feelings are not always opposite, they can also work together.

Your Edited Email

Relying on our intuition generally has a bad reputation, especially when analytical thinking has been steadily promoted over the past few decades. Gradually, many have come to think that humans have progressed from relying on primitive, magical, instinctual and religious thinking to analytical and scientific thinking. As a result, they view emotions and intuition as fallible reactions. However, such kind of thoughts may ignore the fact that in most cases, such seems sub-conscious reactions are also based on our past experience. To make it more clear, that means that our brains store some useful information at ordinary times and instruct our behaviors when they believe that we are under the same or similar situations. So such reactions can also be objective and reliable.

Therefore, for every situation that involves a decision based on your assessment, you may have to consider: is it a new situation? Do you have any experience for the current situation or do you have any relevant expertise? In the event that you just meet a new situation and you do not have any expertise for that, it would be better to rely on your analytical thinking. Otherwise, you can feel free to trust your gut feelings. The most important thing is you may have to accept that the analytical thinking and gut feelings are not always opposite, they can also work together.