Making Your Intuition Work for You Instead of Against You

Clarifying and Refining What You Really Think about the Sacred

I’m in chapter five of a long book that has my head buzzing. The book is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Kahneman died two years ago after a fascinating career as a psychologist specializing in judgment and decision-making, a career than saw a creative collaboration with another famous psychologist, Amos Tversky.

I found Kahneman’s book by reading Michael Lewis’ The Undoing Project, and I am intrigued by the insights regarding how people decide what to do and what to believe about life in general and their lives in particular.

Forty-five years ago, when I co-founded the Life Training Program, it was news to most participants that their minds automatically shaped their thinking and drove their behavior. Today, that is something most people acknowledge, although, like everything that is popularized, it is recognized without being understood.

I’ve learned that my intuition plays a central part in the development of what I believe about the unseen forces that shape my life. Throughout my life, convictions about things pertaining to “God”have shifted a lot, but at every turn, no matter their content or impact on my life, they were deeply felt, conformably familiar, and satisfying reassuring. And they arrived “out of the blue” and therefore seemed more inspired and accurate. If anyone questioned them, I often thought: “That’s what I believe, and I have a right to my beliefs.”

This is where Kahneman (and Tversky’s) work comes in. And it’s an eye-opener.

In his book, Kahneman identifies two systems of thinking we all employ: System 1 (which he calls Fast Thinking) and System 2 (which he calls Slow Thinking). Another, more familiar, way to label them is Intuition and Rationality.

Intuition takes place automatically as the mind, at lightening speed, blends memories, previous conclusions, and associations and comes to a decision about what to do and what to believe that justifies the doing. This process is involuntary, and Kahneman illustrates it with numerous examples, including asking the reader to notice their immediate physical and emotional reactions to two words: Bananas Vomit.

System 2 thinking, on the other hand, is much slower, and it requires effort to a) notice what System 1 is urging, b) address its conclusions with conscious thought, and c) make a thoughtful decision about what to do and what to believe.

Here’s a short quote from Kahneman: “Many people are overconfident, prone to place too much faith in their intuitions . . . overriding [them] requires hard work.” He continues with, “The insistent idea that “it’s true, it’s true!” makes it difficult to check the logic, and most people do not take the trouble to think through the problem.”

Over the years, I’ve found he is right about this. It’s far too easy to let my mind continue to create beliefs and drive actions that require effort to question and change. This is especially true when it comes to my convictions about sacred matters. I have decades of experiences associating scripture, liturgy, statuary, paintings, sounds, smells, and music with beliefs about a supernatural being that will rescue me and the people I love from the messes we get ourselves into.

I know many people who do the same thing. In the face of human suffering, a common “intuitive” belief is the existence of an afterlife that rewards or punishes them (and others!) for how they behave and what they believe in their daily existence. That particular belief has never really grabbed me, but I’ve been grabbed by a lot of other convictions that required time, observation, education, and painful experience to undo (hence Michael Lewis’ book title).

I’m only part way into Kahneman’s book. I’m sure his later chapters will expand and probably counter my first, (often intuitive!) conclusions about his Fast and Slow thinking models.

I look forward to those changes, because I want to sharpen my intuitive abilities. It is System 1 thinking that sources my creativity, my hopefulness, my resourcefulness. However, without System 2 thinking—slower, measured, informed—it can and will continue to create inaccurate perceptions of reality and make me certain that these perceptions are “the truth.”

And, I find it important to keep in mind Kaheman’s discovery that System 1 (intuitive and automatic) thinking is driven by what seems familiar and what requires the least amount of effort to assimilate. Many solid academic tests have proven that intuition can be swayed by repetitive messages (even and perhaps especially if false). I think about that often in the light of what we are bombarded by every day, courtesy of social media and AI-generated material. This past week, for example, the news was filled with people in power speaking perhaps too quickly and easily about their theological convictions and how they justify their behavior.

Thankfully, if I’m willing to engage life with both systems of thinking, all that bombardment is simply more fodder for the hard, but helpful, work of sorting out the wheat from the chaff of my convictions about ultimate things.

So, on to more reading and thinking of both kinds, System 1 and System 2.

Please join me in observing your reactions to all that’s going on in our world. Especially notice those decisions and beliefs that come too quickly, too easily, and feel “so true.” Let’s see where that effort takes us, and share it with those around you.