“A risk-less life is unbelievably risky.” — Jim Donald (Former CEO of Starbucks)

I’m coming to you with some key takeaways from Day 3 of the Titan Summit. The topic was Exponential Business Results + Creating a World-Class Company. If you missed my posts about Days 1 and 2, definitely go back and read them.

We had speakers such as Jim Donald (above) urging us to understand what makes us unique in the world and go out and play the long game.

Robin Sharma also reminded us that our income affects our impact. In other words, the wealthier you get, the more you can impact the world through giving back.

He also shared that “until your vision becomes your obsession, your mission won’t become your genius” and “ideas don’t work for you if you don’t do the work”.

(I had to share more than one with you — they are too good not to!)

And finally, we had author, coach and speaker Philip McKernan who spoke about something that’s been on my heart and mind a lot lately: Intuition + action.

That’s what I want to talk to you about today.

Philip started off displaying this image on the screen at the beginning of his presentation:

“90% of people die with regret. I work with the other 10%”.

I loved that and could definitely relate when I saw it, but it also made me sad for that 90% and led me wonder how we can decrease that number.

Although I’m sure there are quite a few answers to that question, the word that comes to mind for me is trust. I’ll come back to that in a second.

One of the incredible stories of intuition that Philip shared from the stage was one of Stanislav Petrov.

A quick Google search says that Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who became known as “the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war” for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.

As Philip shared, when asked how he was able to recognize some of the signs and prevent the world from nuclear war, Petrov said, “I had a funny feeling in my gut”.

He had a “funny feeling” that stopped a nuclear war…

Intuition.

Can you imagine trusting that instinct? Would you trust in that situation?

Luckily, we’re probably not depending on you to stop a disaster of that magnitude, but arguably, those of us who are running businesses, are looking to alleviate some major pains and change the world.

At least that’s what we’re being called to do. Trusting that calling is a whole other topic.

The reality is, after working with thousands of women around the world, most people wouldn’t be strong or confident enough to follow that feeling. In fact, most of us deny our intuition or aren’t present enough to even hear it.

And believe me lovely, it’s not always our fault. Most of us aren’t taught to trust our gut feelings — only facts are meant to be acted upon.

Can you relate?

Here’s a simple example that displays this…

Philip shared an experiment that was done by having participants play with a deck of cards. One group was given a faulty deck, and the other a regular deck.

Ten cards in, the sweat glands of the participants with the faulty deck opened up — in other words, their body started to tell them something was off.

50 cards in, they realized what may be happening and experienced suspicion.

But it wasn’t until 80 cards in did they actually trust what they were feeling and say something. (In other words, take action.)

For me, this displays the lack of trust we have in our own gut feelings. We take far too long to voice them to ourselves, let alone others. Until it’s fact, we hesitate.

That’s what I’m getting to here, and that’s why that image above makes me so sad.

We have the inkling inside but we don’t go for it. We censor, stop, procrastinate, let others dictate our dreams and choices, we put something off for another week, month or even decade. Then too much times has gone by and we succumb to what we believe is the reality of “it’s too late”. We don’t trust our calling.

Sad, right?

But it doesn’t have to be that way lovely. You can start to trust yourself, and take action on behalf of your instincts — today!

And believe me, you’ll be more successful, have more impact and be happier because of it. Literally my best decisions have been made off instinct.

Still not convinced? Take a look at this…

Philip also shared that people who make intuitive decisions regret their choices 20% of the time. Yet people who make intellectual ones regret them 65% of the time.

Isn’t that an incredible stat?!

I see this time and time again lovely, my clients want the next strategy or quick fix, and forget about the most powerful tool at their disposal: their gut.

Ready to pay more attention, lovely? You can get started today. Follow your heart towards something small — the next book you want to read, program you want to create, coach you want to work with, trip you want to take and then move into the business you want to start, team member you want to hire or city you want to live in — your wisdom is there within.

It’s up to you to acknowledge and learn to trust it and then take the action.

Speak to you later this week with Day 4!