Listen To Your Intuition Quotes

You will never follow your own inner voice until you clear up the doubts in your mind.

You Chose You chose. You chose. You chose. You chose to give away your love. You chose to have a broken heart. You chose to give up. You chose to hang on. You chose to react. You chose to feel insecure. You chose to feel anger. You chose to fight back. You chose to have hope. You chose to be naïve. You chose to ignore your intuition. You chose to ignore advice. You chose to look the other way. You chose to not listen. You chose to be stuck in the past. You chose your perspective. You chose to blame. You chose to be right. You chose your pride. You chose your games. You chose your ego. You chose your paranoia. You chose to compete. You chose your enemies. You chose your consequences. You chose. You chose. You chose. You chose. However, you are not alone. Generations of women in your family have chosen. Women around the world have chosen. We all have chosen at one time in our lives. We stand behind you now screaming: Choose to let go. Choose dignity. Choose to forgive yourself. Choose to forgive others. Choose to see your value. Choose to show the world you’re not a victim. Choose to make us proud.

Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.

Nothing comes unannounced, but many can miss the announcement. So it's very important to actually listen to your own intuition rather than driving through it.

Anyone can plot a course with a map or compass; but without a sense of who you are, you will never know if you're already home.

Listen to your inner voice... for it is a deep and powerful source of wisdom, beauty and truth, ever flowing through you... Learn to trust it, trust your intuition, and in good time, answers to all you seek to know will come, and the path will open before you.

We all have an inner voice, our personal whisper from the universe. All we have to do is listen -- feel and sense it with an open heart. Sometimes it whispers of intuition or precognition. Other times, it whispers an awareness, a remembrance from another plane. Dare to listen. Dare to hear with your heart.

Grow with discipline. Balance intuition with rigor. Innovate around the core. Don't embrace the status quo. Find new ways to see. Never expect a silver bullet. Get your hands dirty. Listen with empathy and overcommunicate with transparency. Tell your story, refusing to let others define you. Use authentic experiences to inspire. Stick to your values, they are your foundation. Hold people accountable, but give them the tools to succeed. Make the tough choices; it's how you execute that counts. Be decisive in times of crisis. Be nimble. Find truth in trials and lessons in mistakes. Be responsible for what you see, hear, and do. Believe.

Intuition goes before you, showing you the way. Emotion follows behind, to let you know when you go astray. Listen to your inner voice. It is the calling of your spiritual GPS system seeking to keep you on track towards your true destiny.

You have more brain cells than there are grains of sand on your favorite beach, and you have cleverness, dexterity, and creativity—all of which powerfully combine when you are at risk—if you listen to your intuition

When at a crossroads, my father was fond of saying “go with your gut.” “Intuition,” he said, “always has our best interests at heart.” It is a voice that can tell us who is friend and who is foe…Which ones to hold at arm’s length…And which ones to keep close. But too often, we become distracted by fear, doubt, our own stubborn hopes, and refuse to listen.

When you listen to your intuition and it sparks your creativity, that allows you to become energized to find your purpose. Your purpose cannot be manifested with dormant intuition—you have to reawaken active intuition to be in tune with your purpose. This is why active intuition is like an ignition: it generates that spark—the energy needed to channel holistic wealth.

time does not heal all wounds; it just gives them space to sink into the subconscious, where they will continue to impact your emotions and behavior. what heals is going inward, loving yourself, accepting yourself, listening to your needs, addressing your attachments and emotional history, learning how to let go, and following your intuition.

Follow your heart and listen to your intuition...your higher self knows what you really want...listen...follow and get to the place you want to be.

In my own life, as winters turn into spring, I find it not only hard to cope with mud but also hard to credit the small harbingers of larger life to come, hard to hope until the outcome is secure. Spring teaches me to look more carefully for the green stems of possibility; for the intuitive hunch that may turn into a larger insight, for the glance or touch that may thaw a frozen relationship, for the stranger's act of kindness that makes the world seem hospitable again.

A leaf does not resist the breeze. A goose does not resist the urge to fly down south. Is this not happiness? Is this not freedom? To access this incredible state, we need only one thing: Trust. Trust that, when you are not holding yourself together so tightly, you will not fall apart. Trust that it is more important to fulfill your authentic desires than listen to your fears. Trust that your intuition is leading you somewhere. Trust that the flow of life contains you, is bigger than you, and will take care of you - if you let it.

I’ll tell you another secret, this one for your own good. You may think the past has something to tell you. You may think that you should listen, should strain to make out its whispers, should bend over backward, stoop down low to hear its voice breathed up from the ground, from the dead places. You may think there’s something in it for you, something to understand or make sense of. But I know the truth: I know from the nights of Coldness. I know the past will drag you backward and down, have you snatching at whispers of wind and the gibberish of trees rubbing together, trying to decipher some code, trying to piece together what was broken. It’s hopeless. The past is nothing but a weight. It will build inside of you like a stone. Take it from me: If you hear the past speaking to you, feel it tugging at your back and running its fingers up your spine, the best thing to do—the only thing— is run.

The INFJ is able to tune into underlying meanings and gain deeper awareness of your situation. They can feel unexpressed emotions and pick up on small inflections which others may require you to spell out. INFJs do not only listen, they hear, comprehend and engage in your words.

Intuition - When shit just doesn't add up and you are confused about something, that is your intuition pointing out for for you to stop, look and listen because something is wrong.

The part of you that knows this to be true is your intuition. It has always been there. We have simply developed a habit of not listening to or trusting what it says. Being here today is a step in healing that broken trust within ourselves.

You have a contribution to make and unique gifts to offer. It's time to stop listening to the voices that tells you that you're not good enough, won't make it, or don't have anything to offer.

When we learn to work with our own Inner Nature, and with the natural laws operating around us, we reach the level of Wu Wei. Then we work with the natural order of things and operate on the principle of minimal effort. Since the natural world follows that principle, it does not make mistakes. Mistakes are made–or imagined–by man, the creature with the overloaded Brain who separates himself from the supporting network of natural laws by interfering and trying too hard. When you work with Wu Wei, you put the round peg in the round hole and the square peg in the square hole. No stress, no struggle. Egotistical Desire tries to force the round peg into the square hole and the square peg into the round hole. Cleverness tries to devise craftier ways of making pegs fit where they don’t belong. Knowledge tries to figure out why round pegs fit into round holes, but not square holes. Wu Wei doesn’t try. It doesn’t think about it. It just does it. And when it does, it doesn’t appear to do much of anything. But Things Get Done. When you work with Wu Wei, you have no real accidents. Things may get a little Odd at times, but they work out. You don’t have to try very hard to make them work out; you just let them. [...] If you’re in tune with The Way Things Work, then they work the way they need to, no matter what you may think about it at the time. Later on you can look back and say, "Oh, now I understand. That had to happen so that those could happen, and those had to happen in order for this to happen…" Then you realize that even if you’d tried to make it all turn out perfectly, you couldn’t have done better, and if you’d really tried, you would have made a mess of the whole thing. Using Wu Wei, you go by circumstances and listen to your own intuition. "This isn’t the best time to do this. I’d better go that way." Like that. When you do that sort of thing, people may say you have a Sixth Sense or something. All it really is, though, is being Sensitive to Circumstances. That’s just natural. It’s only strange when you don’t listen.

Tarot is always whispering to you. Tarot weaves truth, stories, secrets, and tales. All you need to do is slow down and listen.

Intuition is the art of listening, with an inner ear, to the rhythms and melodies of your own “body music.” T

Ladies: There are some men who will listen to all of your desires simply to use them to control you. #LearnToDiscern Listen to what he does, Watch what he says and avoid the heartbreak.

When you fill your soul by listening to and acting on your intuition, you'll find yourself moving toward the fulfillment of your dreams.

I once told someone not to go into business with someone, and a year later, after he didn't listen, he was bankrupt and near divorce. I once told a popular actress, who everyone constantly praised, to not join a certain group. A few years later, that group was accused of heinous acts, and that actress told me she wished she had listened to my advice. Her career tanked. I once told a popular musician to choose relationship over her career for this one person. She didn't, and now 10 years later, she is still single, but her career tank. Her ex had moved on. I believe that I would be an oracle or seer if I lived during the Greek and Roman times. But then again, I believe my insights come from experience, clarity, and the understanding of humankind. And sometimes from a strong sense of knowing. - Strong by Kailin Gow on Following Your Guts, Strong Intuition

Intuition is the language of silence, the Existential language. The word "in-tuition" means to listen within yourself. Intuition is the silent voice within, which is already in contact with the Existence. Intuition is the voice of God. The more you come in contact with the inner silence, the inner emptiness, the more you have access to your intuition. Silence is the nourishment for intuition. If something increases your love, joy and silence, it is the criterion that it is the right path for you. If something decreases your love, joy and silence, it is a sign that you are on the wrong path. Do not compare yourself with others when it comes to take a decision about what you should do, follow the love, joy and silence of your heart and inner being. When you are in contact with your inner silence, you just know what you should do - you do not have to think about it, and you do not need not compare the pros and cons - you just know. You can listen to the advice of others, but always listen to your intuition, to your inner teacher and guide in life, when you take the final decision. The intuition, the language of silence, will always lead your right.

If you are the intuitive, you need to observe the following rules: First, say explicitly, at the start, what you are talking about. (Otherwise, you are requiring your sensing listeners to hold what you say in mind until they can figure out what you are referring to, which they seldom think is worth doing.) Second, finish your sentences; you know what the rest of the sentence is, but your listeners do not. Third, give notice when changing the subject. And last, don’t switch back and forth between subjects. Your listeners cannot see the parentheses. Finish one point and move explicitly to the next.

When you don't pay attention to your intuition, or go against it, you may find that you feel a certain heaviness, lack of energy, a kind of deadness. This is because the life force is trying to come through and move you in a certain way, and it is being blocked.

The sparkle in your eyes which shows up when you do what you love, becomes a starting point to a grand carnival of your new life.

The closer you come to your authentic self, the simpler everything becomes. Listen to your intuition. It will tell you who you are.

Pay close attention to your personal boundaries. Listen to your intuition. Just because you're kind and compassionate, does not mean you aren't experienced and streetwise. In fact--it's often the opposite.

knowing where our intuitions come from become so important. After all, it’s only with such knowledge that you can begin to make an informed assessment of whether you should listen to your intuitions or not.

Your spirit knows your purpose, your calling, and your highest potential. It may come as that inner voice that nudges you, saying "There's something bigger out there for you. You have a larger purpose. LISTEN.

No one knows our bodies or our subjective experiences like we do. This means we can rest secure in our knowledge of ourselves and what we’re going through, even when the medical profession doesn’t understand or believe us. Migraine is a weird and changing disease. It affects all of us differently, and every attack is a little different than the one before. This means that no one can understand your life, symptoms, or illness like you can. This can be incredibly empowering: you are the expert. But, it also carries great responsibility: to live as happily and as fully as possible, you must listen to your body and trust your instincts.

Intuition - Once you have had a narcissist in your life, you must develop your intuition and learn to listen to it and act accordingly.

Chances are you already know what you want. The question is, who is really stopping you?

Catapult into your highest version by doing the things that fuels you with a swanky fire. Yes, even when it doesn't make sense to the world.

Never focus your attention on what the world has to say about you. Rather turn your focus inside and listen to what your inner voice has to say to you.

Keep your ears open and listen to the whispers of the universe, because they will guide you for the best.

Set your heart on that dream and watch the universe stirring the entire galaxies to make it yours.

If it lights you up, just do it & throw away the logics.

Everytime you listen to your heart, you take 10X steps ahead in the right direction.

Listen to what you tell yourself about your life situation. If you find it's pessimistic or negative, ask yourself, "What's another way of thinking about this?" or "What do I want to create in my life?

Listen for the body signals that tell you that you are no longer hungry. Observe the signs that show that you’re comfortably full. Pause in the middle of a meal or snack and ask yourself how the food tastes, and what your current fullness level is.

Listen to your heart, it will guide you on the right path.

Try listening with more than just your ears.

I call your head a bad neighborhood because your head is full of a lot of babbling, conflicting information; most of it not yours, and most of it really bad.

Intuition, when shit just doesn't add up and you are confused about it, that is your intuition pointing out for you to look and listen something is wrong.

Heart-flow means listening to your intuition and hunches and following your heart. How can you let your heart lead today?

you might have done the external work but your mind is starving for internal attention - listen

If you have that “gut feeling,” listen to it. Don’t dismiss it as nothing. It may save your life.

Listen to your intuition and the quiet promptings of your heart.

That gut feeling is your intuition. Listen up more. When you feel something over and over, it’s your truth echoing the direction towards your unique path. Release the fears and follow it…

Just in time to pick up the shells after the shoot-out is over, I'm sure. I've known a few analysts and number crunchers. You work with paper, computers, pore over printouts-charts, graphs, scatter plots but you don't deal with people. You're more comfortable with bits and bytes," Caston tilted his head. "John Henry did beat the steam drill once. Maybe you were sleeping in when the information age dawned. Today, technology spans borders. It watches. It hears. It registers patterns, small statistical perturbations, and if we're willing to pay attention--" "It can hear, but it can't listen. It can watch, but it can't observe And it sure as hell can't converse with the men and women we've got to deal with. There's no substitute for that, goddammit.

Something is off... You feel it but can't figure out why. Your intuition is reminding you of a lesson from the past. Your internal warning system is sending you signs to protect you. Trust and listen to your intuition this time...

Be silent like a rock, deeply rooted and straight like a tree, bend like a reed in the wind, listen to the sounds that your ears ignore, and feel the world through your intuition. The latter will never betray you, your senses will!

Physical well-being necessitates listening to what you already know, and then taking it seriously enough to act accordingly. When you wake up and feel the impulse to arch your back, stretch and exhale with a loud sigh, for God’s sake, do it.

The most powerful way of being able to listen to your own intuition is by being silent. Find a quiet space, slow down and calm your mind. Your goal is to eliminate all that noise going through your head – all those thoughts that appear from nowhere.

The cure for both the naive woman and the instinct-injured woman is the same: Practice listening to your intuition, your inner voice; ask questions; be curious; see what you see; hear what you hear; and then act upon what you know to be true. These intuitive powers were given to your soul at birth.

Listen to your mind, it thinks. Hear your heart, it speaks. Hearken to your soul, it knows. Listen to wisdom, it thinks. Hear understanding, it speaks. Hearken to enlightenment, it knows. Listen to your friends, they think. Hear your children, they speak. Hearken to your family, they know. Listen to your mentors, they think. Hear your teachers, they speak. Hearken to your instructors, they know. Listen to your intellect, it thinks. Hear your intuition, it speaks. Hearken to your conscience, it knows. Listen to now, it thinks. Hear before, it speaks. Hearken to later, it knows. Listen to life, it thinks. Hear time, it speaks. Hearken to eternity, it knows. Listen to nature, it thinks. Hear the world, it speaks. Hearken to the universe, it knows.

Trust that, when you are not holding yourself together so tightly, you will not fall apart. Trust that it is more important to fulfill your authentic desires than listen to your fears. Trust that your intuition is leading you somewhere. Trust that the flow of life contains you, is bigger than you, and will take care of you — if you let it.

Listen to your heart, not your head.

Silence is never empty. It's full of magnificence. It's full of magic filled with divine words which can lead us to our glorious destination.

Move fearlessly towards that which produces fireworks inside you.

Don't worry about what people say. The difference between them and you is they 'only' talk and you "do". This sets you apart from them.

A choice to listen to the chaos your mind creates or the whispers of intuitive wisdom from the heart.

​You can find the answers to the most complicated questions of life from your deepest self. Pay attention and listen.

You should calm down and listen to the voice of your heart. This is your inner voice, your intuition or strong desire or a passion to a certain kind of activity

If you can't understand what your intuition is conveying to you, the key is to pay attention and listen to your body. It tells you everything that you need to know.

Go for that idea and dream which magnifies your ability to illuminate the world.

The guidance will thrust you closer to your stunning destiny. The question is are you listening clearly enough to that silent inner voice?

Truly being able to see the needs of others around you, that is a rare gift. Only when you embrace it will you start to learn who you are, and begin going after what you really want.

If you listen to your body and your intuition, they’ll guide you well. There are countless ways to develop listening skills. Some helpful and classic practices include: dancing and drumming, sitting and walking meditations, t’ai chi or chi kung, painting or journal writing. It’s important to find what works for you, and even the time of day or night that works best for you. Whatever you choose, the commonality is that they all offer an opportunity for quieting the mind, and slowing down enough to be present and able to listen for inner guidance—and guidance from the plants themselves.

Your ego is the biggest block you have in being able to listen to and trust your intuition in doing readings or even knowing and familiarizing yourself on a conscious level with your spiritual team.

Anybody who listens to their intuition risk at times making other people disappointed or even pissed off because you're not tending to what they want from you but instead to what feels right for you.

Dialogue disappears when you are burdened with belief systems. How can you really be in a dialogue? You are already too full of your ideas and you think they are absolutely true. When you are listening to the other, you are just being polite; otherwise you don’t listen. You know what is right, you are simply waiting until this man finishes and then you jump upon him. Yes, there can be a debate and a discussion and argumentation, but there can be no dialogue. Between two beliefs there is no possibility of dialogue. Beliefs destroy friendship, beliefs destroy humanity, beliefs destroy communion. So

We don't have to see the whole road ahead of us to assure that we're going in the right direction. We take it in stride by staying positive, having faith, and maintaining that vision of happiness. Sometimes I obsess over trying to control the circumstances and wanting to always know the outcome, but the truth is, it is created all along the way. We aid it by our choices. The guidance is there. As soon as we take that single first step in the direction of our Destiny, signs are posted all along the way. All we have to do is keep our eyes peeled! If you want your life filled with abundance, be grateful for what you have. When you realize how abundant your life is already, you attract further abundance

If you have a library of concepts and solutions internalized as chunked patterns, you can more easily skip to the right solution to a problem by listening to the whispers from your diffuse mode. Your diffuse mode can also help you connect two or more chunks together in new ways to solve unusual problems. There are two ways to solve problems—first, through sequential, step-by-step reasoning, and second, through more holistic intuition. Sequential thinking, where each small step leads deliberately toward the solution, involves the focused mode. Intuition, on the other hand, often seems to require a creative, diffuse mode linking of several seemingly different focused mode thoughts. Most difficult problems are solved through intuition, because they make a leap away from what you are familiar with.24 Keep in mind that the diffuse mode’s semi-random way of making connections means that the solutions it provides with should be carefully verified using the focused mode. Intuitive insights aren’t always correct!25

Wiseman has identified four principles that characterize lucky people. Lucky people tend to maximize chance opportunities. They are especially adept at creating, noticing, and acting upon these opportunities when they arise. Second, they tend to be very effective at listening to their intuition, and do work (such as meditation) that is designed to boost their intuitive abilities. The third principle is that lucky people tend to expect to be lucky, creating a series of self‐fulfilling prophecies because they go into the world anticipating a positive outcome. Last, lucky people have an attitude that allows them to turn bad luck to good. They don’t allow ill fortune to overwhelm them, and they move quickly to take control of the situation when it isn’t going well for them.

There is a difference between following your instincts and listening to your intuition. Instincts are primitive modes of survival (fight, flight, freeze, sexual urges, hunting and so on), whereas intuition is a much higher manifestation of thought and emotions.

Understand when you listen to your intuition and commit to a life path that is unique to your desires, you’re likely choosing the path less traveled. This means there are going to be substantial obstacles in your way at times, and sometimes it may seem almost impossible to continue.Some things will happen outside of your control. But if you learn to roll with it, rather than against it, you will produce the best possible results. It is not always what happens to you, but how you respond to what happens to you that matters most.

In summary, listen to your “gut feeling,” especially in potentially dangerous situations. If you are a woman and have been asked out on a date or approached by a man who causes a sense something is wrong -don’t do it! If you are with your family and are driving or walking through a neighborhood and you sense something is wrong, don’t go there. If you are in a business deal and you sense your contact is deceiving you, listen to your intuition. Practice listening to this lightning fast retrieval of data, learn how to analyze it for accuracy and how to appropriately act on it. It could save your life.

We are meant to be flowering of wisdom. We are means to be messages of God. That is our essential being, but we don't allow it to happen. We prevent it, because we are our own enemies. To be a meditator is to become a friend to yourself. Don't be bothered about what others say that you should be or not should be. Listen to your own inner voice - and be it.

If you are monitoring your thinking and behavior, you might notice that much of what you think and do conforms to what people expect. To the greatest extent possible, you should listen to what your own intuition is telling you about people and situations and behave according to this. As you become Self-Actualised, the voice of your intuition becomes stronger because

To experience more synchronicity and 'coincidences' we need to listen and be aware of the world around us and also our intuition. That's how the universe speaks to itself, it's an ongoing flow of information that comes from both the outside and from within. Pay attention to how the universe speaks to you today and participate in the flow by being attentive and by listening to your inner voice.

The mighty Toyota Company was born from the ashes of a failed weaving business. And perhaps you have heard of Wrigley’s gum? William Wrigley started off his company trying to sell baking soda and soap, but he never turned a profit, and so he turned to making and selling chewing gum instead. These men share one thing in common—they were open to change and they listened to their intuition. Sometimes we hear a whisper in the air that guides us positively. This whisper we hear, it is not passive—it is a response to our own enthusiasm, passion, and commitment. We put in the effort and we get back a divine message. Call it inspiration if you want. Call it an entrepreneurial muse. But it feels and sounds like a whisper in your soul. If you hear it, listen to it. You must be willing to change course when it tells you to.

Never focus your attention on what the world has to say about you. Rather turn your focus inside and listen to what your inner voice has to say to you. You can find the answers to the most complicated questions of life from your deepest self. Pay attention and listen. Your inner self has to say something to you. Listen to that eternal entity within, and you shall discover the way through which you’ll reach your goal.

Denning says that the idea of telling stories initially violated his intuition. He had always believed in the value of being direct, and he worried that stories were too ambiguous, too peripheral, too anecdotal. He thought, “Why not spell out the message17 directly? Why go to the trouble and difficulty of trying to elicit the listener’s thinking indirectly, when it would be so much simpler if I come straight out in an abstract directive? Why not hit the listeners between the eyes?” The problem is that when you hit listeners between the eyes they respond by fighting back. The way you deliver a message to them is a cue to how they should react. If you make an argument, you’re implicitly asking them to evaluate your argument—judge it, debate it, criticize it—and then argue back, at least in their minds. But with a story, Denning argues, you engage the audience—you are involving people with the idea, asking them to participate with you.

You gotta learn to trust your spirit. But you can't trust your spirit to drive the car if you have little practice. You gotta practice on the little things before you get into the big things. [...] Play games like which elevator is gonna come [first] before you [ask your intuition big life-changing questions like]: "Should I pack up and leave?" Get a little practice going so you know what it feels like to get in the flow of the vibe. Have little baby steps. Have little tiny games.

Always listen to your HEART. The wisdom of your heart is the connection to your authentic power — the true home of your spirit. Quieten your inner critic, and be still... In serenity you see and feel this power. The most essential dimension within us. The essence of who we really are. To tap in and connect to this SACRED place, it brings you to a conscious of the impermanence and divine essence of everything you truly are. Knowing yourself deeply, is to be rooted in Being. A sense of JOY. Tap in to your heart, and listen. Its higher consciousness will whisper to you intuitively.

Zen Koans The koan is an enigmatic or paradoxical question used to develop a person’s Intuition.  Koans are a valuable tool in your quest for enlightenment, but how do they work and why use them? Koans work by confounding logic and forcing a person out of their normal thinking and into the realm of Intuition. In other words, the inherent meaning is inaccessible to rational understanding, but perhaps accessible to Intuition. This book presents some of the classic koans from traditional Zen, originally written hundreds of years ago in Japanese, and re-interpreted from early English translations into early 21st Century English. The underlying meaning is still there, so they will still work as a koan should, but they are expressed in language more easily understood by people in the 21st Century. Each koan encapsulates a profound truth for reflection. Zen counsels the lessening of the ego, not the strengthening of it as consumer culture would urge. Instead of making a name for ourselves in society, we should listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs, in other words become no-thing, entering instead the field of pure being that is behind the phenomenal world.

You are not responsible for your parents’ happiness. Your first priority is your own happiness. Whether your parents choose to be happy or not is entirely up to them. But you cannot make your parents happy by making yourself unhappy—that ultimately destroys everyone’s happiness. This is a lesson your parents may still need to learn, despite their advanced years. Life is a great opportunity, and your personal happiness and fulfillment—however these are defined—are both the journey and the destination. Use your brain, but listen to your heart. Once you’ve balanced the two, you’re all set. (I’m still trying to achieve this, but at least I don’t deny my intuition anymore.)

A Puritan twist in our nature makes us think that anything good for us must be twice as good if it's hard to swallow. Learning Greek and Latin used to play the role of character builder, since they were considered to be as exhausting and unrewarding as digging a trench in the morning and filling it up in the afternoon. It was what made a man, or a woman -- or more likely a robot -- of you. Now math serves that purpose in many schools: your task is to try to follow rules that make sense, perhaps, to some higher beings; and in the end to accept your failure with humbled pride. As you limp off with your aching mind and bruised soul, you know that nothing in later life will ever be as difficult. What a perverse fate for one of our kind's greatest triumphs! Think how absurd it would be were music treated this way (for math and music are both excursions into sensuous structure): suffer through playing your scales, and when you're an adult you'll never have to listen to music again. And this is mathematics we're talking about, the language in which, Galileo said, the Book of the World is written. This is mathematics, which reaches down into our deepest intuitions and outward toward the nature of the universe -- mathematics, which explains the atoms as well as the stars in their courses, and lets us see into the ways that rivers and arteries branch. For mathematics itself is the study of connections: how things ideally must and, in fact, do sort together -- beyond, around, and within us. It doesn't just help us to balance our checkbooks; it leads us to see the balances hidden in the tumble of events, and the shapes of those quiet symmetries behind the random clatter of things. At the same time, we come to savor it, like music, wholly for itself. Applied or pure, mathematics gives whoever enjoys it a matchless self-confidence, along with a sense of partaking in truths that follow neither from persuasion nor faith but stand foursquare on their own. This is why it appeals to what we will come back to again and again: our **architectural instinct** -- as deep in us as any of our urges.

A man on his deathbed left instructions For dividing up his goods among his three sons. He had devoted his entire spirit to those sons. They stood like cypress trees around him, Quiet and strong. He told the town judge, 'Whichever of my sons is laziest, Give him all the inheritance.' Then he died, and the judge turned to the three, 'Each of you must give some account of your laziness, so I can understand just how you are lazy.' Mystics are experts in laziness. They rely on it, Because they continuously see God working all around them. The harvest keeps coming in, yet they Never even did the plowing! 'Come on. Say something about the ways you are lazy.' Every spoken word is a covering for the inner self. A little curtain-flick no wider than a slice Of roast meat can reveal hundreds of exploding suns. Even if what is being said is trivial and wrong, The listener hears the source. One breeze comes From across a garden. Another from across the ash-heap. Think how different the voices of the fox And the lion, and what they tell you! Hearing someone is lifting the lid off the cooking pot. You learn what's for supper. Though some people Can know just by the smell, a sweet stew From a sour soup cooked with vinegar. A man taps a clay pot before he buys it To know by the sound if it has a crack. The eldest of the three brothers told the judge, 'I can know a man by his voice, and if he won't speak, I wait three days, and then I know him intuitively.' The second brother, 'I know him when he speaks, And if he won't talk, I strike up a conversation.' 'But what if he knows that trick?' asked the judge. Which reminds me of the mother who tells her child 'When you're walking through the graveyard at night and you see a boogeyman, run at it, and it will go away.' 'But what,' replies the child, 'if the boogeyman's Mother has told it to do the same thing? Boogeymen have mothers too.' The second brother had no answer. 'I sit in front of him in silence, And set up a ladder made of patience, And if in his presence a language from beyond joy And beyond grief begins to pour from my chest, I know that his soul is as deep and bright As the star Canopus rising over Yemen. And so when I start speaking a powerful right arm Of words sweeping down, I know him from what I say, And how I say it, because there's a window open Between us, mixing the night air of our beings.' The youngest was, obviously, The laziest. He won.

The twentieth-century mystic Thomas Merton wrote, “There can be an intense egoism in following everybody else. People are in a hurry to magnify themselves by imitating what is popular—and too lazy to think of anything better. Hurry ruins saints as well as artists. They want quick success, and they are in such a haste to get it that they cannot take time to be true to themselves. And when the madness is upon them, they argue that their very haste is a species of integrity.”20 Merton elegantly articulates how the pressure of the create-on-demand world can cause us to look sideways at our peers and competitors instead of looking ahead. The process of discovering and refining your voice takes time. Unnecessary Creation grants you the space to discover your unique aptitudes and passions through a process of trial, error, and play that won’t often be afforded to you otherwise. Initiating a project with no parameters and no expectations from others also forces you to stay self-aware while learning to listen to and follow your intuition. Both of these are crucial skills for discovering your voice. It’s completely understandable if you’re thinking, “But wait—I hardly have time to breathe, and now you want me to cram something else into my schedule, just for my own enjoyment?” It’s true that every decision about where we spend our time has an opportunity cost, and dedicating time to Unnecessary Creation seems like a remarkably inefficient choice. In truth, it is inefficient. Consider, however, the opportunity cost of spending your life only on pragmatics. You dedicate your time to pleasing everyone else and delivering on their expectations, but you never get around to discovering your deeper aptitudes and creative capacities. Nothing is worth that.

Here’s a game I sometimes play in my class: I ask a few students to think about a song, not to tell anyone what song they picked, and tap the beat of that song on a table. Next I ask the students to predict how many of the students in the room will correctly guess the song’s name. They usually think that about half will get it. Then I ask the students who were listening to the beat to name the song that they think was being played, and almost no one gets it right. The point is that when we know something and know it well (for example, the song that we have picked), it is hard for us to appreciate the gaps in other people’s understanding—a bias that is called “the curse of knowledge.” We all suffer from this affliction, but it’s particularly severe for academics. Why? Because academics study the same topic for years in all its details and intricacies, and by the time we become one of the world’s experts on that particular topic, the whole domain seems simpler and more intuitive. And with this curse of knowledge it is easy to assume that everyone else also finds the topic simple and easy to understand.

SELF-RELIANCE Self-reliance is not only the belief that you can handle things and become successful; it is something more than that. It is having the courage to listen to your inner promptings for a hint of the kind of success you truly desire. It means taking your cue from yourself—not listening to something or someone outside yourself to get an idea of what you should be, do, or have. When we learn to read the “signs” correctly and follow our intuition, we can begin to trust ourselves and not follow the beat of someone else’s drum. RECOGNIZING AND BREAKING THE DEPENDENCY HABIT Dependency is slavery by mutual agreement. It is degrading for both the person who is dependent and the person who is being depended upon. Both parties are equally lacking in self-reliance, for such a relationship flourishes on mutual exploitation. The most unfortunate aspect of dependency is that when you think you are dependent on another individual—you are! You neglect to develop the necessary self-reliance to meet and solve your own problems. A sure sign of dependency is when you habitually look up to others as superior. The moment you begin to compare yourself

PRIORITIZE BEING PRESENT Today’s challenge is to keep your focus and preserve the sanctity of mind required to create, and to ultimately make an impact in what matters most to you. This can only happen when you capitalize on the here and now. To do this, alternate periods of connectedness with periods of truly being present: Be aware of the cost of constant connection. If your focus is always on others—and quenching your appetite for information and external validation—you will miss out on the opportunity to mine the potential of your own mind. Recognize when you’re tuning in to the stream for the wrong reasons. We often look to our devices for a sense of reassurance. Become more aware of the insecurity that pulls you away from the present. You cannot imagine what will be if you are constantly concerned with what already is. Create windows of non-stimulation in your day. Make this time sacred and use it to focus on a separate list of two or three things that are important to you over the long term. Use this time to think, to digest what you’ve learned, and to plan. Listen to your gut as much as you listen to others. With all the new sources of communication and amplification, don’t let yourself be persuaded by the volume of the masses. Nothing should resonate more loudly than your own intuition. Stay open to the possibilities of serendipity. The most important connections—whether with people, ideas, or mistakes that lead to key realizations—often spring from unexpected circumstances. By being fully present where you are, you let chance (and the curious universe we live in) work its magic. You are the steward of your own potential. The resources within you—and around you—are only tapped when you recognize their value and develop ways to use them. Whatever the future of technology may hold, the greatest leaders will be those most capable of tuning in to themselves and harnessing the full power of their own minds.