What would you depend on INSTINCT or INTELLIGENCE?

There are many instances in life where we really cannot take a call and say very confidently that it was the instinct which helped us or it was the intelligence which guided us through. All of us have natural intuitive power. Few of us have this power in a more developed fashion which we call as “the sixth sense”.

Whereas intelligence is a natural aptitude or gift which we further nourish and feed with knowledge. Many experiences in life are a mixture of instincts and intelligence. At times we fall prey to certain situations which are not so happy ones and then we naturally resort and depend on our intelligence for a way out. But in few situations we are lucky enough to get signals from our instincts to guide us out of such fixes.

We all know admission of a child in a metropolitan city, in the right school since the inception of his educational journey is very crucial in life for the child and is a priority for the parents. And generally this becomes a very painful, difficult as well as a tedious experience in totality.

My parents were also a part of this when they were trying their level best to get my brother admitted in one of the best convent schools of the city. He was facing a number of admission tests and interviews. He was a very intelligent child and quite a witty child too. So the interviewers always enjoyed the experience of interviewing him but parallel said that they could never assure success. So like all the other interviews this one was also a brilliant one and for a change the Father who had conducted the interview had mentioned that he was a brilliant child. Through this entire interview my parents and the Father had developed quite a nice and fast rapport with each other. Once finished with the interview they were out in the common area where all parents had assembled, my brother was his usual with his sunny smile up his face and my parents were fully content and satisfied. Here after such an amazing session normally we presume success, it comes quite naturally to us. We do not think on the lines of not being successful. But here their intelligence and experience after weighing all options was pushing them to believe that it would be totally successful; but their instinct said this would be unsuccessful. The day the results came out he did not get through. It was sad news but somewhere they had already felt it earlier or were pre informed through their instincts. The same day they happened to meet the Father who had conducted my brother’s interview, he was also taken aback to know the result, but he did add that “we cannot take in all the intelligent students; we need a few average ones also”. Here intelligence kept saying there is something wrong and he would get through but the instinct had already informed that it’s not happening.

Now let’s analyse a situation where intelligence succeeds over instincts. A friend of mine has his own organisation which is a process dominated work place. The firm isn’t people dominated or dependent. It’s quite an old organisation in its category and even the employees are working there since many years. Due to which the employees had developed a laid back attitude towards work and had also started taking things for granted. This friend of mine had got into these fire fighting activities which he knew would not help him at all. His business would grow only if he would have focussed on the processes involved rather than wasting his energy in such activities. Here instead of focussing on his instincts if he would have used his intelligence and improved his processes used in work he would have got a better control over the situation that too much faster. Here we see intelligence would have succeeded over instincts.

“Instinct is intelligence incapable of self consciousness – John Sterling.”

Happy exploring!!!