Dear Stoics,

Can you think of how many times you’ve felt something in your gut that made you change your mind at the last second? Or, more simply: how many times did you do something last week just because you felt it was right? That’s the thing: everyone has intuition, and everyone listens to it more or less. Today, we’ll try to make the case for listening to it more.

What is intuition, really? We’ll have to take away some of its mystery first. Researchers define intuition as an immediate understanding that arrives without conscious reasoning. Most research in behavioral science agrees on where it comes from: from everywhere in our lives.

Our brains continuously absorb far more than our conscious awareness can hold. We recognize faces, tones, patterns, and echoes of a thousand past situations. Then, our brains store most of this information away, both to archive it and to keep us from being overwhelmed. A gut feeling is the result of searching through this archive; pattern recognition happens so fast and in such a compressed way that most of the time, we can’t even put it into words. So, to put it simply, intuition is your whole life experience speaking. The knowing arrives first; the words come later. Which is probably the most useful (and poetic) definition of all: intuition is what we know before we can say it.

Funny thing is, the phrase “gut feeling” didn’t come from nowhere, either. The digestive tract is lined with a huge web of neurons that remains in constant communication with the mind. Some doctors even call our intestines “the second brain.” The body frequently registers a situation before the conscious self does. This is why your palms sweat when you play a card game and try to rig it, or why you might have to run to the toilet when you’re stressed about a job interview.

The Icelandic language has a beautiful word for intuition: InnSæi, which can be translated as “the sea within.” Like a sea, intuition can be listened to or drowned out. Unfortunately, the drowning happens more and more often in our overstimulated lives.

This is where journaling comes in handy again. It offers a few minutes each day to focus on your inner life and search for whatever it is trying to tell you. Try to hear yourself today and focus on what you really need and want. Or perhaps more importantly, what you don’t need and don’t want. Note your gut feelings every time you have them. If you have a minute, open the Stoic app or your notebook. Notice where in your body you feel intuition speaking, and how your body feels in the moment; notice how you react and what comes later.

Over the weeks, you’ll learn something only a few people ever acknowledge: the accuracy of your own inner compass and the situations in which it points true.

Yours truly,
The Stoic App Team

Every life has some kind of “official plot”. It usually focuses on family, career, travels, or other passions. But then, there’s everything else, and this week we’ll reflect on that. Welcome to Stoic’s new weekly theme: On Side Quests.

Together, we’ll take a look at the detours that were never the point but somehow became part of the story anyway. We’ll revisit childhood obsessions, unfinished projects we still think of fondly; we’ll remember the people we’d never have met on the main road, and we’ll ask a question: what if some of these detours were as important as the main quest itself?