Because rationality only considers information received in the past... and information you can process on a rational level.

It does not see the whole picture.

Your "gut feel," on the other hand, takes into account all the information that is actually available to you.

Your gut feel is a feedback mechanism that gives you information based on input received... even if you can't rationally understand that input.

Stick your toes in the sand and sit down on the beach for an hour. Watch the waves roll in. All the way from the horizon until they splash up on your toes and gently recede back into the ocean. Sometimes a big one comes along and you have to scoot up a bit in order to not be drenched.

But after a while, you get a pretty good feel for what the waves look and feel like, and you have a pretty good idea what the next one's gonna look and feel like too.

I see the events in my life as waves in the ocean.

My "gut feel" is what tells me what the next wave is going to look like.

Recently, it was telling me for weeks to go ahead and do something I rationally really didn't want to do -- for reasons of pride, mostly. The actual thing is completely irrelevant here.

(Pride... that's a tricky one, because it's not immediately apparent that it stems from fear. Which it does. What's the #1 rule of Magnetism? Don't make decisions based on fear.)

Eventually, I ended up in a position where I was FORCED to go ahead and do what my gut had been telling me all along. Me vs Universe: 0 - 1.

As that happened... and I knew I needed to do it... I actually managed to rationalize why it was actually a good idea.

In order to do it I had to come up with a RATIONAL explanation so I could trick my brain into thinking it was actually a good idea...

... even though, on a deeper level, I knew it was the right thing to do all along.

So this realization was kind of screaming at me last night...

... when -- 2 days after I started doing this thing -- a huge new opportunity opened up for me that can lead to some seriously big things.

Recognize and ACT when your gut tells you to do something. Even if it doesn't make one bit of sense. Because you know that in the grand scheme of things, it makes total sense and you just can't see the full picture.

You can't see the waves on the other side of the horizon. But they're there. And they're coming, certain as sunrise.

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photo credit: paul bica