When You Travel, Do You Take Your Intuition With You?

Or do you rely on your ratio­nal, log­i­cal mind to “research” what to do when you travel?

I’ve been read­ing some books recently about devel­op­ing your intu­ition and started think­ing about how use­ful intu­ition is when you travel. I’m sure you’re famil­iar with the fol­low­ing situations.

You’re trav­el­ing in a coun­try you have never been to before and are explor­ing a res­i­den­tial, non-touristy part of town. You’re hun­gry and look­ing for some­place to eat, or you’re tired and just want some­place com­fort­able to sit for a while and have some tea or cof­fee. Unfor­tu­nately, every­place you look at looks like every other place you look at. And no mat­ter how hard you exam­ine the menu that is posted out­side, or stare at the front of the build­ing, you just can’t tell if the food will be any good, or if the atmos­phere is enjoyable.

Or you are wan­der­ing through an amaz­ing part of the old­est sec­tion of a city. There are so many inter­est­ing look­ing side streets that it is hard to explore all of them. You just don’t know which streets to wan­der down and which streets to avoid.

There are some peo­ple I know, par­tic­u­larly my hus­band, who rely on their intu­ition to guide them — and he gen­er­ally ends up doing bet­ter than OK for himself.

My hus­band is some­one who trav­els a lot for busi­ness, and has trav­eled a lot through­out his entire life. He’s not the type of per­son who would ever stick close to the tourist parts of town, where the more North American/British style of restau­rants tend to be located. When he is in a new city, he’s off to the more res­i­den­tial areas, away from tourists and into the more authen­tic culture.

Invari­able, when we travel together, we end up find­ing some of the best restau­rants ever. When we were in Hong Kong, we walked for hours through some beau­ti­ful off-the-beaten track areas. Come din­ner time, we passed by sev­eral restau­rants with my hus­band finally set­tling on one he liked the feel of. We had the best meal. The food was fan­tas­tic and the atmos­phere had us really enjoy­ing our­selves — even though we couldn’t under­stand a word of what was being said around us.

This wasn’t a fluke or a ‘one-off’. This hap­pens every time my hus­band trav­els. So I have decided to develop my own ‘travel intuition’.

Many peo­ple believe that intu­ition is some­thing you are born with, how­ever, stud­ies show that intu­ition is a skill that any­one and every­one can develop. Devel­op­ing your intu­ition is not dif­fi­cult — it just requires prac­tice and persistence.

One of the exer­cises that I have been using to develop my intu­ition, and it seems to be work­ing, comes from the book Devel­op­ing Intu­ition: Prac­ti­cal Guid­ance for Daily Life, by Shakti Gawain.

For this exer­cise you need a small note­book that you can carry with you wher­ever you go, and a pen.

For a period of a week or so, every time you expe­ri­ence a hunch, have an intu­itive impulse, notice that some­thing feels right or doesn’t feel right, etc., write this expe­ri­ence down in your jour­nal. Keep a record of what the feel­ing is. The ‘feel­ing’ doesn’t need to be just a voice in your mind (in fact, intu­ition often appears as some­thing other than a voice in your mind) but is likely to be a reac­tion in your body like a tin­gling or tight­en­ing in your gut or a numb­ness or sen­sa­tion in your arm.

For those who are more rational-minded, you could also keep track of the out­comes of these feelings.

If you are prepar­ing to travel, you could mod­ify this exer­cise some­what to fit the type of expe­ri­ences you are look for from your trav­els. For exam­ple, you could spend some time vis­it­ing an unfa­mil­iar part of the city in which you live, one where you are com­pletely unfa­mil­iar with the streets, restau­rants, cafes, etc.. Wan­der through this part of the city mon­i­tor­ing your reac­tion to streets, stores, restau­rants, etc. When ever you have a good hunch, or an intu­itive impulse, explore it. Find out if the street really was worth going down, or if the restau­rant really was worth going into. By mon­i­tor­ing these intu­itive impulses, you begin to rec­og­nize them more eas­ily and trust them more implicitly.

Do you use your intu­ition when you travel? If you do, then how suc­cess­ful has your intu­ition been? Have you dis­cov­ered any real trea­sures through using your intu­ition while you travel?

Right, I’m off to find a nice restau­rant — uummhh I mean, develop my intuition.

TTFN

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