171. Trusting Your Gut More - On Intuition - with Dr Vish Ramakonar and Prina Shah

SPEAKER_01 0:03

This podcast is for people who know that the workplace can and should be better and are ready to do something about it. You will learn practical ways to change organizational cultures and human behaviour without buzzwords, without box ticking, without performative leadership. I am the boss of Prina Shark Consulting, working with executives, leaders and teams to create work cultures and environments that actually work for people. I am Prina Shark. I specialise in organizational culture change and human behaviour change. I am all about making work better with people who give a damn. So if you think I can help, contact me via LinkedIn. I am here to help you to find decent ways to change the workplace. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Ways to Change Your Workplace podcast with me, your host Prina Shah, and I am bringing back someone who you clearly love a lot, who is Dr. Vish Raman Komar. Now, Vish does all sorts of stuff in change management, in uh neuroscience, in project management, loads of facilitation. Uh Vish is someone who I trust at length with all things change and change management. Today I really want to talk to you, Vish, about something that's quite different and it's not really linked to change or change management. Some people might think it's quite woo-woo as well. Um, we've had a chat about this, and thank you so much for saying yes, that you are willing to talk to us about this. The thing I want to talk to Vish about today is about trusting your gut more. Vish, what do you think about this topic when I put this forward to you?

SPEAKER_04 1:41

You know what, Preena? I really resonate with this topic because this is how I live my life now. So makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 1:51

And we've had a couple of cool conversations in relation to trusting our own gods. You know, that the lunch I had with you was just really, really insightful in the way that you think. So I think you'd be a brilliant person to talk about this. Now, the reason I want to talk to you about as well, about this full disclosure. So I I do executive coaching with many a brilliant person at the height of their career vish. And you do brilliant work with people at the apex of their careers as well. And something that I hear repeatedly is, Prina, damn. I wish I trusted my gut more. I wish I'd listened to those instincts. I wish I'd I wish I'd done that thing that I thought I should have done. But there's just something with people that just stops them from trusting their gut more or listening to their intuition, I don't know what you want to call it. Um how do you professionally define trusting your gut, I guess, Vish? And where do we begin with this? I'm gonna hand it over to you. Where do we begin, Vish?

SPEAKER_04 2:55

Right. It's a very uh interesting topic. And um, to sort of try and give you something practical to hold on to with relation to this, I'm gonna share with you a study done by the HeartMath Institute. So one of the programs that I run is based on the work by the HeartMath Institute. We incorporate it into um the programs that Jacob Spence Dr. Joseph Spencer has written. And one of the uh research studies that they did was to give you context, they the HeartMath Institute studies the workings of the heart, the physical heart, and its uh effect on how um the effect it has on our on our nervous system, right? And how we handle challenging situations, how we can become more resilient, and um how we can how it can influence our brain to work in more optimal states, because they found that the heart sends um more signals to the brain than the other way around. And so when Oh uh so to give a background, when you're feeling um calm, when you're feeling peaceful, if you're feeling grateful, yeah, um, your heart is beating in a very uh coherent or orderly way. Yeah. And therefore the signals going to the brain they've discovered are also very orderly, and your brain works in a more coherent way. So you're able to solve problems better, you're able to communicate better, you're able to find innovative solutions, you're more creative. So those um are the benefits. And they but the converse is also true where they found that when you're living by emotions of frustration, anger, um, anxiety, all of those things, the heart beats in a very erratic way or incoherently, and therefore incoherent signals are going into the brain, and the brain starts to fire very incoherently, which means it is they they call it cortical inhibition, where we're not working in the optimal brainwave brain brain state. So these techniques are taught to US Navy SEALs, uh elite Olympic athletes, um, you know, the uh military first responders, um, Mayo Clinic. So they the obviously people who have to be uh working in very stressful situations need to be able to think clearly, make proper decisions, and be able to um handle those or navigate those challenging situations. Yeah. So um one of the studies that they did, and funny enough, linked to intuition, is they um there's a couple of it a couple of studies. One the first one was um, I think with a university in Australia, actually. Um you can find some of their papers on the on on the website, the HeartMath Institute.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

Cool.

SPEAKER_04 5:50

And I think they looked at the repeat entrepreneur study. So they were studying entrepreneurs, what they call repeat entrepreneurs, who constantly have new ideas and who are very successful um at starting up her business and things like that. And they were and they found that 80% of them said that they were they were making decisions based on their gut instinct or based on intuition. So that was one interesting study, and the other um is where they they hooked up, I think it was 26 people and they divided them into two, and um, they were taught the techniques, the heart math breathing techniques. And they hooked them up to so they were measuring brainwaves, they were measuring the heart, they had heart rate monitors on, they were measuring, I think, temperature of the skin, a few um markers they were they were keeping track of. And they were sitting in front of a computer with a random image generator, and so the images that were going to be randomly put up were either to incite a fear response or a a positive response. So an example of something that might in incite fear would be a snake getting ready to strike.

SPEAKER_03 7:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 7:00

Um, and an example of a of something that would um create some sort of positive emotion might be a sunset or a flower or something like that. So this is a crazy thing. So they started, uh they did this experiment and they were they taught these people to move into this coherent um state with the breathing techniques. And what they found was their heart or basically their body responded six seconds before the image appeared on the screen, before the random image generator appeared on the screen. So this is really interesting interesting. Before the yeah, so before the image, before the image, I don't know when the when the computer application was going that chose the image, but the the heart and the brain would respond in fear before before an image of of a snake came up, for example. Okay six seconds before, to be exact. And the heart responded first, it went to the brain, and then the brain sent signals down to the gut, and that's what you might call the gut instinct. So this is what they found, which was really interesting. Um and so it asks the question does our gut actually know before does it actually know? And so they say the heart knows, um, and the brain might be logical. The heart the brain thinks, but the heart knows. Um that's a term that we sometimes hear. So yeah, this is the scientific scientifically proven some type of intuition does exist.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Wow. So the people who have spoken to me saying, damn it, I knew it. I didn't follow through with it, you are not wrong. You did know it. And correct, you did not follow through with it. Whish why is it that people don't listen to that gut feeling? What happens to us?

SPEAKER_04 9:03

Well, we're not used to um getting these intuitive hits. Yeah. Um, we're used to information coming in through our senses and being processed by the brain, and then we make a decision based on logic. Uh we're not taught or no one ever talks about um receiving information, I don't know, from intuition um and and processing that as if it was fact as well.

SPEAKER_03 9:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 9:34

So I think that's the reason we we tend not to trust it, we tend not to believe it because because it's not coming through the conventional way that we receive information, which is through the five senses.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Yeah. And the workplace doesn't really do any uh credit to this aspect as well, because we're very data-driven. And if I need to make a decision, it has to be based on facts and figures and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, rather than that gut feel. And I remember I'm going back to my corporate days. I used to I used to go off gut feel and I would put up a business case to my manager based on gut feel, and you know, like all of the reasons why as well, logical reasons, uh, but then it would readily, quickly get rejected because it didn't have the data element to it. So I learned early on to yes, listen to the gut, don't drop it, but then just add the data and the facts and figures, and then it will get proposed, you know, it would then it would get approved. So that's the way I found around it. So for other leaders as well, I guess the brain thinks, but the heart feels. What a what a brilliant, brilliant heart knows. Heart knows. Okay, knows. That's even stronger, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:43

The brain does thinking and feeling, you're right, as well.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:48

Um so we can't always trust our gut though.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

You know, it's not always right. That's one of the things as well that I I I always talk to as a caveat, you know, don't don't go off on one with, you know, just your gut feeling. Do you have any thoughts in relation to that as well, Vish? Yeah, I do.

SPEAKER_04 11:14

Uh I often will ask yours uh like I would ask yourself the question um if you think that you're getting a gut feel, is it is it coming actually from fear? Okay, or is it coming from a pace a place of neutrality? Because what that study showed us was that these people went into the heart coherence state, which is meaning that the heart is beating in a very orderly way. But in terms of the autonomic nervous system, they were switching on that it meant it was in balance. So coherence means that all the bodily systems are in balance. So we're not we're not in the fight or flight. Um when we could be more in the rest and digest and homeostasis phase um or state of being. And that that amplifies your ability, what they found to to be more intuitive. And um they talk about three types of intuition. There's I think implicit intuition, which they talked about, is to do with information that you might have learnt or seen somewhere, yeah, but you can't remember that you've seen it.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 12:32

So dormant is there? Yeah. So, like example, a nurse she comes into a room and she sees a patient, and she just intuitively knows that's that this patient is going to, you know, code in a in a matter of minutes. But how does she know that? It might be because she's seen similar examples or she gets that as a gut feel based on her past experience. That's what we call implicit intuition.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 12:56

Um, and then they also talk about energetic uh intuition, which is where you know animals can sense when there is a um going to be an earthquake or a tsunami, that type of thing. Because they can pick up on the earth's magnetic field.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:11

And then they also talk about the non-local intuition, and that's something to do with like a parent might have a child somewhere studying overseas, and the mother just just senses that something could be wrong, and then they pick up the phone. Like you can't explain that type of thing, right? Yeah. Um, and so yeah, they talked about how um Steve Jobs talks about following the intuition, following the heart. He talked about in, I think, in the commencement speech at Stanford uh in 2005, I think it was, I can't remember. But um a lot of on a lot of um a lot of leaders, business leaders, do actually use their intuition. However, you were right. I don't believe that you should um rely solely on it. I I think what you did was smart, backing up what your intuition said with through data. And that's what you know. I teach people analytics at university as well, and we tell our students the same thing. You can't rely just on gut instinct. You need the data to show exactly, you know, why you think there might be workplace bullying or why they you know, why could there be gender inequality or all of those things that you've got to have back it up with data because you've got you're gonna be talking to senior management, and then once you have the data, you can look at maybe evidence-based ways of trying of um being able to to sort of um uh combat those those challenges or to be able to fix those challenges.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

So fantastic. There was so much there. Now, one of the things I'm gonna go back, one of the things you said for us to really tune into our gut and gut and trust our gut is for us to be in homeostasis. What is homeostasis and how do we get into that state?

SPEAKER_04 15:00

So uh as I said, that that term coherence that they use um is uh the actual definition is that all the bodily systems move back into balance or or uh homeostasis. So mean meaning your cardiovascular system, the respiratory system, all of those the the nervous system, all of those systems in our body are working in a um harmonious way. Aligned, okay, aligned. Yes. Um and so when you're and it's when your brain uh and your body are in alignment, meaning whatever you're thinking is in alignment with how you're feeling. Yeah. Because sometimes there's a conflict and a lot of there's a lot of energy dissipation when you know logically you're told to do something, but inwardly you're you feel like you don't want to do it. And that creates um but dissonance as well. So much.

SPEAKER_00 15:58

And this is something the leaders really are faced with because they're they're bombarded with you know things here, there and everywhere from people that they report to, from people that report to them. So they're that meat in the middle of that big, big sandwich as well. And it's it's a tough gig in leadership or management of any sort. So to get into homeostatus, I I guess we're all very different. Work out what works for you, talk to brilliant people like this, like work out your thing. Once you get into that state, then you can trust yourself a little bit more, you can you can observe more openly, can't you? And you can make better decisions, judgments, and I guess use using discernment, that's a word that's coming up as well.

SPEAKER_04 16:38

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, so we we uh one of the techniques we teach is called a freeze called the freeze frame technique, and we teach people how to again you just go and move into a coherent state, but before you could do, um you you s you write down you ask yourself or like what's the situation or what information is it that you might want to know, you move into that coherent state, and then at the end of it, um you sort of write down whatever comes to you immediately. Okay, fresh, no judgment, no judgment, just right without your logical mind. And um that that that could give you a hint as to the direction to take. But as I said, and uh and I think as you said as well, don't I I wouldn't say rely solely just on that. You need to also do your due diligence and and uh and also gather the date the relevant data, but your gut could maybe point you or narrow down the information you might need to gather rather than being it so nebulous, it could gather down or point to the direction of what data do you need.

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Okay, so you're really honing in on yourself now, yeah. Bish, I want to share with you. I'm showing something really. So I do um self-coaching. I I applied this to my clients, but I do this myself as well. So I actually tried and tested this on myself years before I actually started applying it to anybody else. So at the end of the week, Vish, I asked myself these questions. And I the act of writing, getting stuff out of my head on onto paper for me is really eye-opening. In the example that you just gave as well. I think writing is just very freeing without judgment. So the questions I asked myself are what am I learning this week? How am I right now, and how has my week been? No judgment. Uh, what were my wins this week and what has felt like success? What were my challenges and triggers this week, and what can I do to mitigate them? And then what do I want to be held accountable for next week? And then I can bullshit myself, so I need to delve deeper. What needs planning? What important things have no action steps attached to them? Do I need help? Do I need to delegate? Who do I need to engage with to make this happen? What is stopping me? How am I going to celebrate when I've achieved what I need to do? So this I religiously do every week because I really find that, you know, being a business owner, I'm busy. I I'm in that busy, busy mode all the time. I don't sometimes have the moment, the clarity to get to homeostatus just there and then to check in on my gut. Whereas when I do this, this is only half an hour, by the way, I give myself because if I overstretch it, then I overthink it. Whereas first thoughts, I just dump them. That has just given me such clarity. Yeah. It's just been life-changing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:36

Honestly, so I love that. I love I love it. It yeah, we often don't take the time to do the self-reflection. Um, but it's so valuable, so, so valuable. Uh, and as you said, it doesn't have to be long, that half an hour. Yeah. Um, but that's gonna give you that return on investment, right? You're gonna get so much more out of out of just investing that short amount of time. Totally. For the rest of the week, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:01

Yeah, yeah. Because without checking in on my week, I just jump onto the next week and the next week, and then I just feel like I'm just, you know, this person in a rat race. I don't want to be that person. I chose not to be that person. No, that ain't me. So that's my circuit breaker. Do you have any circuit breakers or any tips that you do for yourself to come back to yourself and to try and trust your gut more as well for yourself-ish?

SPEAKER_04 20:24

Yeah. Like definitely for me, it's um meditation. Yeah. And um, I often will why I love meditation is because it helps me to stop that incessive firing of those neural networks in my brain and just helps to quieten everything down where it gives my brain a break, it gives my body a break, gives it a chance to move into homeostasis because you know it's not creating all those chemicals. So the nervous system can come back into balance. Um, it energizes me, it gives me clarity. Um, yeah, there's been studies that they've recently published about the fact that um their brain works more effectively, like it becomes more whole-brained. Wow. Um, and uh there are yeah, numerous benefits where they found um, you know, it it's creating hormones in the body like DHEA, which is meant to, it's just called the vitality hormone, okay, which is for responsible for like you know, growth and repair and things like that. Yeah. There's a lot of um physical or physiological benefits, but I for me it's yeah, it's the mental benefits, it keeps me uh less reactive, uh more resilient, it keeps me open to you know uh uh solutions for challenges, being able to communicate better. So it kind of yeah, it puts you in a state where you're um you're open to more possibilities as well. Yes, where you might not. Seen those things before. Yeah, it just opens your prevision, doesn't it? Yeah. And if I can't do a meditation, if I don't have the time, I will do the breathing exercises. Yeah. Which literally takes five minutes. Um, I'll go for walks in nature. I'll do a walking meditation in nature or yeah, just something like you know, if I don't have the time to do that while I'm driving, I'll just do the breathing exercises while I'm driving. So there's, you know, last year was pretty much no no time for anything except bat. Yeah. But really important to take that time to do it because, like I said, you can just go into that overwhelm. Yeah. Um, and you feel like a rat on a, you know, hamster, hamster on a wheel, sort of thing. And it's just not how we want to feel.

SPEAKER_00 22:43

Yeah. Horrible, horrible. Now, the thing about meditation, people freak out with like, oh my god, I can't stop my mind. I can't do this, I can't do that. There's a lot of I can't. I meditate as well, but I have a monkey mind, I tell you. My mind is all over the place. The intention is not to stop your mind, the intention is just for me anyway. Try to stop whatever's happening. If a thought comes, treat it like a cloud and just let it go. Don't attach yourself to that thought. So that's the work that I try to do in my meditation anyway. Thoughts will come, but thoughts will go, and that's the beauty of it. Vish, what about yourself from a meditation perspective? Do you have any tips or any yeah, tricks for people?

SPEAKER_04 23:24

Yeah, so I think um you're right. The more that you try to stop thoughts or whatever, it's just going to create more agitation and defeat the whole purpose of you meditating.

SPEAKER_00 23:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 23:33

Um, some of the tricks uh that Dr. Jo Dispenser uh teaches us is uh to have an try and open your focus. So basically open your awareness to the space around you to basically as you open up your awareness to nothing, which is when you're closing your eyes, it's everything. Yeah, um, it starts to slow the brain waves down and starts to slow the activity in the neocortex.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 24:03

Um, and then the energy starts to move into the limbic brain, where is the seat of the autonomic nervous system and it starts to create order and harmony. Um and that uh I think Buddhist monks also use this similar technique by opening the focus, you're not putting attention on anything, no object, because normally we're habitually thinking about objects and things and people. Um that the same premise can be said about the heart focused breathing, where you put your attention on the heart and it's no longer on things and people, you're just literally just putting your attention in that center of your chest and breathing. That's that's it.

SPEAKER_00 24:39

Amazing.

SPEAKER_04 24:40

Um the other thing is going out into nature, which is nature is a a a beautiful way to do it with your eyes open because, for example, going to the beach, there's nothing to see except the vast ocean and the blue sky, and you're not putting attention to anything, there's no objects or things, it's just the blue sky or and the vast ocean naturally that starts to bring your brain base down into alpha waves, which is the creative state and um starting to bring your body back into homeostasis. So um being in nature is a great way to do it as well.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

So many tips there. Okay. Have we missed anything before I summarize, Vish? How did we in terms of trusting your gut more? No. Okay, so we all listeners need to check out the Heart Math Institute. Vish, I'm gonna put your details. I'm gonna put the Heart Math Details Institute in the show notes as well. I think there's lots of studies there.

SPEAKER_04 25:36

Um and neurochange solutions, that's where they um they take the information from, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Okay, neurochange solutions. Um what else? Um The brain thinks, but the heart knows. Can we just remember that? So do trust your gut more. So people who have spoken to me about trusting your gut, do it. It is okay. But remember to balance it with facts and statistics as well, because we do work in a workplace and we still have to prove certain things. The study that Vish actually shared, which just broke my brain by the way, six seconds before the image was even shown. I don't know if you heard that audience, six seconds prior to the image being shown of a snake or whatever, people had that fear response. So they had that gut instinct of, oh my god, something scary is gonna happen. So there's something within us that is, yeah, pretty amazing, but we haven't tapped into properly yet. So trust your gut, okay. We do have it within us, and there's different types of intuition. There's implicit intuition, which is that dormant kind of info in intuition that we have, energetic intuition, and the beautiful way that Vish um described it is animals, or if there's gonna be a storm, you can really see the birds, you know, going wild. You know something's gonna happen. Or the non-local intuition, and I have completely felt that one from my mom, where I'll get a phone call like Prina, what's wrong with you? Mom, what do you think? What's happened? She said, Yeah, I know you're not well. There's just something there. So there's trust your gut, okay? This is all true. Bish, thank you so much for bringing something that may sound like woo-woo to a lot of people, to real practical terminology and knowledge and data that we can understand. Um, I'm gonna put my self-coaching uh notes and details and everything into the show notes as well. So, anyone, if you want to reach out to Vish, please, her details are in the show notes. Go for it. Vish, I cannot thank you enough. This has just blown my mind yet again.

SPEAKER_04 27:42

Thanks so much, Finnna. I really enjoyed our uh chats and yeah, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much. Been the best.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

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