PART 1:
To repeat from my recent post:
“Certainty—or we can call it confidence—doesn’t come from thinking but doing.
Instead of doing nothing because we’re unsure our village-growing ideas will work or help, let’s be citizen scientists and collect our own damned data!”
OK, but who’s a citizen scientist and what’s data?
Data is information that helps a person gain understanding and / or make decisions. And a citizen scientist is a “regular” person who collects data to help make desired change.
As for how citizen scientists collect data, that can happen in different ways, like researching information, doing experiments or simply making observations while living life.
Despite holding degrees in biology, I’m a citizen scientist when it comes to village work: I got the “qualifications” to get started through my lived experience as a caregiver.
And here’s what I know for sure:
Each of us can use our experiences to make things better in our neighborhoods. But not if we don’t trust ourselves and put “experts” in their proper place.
When I started doing research to develop my village efforts, I discovered a network of village people in the U.S. with decades of experience under their belts. Let’s call them “experts.”
YAY! I thought when finding them, because I figured that my work just got easier.
I joined the network and looked to the experts for guidance. But I started getting a funny feeling and then noticed something: I was shaping my ideas to fit with what the experts were saying, rather than following my inspiration and looking to the experts for support.
I felt it best to leave the network for the moment, and I did.
And I’m glad I trusted myself because things started falling into place afterwards.
PART 2:
Now that I hope you’re ready to start collecting and using your own data to make things better where you live, I want to repeat something else from my previous post:
Do something you’re curious about doing and see what happens—if you don’t like the result, try something else. But don’t abandon your “bad result” experiments too soon.
Let’s say you’re curious to see if your neighbors would join a cooking club. You invite folks, but no one says yes. You call your efforts a flop and start thinking of new ideas.
But not so fast!
How did you make the invitation?
Did you announce it on a neighborhood Facebook page that only a small percentage of neighbors use? Did you make a flyer but put it in a place that doesn’t get much foot traffic?
How did you word the invitation?
Were you generic hoping to attract lots of people, or specific about looking for vegetarians?
In other words, …
When you get a “bad result,” your idea might be good but your approach might need tweaking. Also, think beforehand about what will make your experiment a success.
The late Rev. Gordon Cosby built a highly influential church with a small congregation. I read a story that members of Cosby’s church were ashamed to tell him that only 16 people had shown up for a certain gathering. “Sixteen people!” Cosby reportedly said, “That’s fantastic!”
When I got curious about starting a newsletter years ago, I thought about Cosby and called it a success when 16 friends and family signed up! But I could have equally called getting 16 subscribers a failure looking through a different lens.
PART 3:
Depending on who you ask, Captain Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger was a miracle worker or reckless pilot by going against tower control and landing his plane on the Hudson River.
But in the end, Sully preserved the lives of all 150 people onboard. And after a thorough investigation, the verdict was that Sully’s intuition had played a big role in saving the day.
The leading dictionary.com definition of intuition is “direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension.”
Yep, but I also define intuition as wisdom of the heart…
Language of the soul, …
Inner knowing, …
True intelligence.
I ignored my intuition for ages but finally gave in when I got sick and tired. And in time, I grew to trust my inner knowing as the most reliable data at my disposal. Data that has given me the confidence to make good choices that can nonetheless seem crazy even to myself.
And while my life looks materially worse than before following my intuition became a regular practice, I feel a sense of optimism like never before and now have a vision of soul work that pulls me forward—something that I craved but had alluded me for decades.
Notice that I said following my intuition is a “practice.”
Intuition is an expertise or muscle that can be developed.
Here are 3 ways that you can start:
Be quiet!
The noise of life can overpower our ability to perceive intuition / the language of the soul / inner knowing. Allow yourself quiet time to do nothing and see what surfaces.
Follow your hunches or gut feelings.
Have you had a feeling about something that didn’t make sense but seemed right? Try following those feelings and track your “success rate”—you just might want to keep it up.
Prepare to break ranks.
As a once “go along to get along” kind of person, I know breaking ranks can be tough. But think of Sully—miracles can happen by following your intuition over other people’s logic.
Bonus tip: Be OK with uncertainty.
My hunch is that people worship at the alter of science in an attempt to find a level of certainty that I don’t think exists in the physical world.
That isn’t making a statement about science, per se, but saying that being OK with uncertainty and learning to tap into wisdom and a sense of security inside ourselves are the most powerful skills to have. Particularly when the world seems to be melting down.
P.S. To prove that I’m not anti-science, here’s a link to the HeartMath Institute for the latest research on heart intelligence. 🙂
Published by