Not long ago, I took a decision that left me confused and questioning the way I evaluate good or evil and what I should care about or discard in my life. I talked about this dilemma with one of my mentors, the engineer and philosopher Juan José Sánchez Inarejos. He defends that the only way we can get to know any truth is by using theories. He always says “We are just theory testers!”. As we apply theories, we should be aware that all of them present a wrong side and an accurate one. Therefore, any theory can be really useful in some cases but catastrophic in others. This situation and conversation with Juan José, inspired this post. It inspired me to put into words the way I see life. In my eyes, life is, among other things, a constant decision making process. After this conversation I came to the conclusion that there is no such thing as good or evil, I needed to think about a bigger concept, a method, a theory to define what a fair decision making process would look like. This concept is what I call intuition. 

Since this is my first post, I wanted to share with you the way I tend to approach life. Even if this blog is intended to be a source of technical content for engineers, hobbyist and DIY people, I find it impossible to separate everything into just technical/scientific content from the most basic human concerns. Everything is and must be related.  We should never forget that whatever is behind any invention is not only a group of pieces, ingredients or molecules arranged in a clever way. Behind the machine, there is the soul of the people, their passion, their methods, plans and mistakes, their emotional ups and downs, their need to make a living; but after all, their emotional drive to solve a problem.

The most important observation I did some years ago is realizing that life is limited. To be honest, I was not really aware of this fact previously. Therefore, I felt the need to be picky choosing the things I should spend time on. This requires a conscious analysis to get to know what are the things that move us the most, the ones we resonate with and define us.

So here comes the tricky part… choice! Choosing means the active practice of freedom. You are free to choose whichever path. We should not be so simplistic to blame society, religion and pressures of different kinds for our life choices. You are free and freedom requires a sharp awareness of oneself, our needs, concerns and basic preferences in life. We cannot have it all, but if we are wise enough, we can achieve most of the things that truly mean something to us.

There is no way we can live a balanced life without applying intuition to whatever we do. Being intuitive involves balancing thought, action and emotion in our decision-making process.

We carry a lot of information within our system: culture, science, mentors, moral and behavioural references, artists we like, past experiences we have distilled some wisdom from, etc. Our thought is comprised of all that and we have the capacity to imagine how the future would look like based on this information. However, the truth is that we are blind to the future! Therefore, we must bring thought into action to see how the experience resonates with us instead of limiting ourselves to imagine it. Aligning thought and action is the first step for wellbeing, we should do what we think we should do! If we do not allow ourselves to do this, trouble will come in the form of negative emotions.

We all feel the feelings but we do not know much about how, when and why they appear. Normally, what I have control over I call it myself and what I do not, I call it universe. Feelings are clearly out of conscious control, that is why I see feelings as the universe giving feedback about how balanced is our life. Feelings pop-up as the warning lights in a car. It is up to us to stop and analyse what is causing trouble, or keep the journey blindly. These warnings will point out any mismatch between our thought (theories/references) and our reality (actions/circumstances). Feelings have an enormous transformative power, they represent the highest potential for change, providing us with required leverage to update our theories/beliefs as well as forcing us to act accordingly. There is a great phrase in the book The healing power of illness that says “One of the main difficulties of human life is recognising the need to change at the right time”. Feelings play a vital role here, making us realize we can be mistaken and providing the sight to stir the wheel the right way. 

Many times we are “invited” to think in a determined way due to social pressures and beliefs. Even our own dreams and goals in life can be completely mistaken, maybe defined by others or just by a feeling of inferiority we need to compensate with our achievements, success, feats,… you name it! However, there is nothing to demonstrate to anyone, nobody is asking you to kill yourself for recognition or success. Doing things for the wrong reasons, at some point, will trigger the right feelings for change. This is why I encourage everyone to set aside the daily rush for a while and try to recognize what the feelings are telling and make them raise into reality in a healthy way before they get unmanageable. Not giving space to our feelings in our reality, will lead us to catastrophic damage.

What is worth the pain?

Most times, suffering and enduring the pain is the lesser of two evils. Suffering is part of the learning process, one cannot experience the true pleasures of life when being blind to the feelings and avoiding suffering as a way of living. In this sense, enduring suffering represents the vital process of ordering the chaos present in our lives. Too much order or too much chaos means our life is out of balance. The way we deal with chaos is going to define our quality of life. Sometimes, chaos will hit hard in our lives and we need to be able to identify how to bring the order back. This will require to cope with a harsh and unbalanced situation for a period of time. However, it will be easy to identify what is worth our pain and effort as long as there is a strong higher purpose behind it. Whatever is at the other side of suffering resonates with you, is important to you and defines yourself. In this case, balance will come gradually as order cancels out chaos. 

This is the walk of life: deciding what to integrate, keep, care about in our lives and what to let go, reject, and keep away from ourselves. Here we should lean on intuition to decide what to choose and act accordingly. Every intuitive decision will have the aim to align what we do to what we think and feel. This process should be natural, but some times it requires attention from our side. At the end, our balancing capacity will determine the quality of our decisions and with practice it will get better.

Making the best decision is a process 

There is no such thing as right or wrong decision. In fact, there is no need to pursue the perfect choice because the truth is that there are myriad valid options in life. You learn from your ups and downs, especially from your downs, so don’t be afraid about being wrong, you will learn from it.

Although there are many options, consistency is the key. The biggest favour you can do to yourself is being consistent. Even if you are the most capable human on earth, you will not be able to follow two directions at the same time. Choose to follow one at a time! Being doubtful is naturally linked to decision-making process, however, you should not extend this process endlessly. Doubt has an enormous impact, energy and time wise, leading to paralysis and stagnation.

Some people are afraid of being consistent and prefer not to decide a thing, because they think whatever they decide will tie them for life. This is never the case! In fact, this reveals the low capacity to apply intuition and freedom to choose at any point of our lives.

Decision making process can be divided into three stages:

1. Do not waste time: simple decisions should not take longer than 1 minute! All joking aside, setting a reasonable amount of doubt time is tricky and will depend on the nature of the decision. However, setting a limit will help.
2. Decide what to do: great! Now you have chosen just one direction to follow.
3. Keep the balance: now it comes the tough one; putting the necessary effort to balance thought, action and emotion all the way. This is the only secret to successfully achieve any long lasting plan.

If balance is not achieved after a reasonable amount of time, you will feel clear evidences for change. In these cases, finding a way out is as natural as having found the way in. Do not feel bad or guilty for dropping a project, relationship or agreement that does no longer resonate with you. Stay fair to yourself, communicate your decision and negotiate the best terms for leaving. Most times this process will be easier than you thought at first place.

No worries, we all can be mistaken

Part of being intuitive is accepting we can be doing things the wrong way by applying the theories that simply does not work for the task. The important thing is having the mindset to improve our self-awareness with a constant seek of life balance. We are not tied to any theory or trend, so at least, we should try to be fair to ourselves and not do what we don’t feel doing! Be open to update, tune or discard any theory at any time when they are no longer valid for you in a given situation. 

We are not defined, we are still learning, we keep seeking!