Intuition vs. Instinct

There's a big difference between something that's instinctive and something that's intuitive. For example, as I go through this presentation looking at the camera, I'd be looking over at this camera trying to explain the ideas that underlie the concepts and techniques that we gonna go through when we're on the training range. There's another doorway next to this room. There's another set of offices and classrooms here in this building. And when I hear people going in and out of that doorway I'm not gonna react instinctively because I have an expectation that people are coming and going.

It doesn't startle me, it doesn't distract me. So instead I act intuitively. And intuitively means in a way that works well with what the body does naturally and is consistent and congruent with the context of what it is I'm doing. I need to focus on the cameras, I need to focus on giving you the information that I'm trying to put out in this training DVD. So someone coming and going through that door isn't going to distract me.

But if someone were to come through this door and enter this room, I would instinctively be distracted because I wasn't expecting that. While we'd probably say cut and edit it out, if we left it in what you would see was an immediate distraction as I recognize that stimulus and an orientation of my focus in that direction towards the doorway so that I could learn about what was coming through the doorway maybe decide whether or not it was a threat and either ignore it or react appropriately to defend myself with the others in the room. That's the difference between instinct and intuition. Intuition relies on having some idea, some learned response, some piece of information to which I have been exposed to before to make my response as appropriate and as efficient as possible. Instinctive things are beyond my control.

They are reactions to a stimulus, and in the case of a threat stimulus it's going to be something that's introduced rapidly, introduced unexpectedly and not really be predictable. The body has developed a great set of natural reactions. These reactions all have natural world survival positives. If you're like me, you want to try to have as much control of your environment as possible and certainly if someone is threatening you or someone you're trying to protect you gonna to try to gain as much control and take advantage of the opportunities to control that other person, to control yourself to get out of the way to control that family member or friend to protect them. But we have to accept that we're not going to be able to control everything.

And in fact, those instinctive reactions that we can't control probably are there for a good reason. Now, as we get ready to discuss these things it's important to realize that I don't really care whether you believe that we all have these gifts as individuals or whether these gifts have evolved over a great period of time. The fact is that, at this day, at this time I'm going to be able to predict my reactions and your reactions to those rapidly introduced stimuli at a very high degree of accuracy. And if we don't accept those things we don't understand them and we don't work with them then our actual responses in a true critical incident aren't gonna be as efficient as possible.