Written by Robert D. Sollars
Want to unsubscribe? Sorry to see you go but…Send a blank e-mail with unsubscribe in the subject line to robert@sollarsviolencePrevention.com
As a child, usually around 7 or 8, we learned about the 5 senses. We discovered them during our science classes and I would venture to say we still know them by heart, using them on a daily basis:
- Sight – you use your eyes to view and interpret the world
- Smell –It provides a wealth of information to you, smoke, rotting material, and rain.
- Hearing – Listening to music or television, children laughing, and alarms from your pets.
- Touch –It lets you know if something is too hot or cold and the feel of a loved one’s skin.
- Taste – The taste buds allow you to savor the flavor of food or make your nose wrinkle.
However, there 3 other senses that have been drummed and verbally pounded out of us by the time we’re teenagers. They are stunted and ignored by most people, especially after becoming adults. They are just as important to your survival if you utilize & listen.
- Gut instinct – Also known colloquially as the 6th sense, most people including security professionals, especially at the field level, ignore or are told to ignore and dismiss, as being childish, paranoid, or just plain stupid. It isn’t BS***, déjà vu, or coincidence.
Listening to your gut instinct can help keep you safe from innumerable calamities. When you get that indistinct sensation in your stomach or that niggling feeling in the back of your head, listen to it. It is trying to tell you something, whether you perceive it obviously or not.
You’ve heard the stories of people who suddenly turned around and jumped out of the way of a speeding truck or the metaphorical falling piano. You also have the stories where someone has suddenly made a startling move for them…and it worked to their benefit, financially, finding ‘love at first sight, or saving a life.
Situational awareness is another term people use instead of gut instinct. This term may work better for military or law enforcement, but it certainly applies to anyone who gets that tingling sensation that tells them something just isn’t quite right.
- Imagination/delusion – I’d wager that while wracking your brain trying to figure it out you didn’t come up with this one. Your imagination, or delusions (not a drug, alcohol, or mental illness-induced), is just as important as the physical senses you have. Why? Because it allows you to see different possibilities and a different way of seeing things in the world around you.
We are born with an imagination that could fill the universe if we could have the brainpower with it. It helps us think about things we would never think of otherwise. It allows us to visit distant planets and wonder about future inventions such as mini-computers to take anywhere.
But as we get older, we are told by parents, teachers, and many others “Stop daydreaming and be an adult. You’re wasting your time…and ours!” So, we file away our imagination into a corner.
We dream to release that imagination and when we wake up…we forget about them because no one else wants to know that rubbish or delusions much less hear about them.
Sometimes dreams are a good thing:
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had a dream and attempted to make it real, unfortunately, we ain’t got there yet. Albert Einstein or Steve Jobs used their imagination to come up with possibilities that no one had ever dreamed of before.
Adolf Hitler, Kim Jung Un, ISIS, white supremacists, communists, socialists, politicians, and any number of groups that think they are better than everyone else, according to their ideology.
- Emotional feelings – When you lose your temper or begin crying for no particular reason, that is also telling you something down deep inside your psyche. What is it? Only you know the answer to that. Therefore, you have to dig deep at what’s making these feelings erupt from inside of yourself, not that we want to be automatons but or unemotional but… looking deep inside yourself, and being honest about what you find, will help you in the long run.
It may be a sad movie like the classic “The Yearling” or “Ghost”. It could be a politician telling, and wanting you to believe, what there are saying is the truth…when you know better. In either event, angry or sad moments from your past help to raise those emotions to the forefront and that’s not a bad thing…a chance to set things right or do something for the betterment of everyone.
With all of these, supposedly new, senses you have to develop them in order to be able to use them effectively. I know how hard it can be. After years, and literally, decades, being told to “ignore that idiotic nonsense and be real, and live in the real world, “I decided I wanted it back. It was a long time in coming but being a confirmed realist or pessimist as some call me, it was easy for the gut instinct.
The imagination didn’t come about until I could no longer use my eyes to tell me what abounded in the world. Therefore, my imagination returned to the empty part of my brain to help me perceive the world without sight. Not the way I wanted to do it but…you still have to cultivate it.
One way that people who are not in the creative arts, fiction writing, painting, sculpture, and even modern journalism. can do this is simple. Start writing. Sooner or later your imagination will take hold. It doesn’t matter what you write just start writing.
Eventually, it will come to you, and your family and the company you work for will be better off for it. Imagination is what drives man forward. Gut instinct is what keeps us safe even if we don’t outwardly perceive any threat. Emotions help us to realize things from the past that we need to rectify or something now to do something about.
Sow the seeds of imagination and cultivate it. We all have the capacity to do it, so get out there and create something. Gut instinct? Pay attention to that niggling feeling that tells you something is wrong, whether you perceive it or not. Emotions, keep them under tight control but analyze them to discover why.
It happens to Anyone…Any Time… Anywhere… For any Reason
I May Be Blind, but My Vision Is Crystal Clear
Permission to share? Of course, with full attribution.
Copyright 2021 Robert D. Sollars
