After a long time, the other day, I started making a gratitude list. One of those things that I have many of my clients do, but hadn’t done myself for a while. As I looked through the list, I noticed a familiar but unanticipated pattern. One that I have been trying to embrace for a while, although it’s much outside of my comfort zone.

I am an engineer, left-brained, analytical type. Given my broad success with problem-solving, I have perhaps subconsciously formed two beliefs. One, that every life issue is a problem to be solved. Two, with an analytical approach, I should be able to solve for most things. I clearly view that as a strength. I have been often rewarded for it in my professional life. However, what I noticed in the gratitude list was revealing. For some of the most significant points in the list, neither I nor my problem-solving mind had any contribution whatsoever.

On the contrary, they had everything to do with letting go and trusting. Letting go of my analytical mind and my achievement-orientation, and instead trusting the universe and my intuition.

I am grateful for the presence of my wife in my life. She’s my rock. But then, the life-long love affair that started with a brief encounter was not based on my thinking abilities, but on emotions, intuitive connection and trust. The more I have learnt to silence my judgmental self and the more unconditionally loving I have tried to be in my heart, the deeper my experience of the relationship has been.

My introduction to spirituality was a design of the universe. Some 25 years ago, my wife suggested that we both learn Reiki. I was naturally sceptical. As a trained engineer, I was just not going to fall for a technique to heal ourselves using our hands and some invisible energy. The idea that it could heal others, and even remotely, seemed absurd. But something within me led me to go along. And I have been grateful for that initiation since. It opened my heart to the world of spirituality – of deeper reflection, meditation, self-awareness and purpose. It also built an appreciation of the huge role universal intelligence plays in our life.

Fifteen years ago, when I was beginning to feel restless with my corporate career, it wasn’t my analytical ability, smarts or the achievement-orientation that led to me to a new path. It was simply paying attention to the little voice within. It was this voice that guided me to a path of pursuing personal growth and of being of help to others. This voice also gave me the courage and conviction to leave a successful career to pursue a vocation. What followed was a new life that I feel grateful for every day. How it came to me from nowhere. If I had paid attention to my thinking mind, and its limiting construct, I would’ve surely found enough reasons not to make the leap.

The point

We lay too much emphasis on our thinking mind. And if we are generally good at problem-solving, we are likely to see every life challenge, professional or personal, as a problem to be solved. Such thinking tends to be linear in its approach. It also stems from a desire to control all our outcomes. Instead, sometimes it helps to simply be with the challenge and wait for the creative intelligence of the universe to reveal itself. Those answers invariably serve us better. But it requires learning to let go of the obsession with problem-solving and the over-reliance on our thinking mind. Instead, we need to trust the universe and it’s intelligence being expressed through our intuition. The more we trust it, the more it grows and the more reliable it becomes.

In what way has the universal intelligence guided you?