Instinct: The Power to Unleash Your Inborn Drive (2 page)

I
t’s the way mother birds build nests, and build them high enough to elude predators. It’s the way bees know to extract pollen and return with it to their hive. Or the way that sheep, cattle, and other animals often travel in herds so that they will not be as vulnerable. It’s the surge a mother bear experiences to protect her cubs when confronted by a startled hiker in the forest. Biological instinct is the fierce determination of the majestic lion to guard his territory.

These creatures don’t have to be taught how to do these things; they are born with the natural instinct to behave in these ways. In fact, most scholars define an instinct as a genetically hardwired tendency, a behavior that’s built in and automatic, not learned or conditioned. The survival instinct is generally regarded as the strongest in most every species. Instincts to
nurture, to gather, to procreate, to secure food and water, to protect and to defend—these sustain life in practical, very tangible ways.

On a basic level, we share many of the same instincts. We see instinct in action when a baby tries to suckle in order to receive nourishment, or a toddler recoils from a hot skillet. It’s the sense you have about the stranger lingering behind you on your walk home that causes you to run into a store and call a taxi. Similarly, no one has to teach you to dodge the oncoming bus careening toward you while you’re crossing the street.

We are wired to stay alive. Our bodies naturally seek out nourishment (food and water) and protection (such as shelter, clothing, and weapons) to survive. You’ve probably heard of the “fight or flight” response, which is an instinctive reaction to any perceived danger. Many scientists also believe that language is instinctive, or at least the desire to express our responses to both internal and external stimuli. Some researchers believe that we are instinctively spiritual beings as well, which of course I would confirm.

As we grow and mature into men and women, our various instincts also evolve and become more sophisticated and personalized—but so does our reliance on intellect, evidence, and technology. We are assaulted
by so much information each day that it’s easy to lose touch with the voice inside us, the compelling sense of knowledge, the awareness we have in our gut.

In addition, we’re often conditioned to dismiss our instincts as primal and animalistic, subjective and unscientific. We’re taught to rely on facts and figures, data and digits, not hunches and gut feelings. Some people may even consider relying on instinct in the same way they regard superstitions and mental telepathy: fodder for science fiction and superhero movies.

Sometimes we rely on our instincts without even realizing it. We notice details about how a job applicant has dressed and groomed himself and form an accurate opinion about his qualifications. Perhaps we sense the timing is right to have a difficult but necessary conversation with someone in our family and find them receptive when approached. It could be an inexplicable attraction toward one particular field of study or area of business. For instance, you can’t help but notice the lines of other people’s clothing, wondering about the fabric: how it drapes; its shape, color, and fit. Maybe you’ve always been fascinated by the way numbers work and enjoy creating order by making the columns balance. Whether you recognize those glimpses of instinct or not, it’s there.

On the other hand, our instincts are not necessarily accurate all the time. That hunch about someone else’s business deal wasn’t true. Your sense of timing for the big date wasn’t on target after all. The sense of
dread about a client’s reaction to your work proved to have no basis in reality. Your intuition about getting the promotion wasn’t accurate.

So how do you become more aware of your unique, naturally developed instincts? And perhaps more important, how do you discern when to trust your instincts and when to rely on logic, fact, and objectivity?

Obviously, this is where our relationship with instinct gets tricky.

And that’s what this book is all about.

Not one of us is born without instincts. A person is more likely to be born without sight than to be born without insight. In fact, many of my blind friends rely upon insight. All of us have internal senses beyond the physical with which we can better determine what’s next, what’s safe, or even what’s right. Our instincts speak to us daily, prompting us to pay attention, to listen more carefully, to sidestep danger, and to seize an opportunity.

Some may be more in tune with their instincts. And some may be less inclined to listen to them. But we, like all of God’s creatures, come complete with them on the inside. From this inner sanctum springs wisdom we don’t even know we possess. But in a fast-paced, busy
world, we tend not to give ourselves the quiet moments of reflection that are needed to unleash them.

Think about it: there are some things you just
know
. You don’t even know how or why you know, you just do. This inner knowing is instinctive. It is as natural as the ability to sense when you’ve found the thing you were born to do. Unfortunately, many of us often spend our lives doing what we were trained to do. Some do what they were asked to do. And most of us do what others need us to do. And all the while, we wonder why the feeling of fulfillment eludes us.

Our Creator designed everything he made to have a purpose. Yet most of us live our lives wondering what our purpose is. Worse still, there’s an aching in our hearts as we sense that there has to be more in life, something beyond the monotonous compliance with convenient opportunities to which most of us have lived our lives. I encounter so many people who dread going to work, not because they are lazy but because they are unfulfilled.

Without understanding the guidance that our innate God-given instincts provide us, we simply adjust to the urgency of circumstances, all the while sensing deep within that we were created for so much more. Yet the uncertainty or fear of pursuing this inner sense keeps us contained in the contrived cage of the ordinary. Simply put, we’ve never learned to rely on our instincts.

But regardless of where we are in life, it’s not too
late to align our lives with the inner wisdom of who we really are and what we were made to do. God, the master designer, has equipped us with a fundamental instinct that draws us to our divine purpose. This sense of potential being realized is more fulfilling than any paycheck. It is the feeling of fitting in, like a piece in a puzzle, to form a greater picture than what we may be doing right now. It is the innate satisfaction that comes from giving the gifts that you and you alone can contribute to the world.

Once we embrace this instinct of identity, we understand why we are so shaped and designed. We realize why we were rejected in other places, why we grew bored by other roles, and why over and over we’re haunted by the possibility that there’s some place, some plan, some design to which we should be aligned. Deeply spiritual people pray for it to be revealed. Other people wander for the lack of it.

But the most fulfilled, confident people live their lives in the very midst of it. These individuals have answered the question, moved into the sweet spot, and been guided by a God whose design is revealed in them. When we have the courage to leave the familiar and step into the destiny to which our instincts keep drawing us, we can live the same way.

I am not writing a book to show you how to get rich, because I know that many rich people have not identified their purpose. I am not writing to share how to be famous. Too many famous people are miserable.
I write to share with you the importance of being led into your fulfilled purpose by leaving the confines of your conventional cave and entering the space where your heart longs to reside.

The place you will discover when instinct is your guide.

I
nstincts are the product of what we have and what we want to have. They are the inner compass guiding us from where we are to where we want to go. Perhaps this explains why artists, inventors, and entertainers may be more in tune with their instincts than bankers, engineers, and accountants are with theirs. It’s not that these latter professions do not require the power of necessity to stimulate innovation; it’s simply that these fact-based fields rely on numbers, equations, and balanced ledgers as their building blocks.

Creative careers, on the other hand, require participants to produce something new from more malleable materials such as words, images, and music. This kind of resourceful resilience often emerges in childhood, requiring some to rely on instinct more than others, not just to survive but also to thrive. This was certainly
my experience, the way my own instincts were initially activated.

Being a relatively poor boy born in the hills of West Virginia, I grew up with meager means but with an enormous work ethic instilled by my parents. We lived in a bedroom community in the suburbs of Charleston, and its topography, punctuated with stately trees and rolling hills, abundantly provided one of its more pristine features. However, none of its natural opulence succeeded in camouflaging its economic limitations. Still, it was the matrix that developed me, and now I can more adeptly see why.

Growing up, I was a little chocolate-colored boy with short pants and greased knees tromping through the neighborhood. I’m sure I must have glistened from the Vaseline my mother used to moisturize my skin, but since I had few friends and an overactive energy level, no one seemed to notice. As a result, I spent a great deal of time outdoors, and must confess that since my first name is Thomas I became a bit of a “Peeping Tom.”

Yes, I know how that sounds, but I don’t mean it to connote someone spying inappropriately who will eventually get arrested! Instead I simply mean that I learned by watching and allowing what I saw to become fuel for my imagination. A voyeur of life and people, I witnessed events and ideologies that became the catalyst for many of my adult conclusions and an impetus of the logic with which I attack life.

You see, research from observation can be quite conclusive. This explains why scientists have laboratories and not just libraries. It is why lawyers seek an eyewitness at a crime scene to testify at a trial. What we see often creates quite an impact. But it’s how we process it internally that influences our instincts.

Now, I realize that everyone didn’t come from my era or environment. But any time you have been denied a passage to privileges and access to opportunities, you have a tendency to develop a certain adaptation, sensitivity, and instinct through which you compensate for that denial. And it is the development of this instinct for success that is the catalyst of my focus, research, and now writing of this book.

I’ve climbed high enough in life to peek into the minds of some of the most accomplished people in the world—award-winning entertainers, world-class athletes, and world-changing political leaders. Having come from meager and mediocre beginnings, I am astutely aware of my surroundings when allowed an actual glimpse into the lives of those usually seen only from the distance of blogs and news reports.

Over the years, both through my business and my ministry, I’ve had dinner with many of them and been entertained in their homes. I have had intense conversations that lasted until the restaurant closed and have observed their families and friends and listened to stories about how they became who they are. I’ve
been on the set of their movies and visited the Oval Office of their leadership, watching them do what they do, discovering what shaped who they are.

I’ve seen their instincts in action.

I’ve learned that most highly successful people didn’t develop in an environment of success; they evolved into it. When obscurity precedes any level of accomplishment, it does so as a mother birthing a child. First generations of successful people are often shocked to find that giving their children all they dreamed of providing doesn’t necessarily create the same skills and ambitions in their kids that their own parents’ lack of resources instilled in them.

Born in the 1920s, my parents were raised in an industrial age where the primary goal was to get a great job, earn a gold watch, and draw a modest pension when you retire. My mother was a strong advocate for education, and she recommended getting a degree in something marketable so you would always have a job, maybe even a management position of which her generation was enamored. Rightfully so, as their parents were sharecroppers in the Deep South who spent their lives picking peas, sawing lumber, and living off the land.

Now, my parents’ ideals are good ones, and I support
them to the highest. But my parents could only promote us to the levels to which they themselves had been exposed. This is why you can’t imagine my astonishment when I pulled back the curtain on the Steve Jobses of the world, the Bill Gateses of the world, and others, only to find that some of the most influential leaders of our day either didn’t have a degree or didn’t have a degree in the area in which they became most well known.

There is no doubt that these men and women are quite intelligent. And through that intelligence, they would without question have reached some modicum of success. But what blew my mind was the discovery that somewhere along the path of intellectualism they either took a detour based on an instinctive decision or incorporated an instinctive move that lifted them completely out of the league of their peers and enabled them to be the icons of power they are today! In other words, these successful icons not only had great instincts, but they were dialed into them and acted on them.

I noticed that most of my new constituents discovered the ideals, products, or passion they have now come to epitomize (and many of them were way past the age of twenty when they did!) by blazing their own trails. These men and women listened to the promptings within them and had the courage to derail the scripted plans of their lives and take the road less traveled by the inner impulse to go further than what their background would’ve predicted.

They listened when prompted to that nebulous space undefined within the human soul where they house a navigational system—one that virtually all of us have, even if in most of us it’s often underutilized. This innate compass provides guidance in answering the age-old questions: Why am I here? What can I do with the life, gifts, and opportunities I have been allotted?

Instincts provide us with information that has been synthesized through the filter of who we really are and our truest goals in life. Facts, data, information, and knowledge provide nourishment and stimulation for this capacity within us. Our powers of observation and of experience are stored here. Our creativity, resilience, and resourcefulness also abide within our instincts. Fused together, the basic instinct in each of us compels us toward the unique fulfillment that is ours alone.

Also, please understand that the kind of instinct we’re talking about here is not an uncontrollable urge, self-indulgent desire, arbitrary impulse or compulsion. Instinct may seem similar to these other aspects of our humanity at times, but ultimately our instincts include an acute sense of timing along with an awareness of self and others that transcends selfish lusts and addictive desires. In other words, our instincts are not motivated by immediate gratification, personal gain at the expense of exploitation, or the pursuit of satisfaction untethered from conscience.

Since we are made in the image of our Creator, I’m
convinced that our instincts also bear the imprint of the divine. As human beings, we not only possess the instinct for survival, just as any other living creature does, but we also have instincts for purpose, fulfillment, and dominion. God made us to reflect his creativity, resourcefulness, and imagination. He wants us to see beyond the literal, above the bottom line, and beneath the surface of appearances.

We all have access to the same information and opportunities. But some of us never go beyond what is required to add to the task what is inspired. In this highly competitive world we live in today, meeting the demand will never produce exceptional results. These people exceeded what was commanded of them and veered into the creative to which there was no previous point of reference.

Trailblazing people move by instinct, because there is nothing outward that suggests that what they see inwardly is possible.
Like a good detective on a crime scene, they look for clues but don’t ignore the unsubstantiated hunches that have often solved cases. They combine instincts with intellect to discover a new way of seeing what’s missing in plain sight.

People who combine these two are far more likely to excel than people who only operate according to job descriptions and acceptable past practices. They unlock the undiscovered treasures of instinctively formed creativity; they enhance their life’s work by not limiting themselves to the script and structure of
other people’s minds. As I looked in the window more closely, I noticed that these people did more than shatter glass ceilings—they literally tore the roof off the status quo!

There is indeed a great deal of difference between a job and a career, a place of employment and a rendezvous with destiny. Finding the thing you were created to do can be a dubious task, highlighted by the fact we generally don’t have time to do the soul-searching that is required to find the hidden clues to unlock our fullest and best potential. Instead we fill out an application, gain a reasonably good-paying job, and go to work for someone who found the thing they were created to do!

This inward urging or prompting is far too often underutilized, and consequently so many people feel stuck at a certain stage even as they long to be more productive. Beyond pursuing the direction of their instincts, as you may have done at times, the question remains: have you maximized your findings, or only stored the data and acquiesced to the mundane routine of fitting in with what has already been done?

Now, all of us aren’t created to lead a country like the president or compose a classical concerto like Mozart. Instead many of us are, in fact, intended to be a support
to these high achievers and realize our dreams by the often-fulfilling task of using our gifts and talents to support a person in power. But even in these roles, the people who live out their opportunities with advancement and promotion do so because they always sense the extra and not just the ordinary!

Whether you work in a government office, a cubicle, a courthouse, or the corner of your apartment, your instincts know truths that can enhance your performance and increase your productivity. There is one thing that is needed to find fulfillment in life: to find that place in life, that station of being, where all that is within you resonates with the challenge before you. This is the spot where inborn natural and innate creativity soars into the horizon of possibility! It’s the extra edge that some use and some do not!

Anything that we do for years that doesn’t match the inner imprint of our gifting will eventually become monotonous and routine, ritualistic and frustrating. Like a key that will fit a lock and yet is inadequately structured to let us open the door, we find ourselves jammed into a role that fulfills the needs of those around us but may not unlock the door to the larger life, work, and cravings of our inner soul.

If we are to find alignment between the external career and internal call, we are going to have to navigate through the maze of low-hanging opportunities offered to sustain us and fulfill the open-door area of need that awaits us! It is the vision of what is beyond
the routine that heightens the blood and stirs the adrenaline within each of us.

There is a satiety achieved when we get out of bed knowing that although the day ahead may be demanding, it can’t require something of us that isn’t represented within the inventory of what we can handle. In fact, it is often the more challenging job, ministry, marriage that either causes us to shrink away and grumble or activate the creative instinct to find a remedy or create a solution.

This is the choice we face each day.

In a staff development training session with my team recently, I explained to them that at a management level I needed around me people who bring innovative solutions, not people who gain access to my office merely to reiterate problems. Truly great leadership is solution oriented. While it is true that the proverbial buck stops with me, many issues made it to me that should’ve been resolved before they ever got to me. I further explained that if they weren’t participating in the solution, they were by default adding to the problem!

Great instincts lead to great promotion. Since leadership instincts have the power to influence net worth, it may be worth your time to spend a little time enhancing those instincts and acting on them when given the freedom to do so. Because at the end of the day, all that matters in this brief vacation we take on earth is that
we didn’t shrink into a corner and waste the days we’re given doing what we have to do rather than rising and taking on the challenge of becoming all we were created to be.