With intuition to success

In sport, too, there are excellent examples of how intuition can contribute to success. The 32-year-old Polish professional footballer Robert Lewandowski has been with FC Bayern Munich for years and is now regarded as one of the best strikers of his generation. He simply scores goals by the metre. Since 2010, when he first started at Dortmund, his Bundesliga tally now stands at 321 goals. Lewandowski trains every day, dogged, fighting, and testing every game situation. Training is the basis, but in the game, in the work, it is different. Lewandowski explains this on the club website, "A striker doesn't have time to think about how best to hit the ball. You have to act on intuition. Sometimes, after scoring a goal, I am surprised myself how I was able to score it at all".

Gut feeling

It may be that professional sport works extremely intensively with feelings, intuition and intuition. But even on the professional path, there are always opportunities to listen to your instincts and trust them. This starts at the age of 15, when you have to make a decision about your basic training. Even though at this age hardly anyone knows what he or she wants to do in ten or twenty years. Some are helped by their parents, others have access to careers advisors. But many young people already have their own images in their heads and can almost sense whether they want to go into an office, a garage, a job in the countryside somewhere or perhaps straight onto an academic path. Gut feelings certainly play a role in young people's decisions, even if they are rarely openly discussed.

Later, on the educational or professional path, an "inner voice" slowly develops. One gets to know oneself better; perhaps not yet the strengths, but certainly already the first weaknesses and insecurities. One learns that there are personal limits and that it takes extraordinary energy to overcome them. Self-confidence, especially in professional matters, develops only hesitantly and with it the knowledge that you can decide for yourself and that you can be responsible for your own destiny. If one wants to.

Strict framework conditions

In Switzerland, on the other hand, there are many rules, recommendations and predefined patterns on how to behave, how to decide and what next steps to take in a way that is as socially acceptable as possible. Just as there are football coaches who tell their strikers exactly how to run. When choosing a career, and later during training and further education and subsequent career changes, young people are constantly exposed to the pressure of the employer world; formatted by the personnel managers and unfortunately also conveyed via the job placement industry. Intuition is not a topic there. Instead, it is suggested what is right, what professions suit you, what qualifications you need, what languages you should master and even how long the obligatory year abroad should be. Six superficial months in Brighton with some B2- First certificate seems more purposeful than a six-month adventure trip across North America. On this process of economic-social adaptation, one may well lose one's own intuition and / or never really get to know one's own gut feeling.

Feel the things

Perhaps generations Y and Z challenge their own consciousness more than their predecessors. Perhaps they are more open to trying new things and different ways of doing things. Perhaps they no longer have the absolute sense of loyalty that was instilled in the "baby boomer" generation. Not that they know themselves better or have a stronger sense of self-worth as teenagers now, in part because of the mass flow of data via social media. But the basic idea of trying things, popping in here and there, and being fundamentally open to alternatives, that may be easier today. That's exactly how Lewandowski sees himself when he talks about his game: moving around, dropping back sometimes or going out to the flanks, just trying the surprising. Quite intuitively.

The business world no longer makes any guarantees, except that there will indeed continue to be changes, corrections and turnarounds. Change Management - Corona clearly shows how this works. Those who learn to accept "change" on principle or even consciously embrace it will probably have an advantage in the next twenty or thirty years. And that is precisely why people should also be free to try something new or venture into the unknown in their careers. Professional qualifications and training certificates guarantee, ultimately, absolutely nothing. Especially not success and satisfaction.

"Learning Curve"

And so young people after completing their apprenticeship, students after completing their Bachelor's degree or people who are already in full professional life should dare to tackle new ideas or alternatives that present themselves. And to trust their own gut feeling - and thereby trigger personal "change".

That's what it's all about: trusting your own feelings and desires and using your own intuition to do so. Anyone who learns once to proactively influence or change his or her path will do so again and again, and in the process will constantly develop - whether in his or her career, even as a professional footballer, or in his or her private life. And in the process, he or she will realize how "colorful" the world can be, or in other words, how varied and satisfying one's own personal path can be. It may be that one can seek this path only after Corona. But it may also be that Corona explicitly triggers new experiences and opportunities. In a few years, even Lewandowski will have to "hang up his shoes" and then start something new with gut instinct. Maybe it will be something quite surprising.