Masters Acting On Hunches

Acting On Hunches Comes After Mastering Inner Monsters

Masters acting on hunches make it look easy

repetition, rhyming, pattern recognition

Still endure double-think + analysis paralysis

What they’ve really mastered are inner monsters

The task, ask, act, fact of their lives is

to embrace doubt as part of each hunch

You’ve seen the sure and swift moves of a master.

They make it look so easy, even if they’re sweating or swearing as they’re doing it, you know nobody else does it better. They’re starting or fighting a fire of the moment before them. Just another day in their lives.

They seem to be acting on instinct. When you ask how they did it, why they went left instead of right, or vice-versa, and they tell you that they just “knew” or admit they can’t really break it down for you. They admit they’re “winging it” sometimes. It seems like they’re acting on a guess, a hunch.

Hunches are those times when you just knew and felt what happening in the moment. They are epiphanies, a flowering from hardwired experiences and pattern recognition.

Your heart beats faster, your skin tingles, you feel like your hair is standing on end. You just know and feel it. You feel like you have returned to a familiar favorite haunt. You’re home.

These “déjà vu” feelings are less about mysticism and more about memory. What is that memory made of?

Repetition, rhyming and pattern recognition.

This is also when even masters can be swayed by friends and family, right when our double-thinking comes in. Even masters have “double-think” and “analysis paralysis”. The best will use that to keep going — the only thing they’re really perfecting is managing their inner monsters.

The task, the ask, the act, the fact of their lives is embrace the doubt as part of their hunch.

You may have done the hard work, day after day, and paid your “10,000 hours”, but you must still practice trust of self. Some of the questions you’re really wrestling with aren’t “how” or “why” you do what you do but include the following:

Are you working in a consistent and constant way?

Do you personalize these skills to take action your way?

You’ll never really “become” a master of even your way unless you master practice.

When you do, you’re busy. You’re too busy. When someone asks “how” or “why” you did what you did, you say it’s because you “just know”. A hunch.

Originally published at https://edwardrooster.substack.com on January 18, 2023.