Have you, ever, found yourself using this expression? It, sometimes, happens when you encounter and need to assess a new situation. Or, perhaps, along with colleagues, you are deciding whether to hire a particular job candidate.
What if we possess the ability, albeit sub-consciously, to take the known facts and analyze them, in quite a different way? Perhaps this subliminal ability interpolates and interprets the known empirical data against another index of assessment, of which we are unaware. Because this sub-conscious process takes place automatically, we establish a compelling opinion, of a person or situation, without, really, knowing quite why.
A more accepted thesis originates from our own background and experience. We, all, look out on the World, through a personally unique ‘Window’. Not a real window, of course, but a view constructed from our experience, education, environment and belief systems. These four indices make up our Frame of Reference. We measure everything that occurs and people that we meet, against this Frame of Reference. It is inevitable that the application of our ‘Window’ comes into play, at such times.
Our Frame of Reference, clearly, has an essential contribution to make in our judgement and decision-making. However, we must guard against ascribing qualities and expected behaviours to people that we meet, just, because they remind us of other people that we know, or have known. Equally, we should not, necessarily, expect the same outcome from a situation or decision, because we have experienced something similar, in the past. Every person or situation must be judged ‘in the present tense’. Notwithstanding, our Frame of Reference has a vital part to play.
Or is there something extra? Do we possess another ability that we choose to call a ‘Sixth Sense’? The behaviouralists, among us, tell us that we are just another genus in the animal kingdom. Accordingly, we share many of the traits and qualities of our fellow planet dwellers. Many animal species are known to have some innate ability, which provides sensory input, beyond the accepted five senses. Do we share a version of this ‘sense’?
Whatever the truth, this ‘Don’t ask me how I know; I just know’ phenomenon cannot be overlooked. My personal view is that its value is in providing an additional emotional endorsement to an assessment or decision, arrived at by more empirical judgement.
‘Can anything be beyond the knowledge of a man like you?’
(Figaro to Count Almaviva from ‘The Marriage of Figaro’)
This, somewhat, unconventional theory contributed to the DNA of the following Training Package: