If you listen to enough interviews with entrepreneurs, there is a tip you will listen to over and over: believe your bowel.

Unfortunately, this may be the less practical advice sometimes, because the “belief of your gut” seems and feels different from everyone. And if you are a billionaire who has built and sold ten companies, your intestinal trust can seem like a more valuable strategy than you are Joe Shmoe starting a dog business in his garage. After all, Joe's intestines do not have much record.

But that's exactly why I wrote my book Daily intuition: What psychology, science and psyche can teach us about finding and trusting our inner voice. Intuition is just another word to “believe in your gut”, and I believe it is a tool that we can all learn to use.

One of the ridiculous paradoxes about intuition is that it is derived as not true, and then violated at the highest moments. When faced with the choice between two jobs or two apartments or two romantic partners both have an equal book of pros and cons, where there is no clear winner, what do you do? You go with your gut. Is an excellent idea, in theory, but why should you trust your intestines in these critical joints when you haven't practiced to use it in the day? We need to cultivate daily intuition.

When I started writing about intuition, it felt as if I were trying to follow Jell-o on the wall. Because what the hell is it? I would use a very technical term, like “vibe”. This did not look exactly like something you could get to the bank. Intuition is really a vibe, and is also knowing without knowing why (I would argue “why” is not that important, but your recognition is), and is the direction: go this way, not it, move on to it and far from it. You can't always show your work to mark how you got from point A to point B, and this can make you doubt the final destination.

But after researching intuition from many different perspectives – neuroscient, bodily, psychological, metaphysical, spiritual and pragmatic simple – I understood something. While intuition often flows as irrational, illegal and fantastic, intuition actually IS data.

While doing research on this book, I spoke with scientists and psyche, who study and use intuition. While a psychic can claim that intuition is the province of the soul, neuroscientists attribute to the brain. Neuroscientist Patrick House describes the brain thus: “A wonderful bin of evolutionary hacks contaminated in a watery piñata, salty we call it head.” The main task of our brain is to keep us alive, and recognizing models rapidly is an evolutionary asset.

So for neuroscientists, intuition is the recognition of the model and the memory that happens fast, below the level of our consciousness, and often results in biofeedback (sweaty palm, a lump formed in the throat, a wave of nausea). Our brains process the data and spit them on sweat and feelings. Our minds make sense from it. Our bodies are indivisible to all. Trying to find a central intuition in the brain is a kind of mistake of a fool (a fool spent many hours trying to find) due to the complex and dynamic interaction of the human beast.

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From a scientific point of view, intuition is our brain that recognizes models in the world and sending signals for understanding those rapidly, often subperceptual and biofeedback patterns. Think: Your palms sweat when you hear a certain song on the radio that you associate with a memory, even a deeply buried. So intuition is an ensemble of brain processes such as memory activation, unconscious processing and prediction. We make predictions based on past experience, and if you have a lot of experience in a particular area – reading people, for example – then your intuitions probably come quickly and correctly. Since that super fast information processing is an extremely adaptive feature for people living in complex environments, here's the good news: intuition – you have it! You were born with. You don't have to sit there by wondering whether you are intuitive or not. You are.

That is why labeling intuition as a mystical thing, in fact it makes no sense. Intuition, from the point of view of science, is literally everything that has ever happened to you that you are able to draw to make sense quickly and efficiently. Because intuitive hits sometimes come out of “nowhere” (though “nowhere” is actually “anywhere”) can feel another world. As the cognitive neuroscientist Sara Laszlo said Voices in the riverIntuition is “practicing so much that it feels like magic”.

Another reason why intuitive data can feel so slippery is because people experience intuition differently. For me personally, intuition is both very embodied and very intellectual. I get the sensation in my body, like tightening in my throat, when I don't like something or someone. Or if I think something or someone is great, I will feel a warmth and enlargement in my chest. Sometimes I will get an intuitive hit that is just a full sentence, like “this is a good idea”, or “Stop, stay away from”. But you know what else says “Stop, stay away?!” Anxiety, bad twin of intuition.

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That is why intuition can be such a mess. But if we apply the framework of our scientists' friends – intuition is to know the model based on expertise – then the best thing we can do is become experts in ourselves. How and when you get intuitive information? Here are very useful Clair.

This kind of thing can be easily thrown like “there”, but I prefer to think of Klair just as learning styles.

There is a Clairvoyance, Clairaudence (clear hearing), Claircogise (clear recognition), Clairintelct (clear thought), clairempathy (clear emotion), clayrtangenics, clayraliens (clear smell), clairgustant, and clair Other not on this list that you may have experience. They are useful for how you know what you know, and I believe we can conceive them widely. Get for example Clairvoyance: The image that can emanate in mind is someone who looks at a crystal ball. But Clairvoyance can be much more than that. It may mean getting images, yes, but it can also mean to notice visual signs in your life.

I remember vividly standing in the street and reading an annoying email. I looked up, and immediately in front of me were some inscriptions reading, “Please leave.” Coincidence? Maybe, but noticing that a little visual message made me smile and tighten my irritation, preventing me from being completely kidnapped.

Clairempathy can get other people's emotions, feeling what other people feel – or just getting a specific feeling of something themselves. Clairintellect? You just know.

Spend some time – a week, a month – mentioning how you experience intuition. Is it a tightening in your throat, a dot in your stomach, a warm space all over your chest (Clairentience)? Maybe when meeting a new customer or contractor you can get a special download like “this person will deceive me” or “this person will be a wonderful collaborator” (Clairintellect). But even more broadly, ask yourself: When you have an intuition, do you feel it in your body? Do you come in a sentence? Do you get visual ignition or notice objects in your visual field that takes a special meaning?

There is a bunch of QUIZZES You can get to learn your Clair. Here are some.

But … I have a feeling you probably already know.

If you want more common knowledge of intuition, you can find them in my book, Daily intuitionor my newspaper, “Intuition letters.“