I don’t know that I’m the most intuitive person in the world but I do know something when I like it. Don't you? Now whether or not we can afford it is another matter altogether!
Last week my husband and I bought a house. It feels kinda blasé to say it like that yet pre 2011 I had never in my life bought a house, had a say in buying a house, or even rented one. Up to that time I had always been given a place to live. In 2011 my husband and I decided that we wanted to buy a house in Tampa, Florida. Isn’t it amazing the ideas we humans concoct! That was ours. We were living in Cold Lake, Alberta, Canada and both dreaming of a warmer climate. We spent our holidays in Tampa looking for a house and it was only a couple of months later the realtor contacted us and said we HAD to come see a particular house. By that time my husband was deployed and unavailable leaving me to go see the house and decide. Yikes!!!
We ended up buying that house because when I went in I knew it would be perfect for what we wanted. It turned out to be a great investment. In the military you are constantly moving, sometimes buying a house, sometimes renting. Now in 2017 the current move is one where we have decided to buy. Last week as we were chatting with the agent about the three houses that remained on our list after two days in and out of all sorts of dwellings, I said that while they were nice homes they didn’t have that umph! Hubby and I decided we could live in any of them but ‘eh’…
The agent responded saying that she was taking us through a process and that most of the time house buyers didn't get a wow factor. I disagree. Maybe I’ve been lucky but in the three houses I’ve had an input in purchasing it has always been decided because of the wow or feeling that you get when you enter. You walk into a place and it feels right. You may have things that need fixing or changing to your style. You have to look at the information provided surrounding the decision and yet in your gut, that ‘brain in your belly’ you know. I remember reading The Undoing Project by Michael Lewis about the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky who proved that people don’t use statistics or data to make decisions even when they are trained in statistics. They follow their gut instincts.
“There is a Voice That Doesn’t Use Words...Listen.” ~ Rumi
Do you? Follow your gut, I mean. Do you even cultivate this thing called intuition or do you go through ‘the process’ and choose something from what has been presented? Don’t ignore the data but use it along with your intuition. I think that learning to hear and follow your intuition is a learned skill. Best if you practice using your intuition with smaller decisions in life so that it will be a little easier to ‘hear’ and understand it when a big decision comes along. Buying a house is a huge financial decision, not to mention emotional too - don’t start practicing here!
Practice using your intuition by getting still – walking away from the decision that needs to be made for a few minutes, hours, or a day if you can. If something about the situation feels off in your gut, listen! Ask more questions or talk about that nagging feeling with a friend to see if you can pull out what's bothering you. Practice in the everyday matters.
In the end we have been able to buy a house that we just love and stick within our budget. I’m glad we didn’t settle.