We all have gut feelings. You experience that immediate feeling that choice A is correct on a midterm, but your head tells you B seems more plausible. So against your gut feeling you choose B — only to find out later that A was correct. 

This is your intuition speaking to you, or what Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines as “a feeling that guides a person to act a certain way without fully understanding why.” It’s not magic. You aren’t psychic. Instead, you are pulling past experiences and knowledge from your brain, according to Psychology Today. Sometimes, it appears to be just plain, unexplainable luck.

CEOs are known to channel their intuition when making business decisions. Successful companies use intuition for 80 percent of brand and market management decisions, according to a 2011 MIT Sloan School of Business survey.  Even the military finds value in intuition. In 2012, the United States Navy started a program to train soldiers to use their intuition in combat.

No matter what your profession, however, intuitive decisions are happening daily, and you should listen to that little voice of survival and advice in your head. It just might help you make the right decision.  I know my intuition helped me. 

Last week, after days of car trouble, I was going to get my car’s computer checked for a diagnosis on Friday. That same day I happened to have an important interview in the afternoon so I planned to take my car in the morning. For whatever reason, I woke up that morning concerned about taking my car to get checked. I had this gut feeling something was going to happen in the five-minute drive there and keep me from my interview. I decided to postpone the check-up until after my interview was over.

The car made it to the interview. I learned that the problem with my car was nothing that couldn’t be fixed, and I was safe to drive it home to my usual service place. Before driving to my apartment, I had this other immediate feeling that I should get Chipotle, even though it was out of my way.

On my way to my Kent apartment, my car went AWOL. I couldn’t control my steering, and in a panic not to hit pedestrians or other vehicles, I pulled off onto a side road. I moved my car to a nearby parking lot when I heard grinding beneath me. My car broke down right there. This was a totally unrelated problem to the initial issues I just had checked.

We all have car trouble, but I can’t help shake that my intuition saved me in multiple ways that day. I didn’t miss my interview because my gut told me not to take the car in the morning, which ended up breaking down. I also didn’t get in a horrific wreck on the highway that could have happened when my car’s steering was off and came to a complete halt. If I hadn’t decided I should get Chipotle at that moment, would my car have made it onto the highway just in time to break? It’s possible.

All I know is I listened to my intuition, and because of it, I’m not bruised and bandaged, and I am not rescheduling an interview.