The Intelligence You Were Taught to Ignore

There is a kind of intelligence that does not show up on any resume.

It does not require credentials or a formal framework. It is not taught in business schools or measured in performance reviews. But every leader who has ever made a great decision that they could not fully explain, every person who has walked into a room and felt something was off before anyone said a word, every woman who has known something in her gut that her mind could not yet confirm, has used it.

We call it a hunch. A gut feeling. A sixth sense. We say it like an apology.

Kirsten Sharo calls it your inner knowing. And she has spent years helping people find their way back to it.

What We Were Taught to Unlearn

Here is what Kirsten says that tends to land hard: most of us are not missing intuition. We are just not listening to it.

We had it as children. Watch a young child navigate a room, a relationship, a situation they have never encountered. They are reading something the adults around them have long since stopped noticing.

What happens? We go to school. We are sorted, scheduled, and evaluated on measurable outputs. We are taught to value what can be proven and to be skeptical of what cannot. By the time we are adults, most of us have spent two decades being trained away from the very signal we were born with. 

Add in hustle culture, the glorification of busyness, the social currency of being the person who never stops, and we have an entire professional class that has mistaken noise for productivity and forgotten what the quiet sounds like.

What Your Body Already Knows

Kirsten is clear about something that surprises people: intuition is not mystical. It is physical.

You have felt it. The pit in your stomach when you say yes and you should have said no. The inexplicable resistance when everything on paper looks right but something feels wrong. The goosebumps that show up when you hear something true. The fast heartbeat for no medical reason.

These are not random. They are data. Your nervous system has been collecting information your conscious mind has not yet caught up with, and it is trying to hand it to you.

The problem is that we have been taught to override it. Logic first. Evidence first. What can I prove? What can I justify?

Kirsten teaches something she calls the pause. It is exactly what it sounds like: the deliberate act of stopping long enough to actually hear what your body is saying. Not reacting immediately. Not filling the silence with more input. Just stopping.

In a culture that rewards the go-go-go, the pause feels indulgent. It is not. It is one of the most important skills a leader can develop.

What Calm Actually Looks Like

Kirsten told a story in our conversation that I have not stopped thinking about.

Thanksgiving Day. Three small children at home. Her husband, a career firefighter and paramedic, comes upstairs after a treadmill workout and says: I need to go to the hospital. When a paramedic says that, you listen.

At the hospital, the tech and her husband looked at her and said: he’s having a heart attack. Kirsten looked back and said: so let’s fix this.

The nurse later pulled her aside: do you really understand what’s happening right now?

Kirsten’s response: Yes. And I need your attention on him, not on managing my reaction. Go fix him.

She sat in a darkened, empty waiting room on Thanksgiving, alone, and checked in with what she calls her spiritual crew. And she knew, not hoped, knew, that it was going to be okay.

Fifteen years later, it is. Her husband made a full recovery.

That story is not about being cold. It is about what happens when someone has done enough inner work that calm becomes available to them even in the worst moments. That is what Kirsten teaches. Not detachment. Peace as a practice.

The Question That Changes the Session

I have worked with Kirsten personally for years. I have sat in sessions where she knew things she had no business knowing. Details about people who passed, insights about patterns I was living inside of and could not see clearly, clarity on things I had been circling without resolution.

People often ask: how do you prepare for something like that?

Kirsten’s answer is simple: come with an open heart, an open mind, and a list of questions. That is it. She does not want your background. She does not want context that might skew what she picks up. She wants to receive what is actually there, not what you have already decided she should find.

That openness is also the thing that determines what you receive. If you walk in with arms crossed and a list of things to disprove, the session reflects that. If you walk in genuinely curious, the session can go places that change things.

[Where This Might Land for You]

If you are a high-performing professional who would describe yourself as practical, logical, evidence-based, this conversation might feel like a stretch.

I understand that. I was that person too.

And I can tell you: the work Kirsten does is not asking you to abandon logic. It is asking you to stop treating it as the only intelligence that counts.

There is information available to you that does not travel through your analytical mind. Your body has been collecting it your whole life. The question is whether you are ready to start listening.

If you are curious about working with Kirsten, download her full services guide below. It covers her private sessions, her two monthly communities (Whispers of Knowing and The Empowered Journey), and how to find the right starting point for you. Everything is also at diceyshealing.com.

And if this conversation opened something in you, that matters too. Trust that.

~ Monique

Listen to the full episode of Possibilities with Monique de Maio wherever you get your podcasts. Download Kirsten’s services guide from the show notes or the link below. And if you are ready for a conversation about where clarity is hiding in your own life, explore [Strategic Navigator Sessions]