Answer:

Dear Fer,

When I was much younger, I found myself as the only woman, and the only black person, working on a team of about ten mostly white cis men. I was just starting my career and was very excited about the work, which involved our team supporting the designers of a very popular book series for young people. The job was in New York, in a tall building in a part of downtown famous for its creativity—the kind of neighborhood where on my way to work, I might see a favorite artist walking their dog. Everything about the job felt right for me, like it was what I had prepared to do all my life.

One day, after an inspiring meeting with the design team, I returned to my desk to grab my things before going out to lunch. As I entered the big open office that I shared with the men, I heard grunting and high-pitched sighs and moans. The intimate sounds filled the space. I was disoriented and so I stopped moving. I saw all the men in the office crowded around the computer of another colleague, apparently watching a pornographic video. The man whose desk it was scrambled to pause the video, but our supervisor stopped him. Raising his voice above the sex sounds, this man, responsible for training me, said to no one in particular: “She’s a feminist, she can take it!” And then, looking directly at me: “Isn’t sex positive for you feminists? You can join us, if you want.” That offer to partake, to be “one of the guys,” unfroze me, and I ran to my desk, grabbed my coat, and left the office.

In the weeks that followed, I tried to forget the incident and to “bond” with my colleagues over lunches and happy hours, but I never quite felt comfortable at my desk again. The glossiness of my new job faded and, as much as I tried, I could not find the same joy and exuberance I’d had when I first entered the building several months before. One day, I was called into the office of my supervisor’s supervisor for a performance review. I listened as this middle-aged white man explained that while my overall performance was “fine,” I was just not “fitting in” with the workplace culture. When I asked why, the man told me: “you don’t dress professionally enough,” and when I asked for further clarification he said, “you wear hats indoors.”

After that conversation, I knew it was time for me to look for another job. Within a month, I was starting work somewhere else.

What does this story have to do with connecting with your intuition?

Well, my story highlights the kinds of experiences that we might go through, early in life, early in our careers, which can block our intuition, dull and dampen our joy and exuberance, and push us off the paths that we know in our bones are right for us. Intuition can look and feel like magic, but it is actually a heightened fusion of habit, practice, know-how, techne. Creative people develop intuition as we develop skills and gain knowledge, as we have the chance to practice something over and over, until, like good jugglers we can throw everything up in the air and catch it all at once! At that old job, I did not have the chance to develop my intuition. Instead of connecting with my inner “magic,” I became increasingly displaced, outside of myself. Instead of intuition, I experienced anxiety.

One evening after work I walked past a small shop, whose windows were full of esoteric books, strange little bottles, crystals and the like. The woman in the shop sold me my first deck of tarot cards and that night I began a journey with the tarot, which has lasted my whole working life. Where my workplace experiences had quietened my intuition, the tarot provided an experience in which the things I could not say could be seen, and where what had really happened to me could be known and acknowledged, if only to myself. Over time, I learned how to identify the things that block my intuition and remove them. I learned where to place my attention to shift the energy in a space or an interaction. I learned how to re-negotiate the unspoken agreements that demanded my silence when it would be better to speak up, and most importantly, I learned when enough is enough and when to say goodbye.

Your friend,

Adeola

P.S. Your question has inspired my upcoming course, Working Intuition, and I hope you, or any other creative leaders who would like to connect more deeply with their own intuition in their careers, will be able to join me.