The business case for your intuition.
Your right answer lives between your spreadsheet and your gut.
Many falls ago, I was sitting outside a coffee shop in Greenwich Village.
The air was crisp. The leaves were falling. I was drinking a cold brew.
This is not, in fact, a scene from ‘When Harry Met Sally,’ but I remember every detail vividly because:
I was being hard-sold to accept my full-time consulting offer.
My coffee companion was enthusiastically touting the benefits of accepting:
Growth! Mentorship! Max optionality! Pay down my loans!
Every point she made set off an equal and opposite reaction in my body.
My shoulders were at my ears, the knot in my stomach grew into a boulder, and I could barely think as my body screamed “no.”
And a few days later, I signed anyway.
Which kicked off almost a decade of ignoring my intuition.
Turns out that was only a fast track to burn out, the wrong career path and relationship, which took years to unwind. Whoops.
But that’s why I feel so passionately about what we’re going to dive into over the next few weeks:
Why using your intuition is the key to creating a life that feels fulfilling and deeply true to you
How to actually start tapping into your intuition and building your intuitive muscles, and
How a client used her intuition to shape the most aligned and fulfilling chapter of her life
If you’re reading this, you might be like some of my clients who (when we start working together) believe deeply in their pros and cons lists and spreadsheets.
When you need to make a decision, you consult trusted advisors, model out several scenarios, do extensive research and pick the choice the make most sense.
You’ve made good decisions, but the life you’ve constructed still feels just a little (or a lot) “off.” You’e open to trying something different, but going all in on your intuition feels risk-y and unnerving.
Or perhaps, you want to use your intuition more. You get the value. You’ve been inspired by others hyping the magic of it. But, how the heck do you actually hear your intuition?!?
You try to get quiet and hear…nothing. Or loud chatter pointing you in ten possible different directions.
Either way, you’re in the right place.
Let’s start with what it looks like to ignore your intuition, and what it can cost financially, emotionally, physically and time-wise (not to be too dramatic!).
And, why listening to your intuition is a strategic way to super-speed your alignment.
I grew up deeply intuitive.
I decided on a whim that I wanted to go college in DC when I was 13. Fast forward five years and I was at freshman orientation a few blocks from the White House.
In my 20s, I felt the nudge to live in South Africa, and wound up on a plane destined for Cape Town (twice).
I felt a ping, and then I acted. It was simple.
My intuition led me to all the right people and places, and I trusted my intuition.
Until I started to get older and all of a sudden, I started to tune into more and more of what my life “should” look like. I also spent several years of my life - in business school and as a consultant - learning how to make “strategic” decisions grounded in rigorous analysis and decision criteria.
The “shoulds” started to get louder and louder, drowning out the soft pings of my intuition. And following my head instead of my heart, I got off track - personally and professionally.
Here are the quick hits:
Scene 1: The shiny path I rationalized
Back to that coffee shop in Greenwich Village…the prestige, pay and optionality of the consulting offer won out over my gut. I accepted the offer, despite every cell in my body telling me not to.
And you know, I did get all those things. I grew more in those two years than at any other point in my life, got excellent training, made a lot of money.
But I also worked constantly. Wasn’t fully present at family milestones (my grandmother’s 90th birthday!).
By the end of my stint, I was only fueled by caffeine and adrenaline. I felt both a deep-full body exhaustion and constantly jittery.
Scene 2: The rose-colored off-ramp
Fast forward, and two years in, I was in my dark office at 8:45pm on a Tuesday hovering over another offer letter - this time with a more values-aligned consulting firm.
This is what I had written my business school essay about. This was the dream!
Yet, my body felt nothing. Numb. No ping of excitement, no warmth, no inner “yes.” I should have clocked that absence as an alarm bell, but I signed anyway.
Well, the joke was on me. I had been so desperate to leave that I took their assurances about work-life balance at face value. And while I wasn’t on a plane every week, I was now working all-day Sundays.
The burnout continued, and I felt farther and farther from myself.
Scene 3: The relationship redo:
A few years on, my long-term live-in partner and I were on a break, taking time to see if we wanted to recommit to the relationship. Deep into consulting, I had gotten so good at suppressing my emotions, I had no idea what I actually felt about the relationship.
I hired a therapist to help me sort through it. She advised me to recommit. I still couldn’t tune into a single thing I felt, so I shrugged and went for it — essentially outsourcing the decision to someone else.
Six months later, we broke up for good after having moved to a new city together and deep in the throes of the pandemic.
I’ll spare you the details, but it was a lot more complicated to untangle our lives than if I had had the emotional wherewithal to call it a few months earlier.
I share all this because I have a hunch that you can relate — that you’ve made one or two big decisions yourself, based on your mind’s keen analysis instead of trusting your inner knowing.
Perhaps you couldn’t get a signal from your body and so went with what seemed right. Or, you felt that full body “no” and heard yourself saying “yes” anyways.
Or, perhaps you feel the friction in your body right now, thinking about how your life is constructed vs. what you deeply crave.
If this is you, don’t sweat it! You’re in good company, and in the right place.
While I hope your ‘head-over-heart’ decisions haven’t been as thorny as mine, you know they can be messy and time-intensive to untangle and reset from.
Let’s get into the business case for using your intuition.
So we talked about the cost of ignoring your intuition, but what about the upside?
Your intuition is your secret decision-making super power, that will slowly but surely guide you towards shaping a career and life that feels deeply true to you.
The upside is infinite!
That may sound dramatic (and tbh, I’m struggling for the right word to describe this), but your intuition is a compass you already have inside of you that will guide you towards the right answer.
It takes intention and practice to strengthen (which we’ll dive deeep into next week), but I hope this gives you a sense of relief and ease. You don’t have to analyze your way to the right answer, you already know the right answer.
Don’t get me wrong, you should do your analysis with your characteristic depth and rigor — write the pros and cons list, model scenarios, get others’ inputs.
Every piece of data you collect is more for your intuition to respond to.
But as I tell my clients:
The right answer lives between your spreadsheet and your intuition.
How to work with me
If you want help practicing this in real time: that’s exactly what we do inside Ambition Reimagined. This is my flagship coaching program where you’ll build the strategy and the self-trust to choose your next chapter with confidence.
And when you have both working in concert, that’s your sure path to alignment.
Specifically, your intuition is your career strategy super-power that will:
→ Sense red flags before you can spot them. You might not have the full story yet, but your body often registers tension or unease before your brain catches up. That slight jaw clenching in an interview, the drained feeling after meeting a future boss, or the discomfort you brush off as “nerves” can actually be your inner radar signaling misalignment.
→ Tell you when it’s time to leave, even when your mind wants to “make it work.” On paper, your job is fine - steady paycheck, smart colleagues, decent benefits. But if you’re consistently feeling heavy, exhausted, or dreading Mondays, that’s your intuition reminding you it’s not sustainable, no matter how practical it seems to stay.
→ Nudge you toward what you want, not what you “should.” Excitement is data. If you feel a spark of energy or sustained curiosity - whether it’s around a new industry, project, or even a random conversation - it’s a ping worth following. It might not be conventional, put that doesn’t mean it’s not right for you.
→ Push you to leap—even when it doesn’t make sense on paper. Often the next right step doesn’t come with guarantees: starting your own thing, pivoting industries, moving to a new city. Your intuition can’t hand you a spreadsheet with a proven ROI, but it will give you a grounded, steady sense of “yes” that cuts through fear and doubt.
→ Cut through analysis paralysis when the options all look the same. You can model, spreadsheet, and overthink forever, but eventually the options blur together. Intuition helps you distinguish between choices that are merely “fine” and the one that feels energizing, spacious, or expansive in your body.
→ Reveal the pace that’s truly right for you—and whether it’s time to accelerate or decelerate. Sometimes intuition whispers that it’s your season to sprint: to go after the promotion, launch the business, make the leap. Other times, it urges you to slow down and pace yourself so you can regroup - which is often the braver choice for the ambitious women in this community!
Here’s what I want you to take away from today’s note:
Write your pros and cons list. Model out every single scenario. Do your analysis.
But the right answer isn’t on a tab in your spreadsheet. And it’s not a random ping or strike of inspiration you’ll get on a walk.
It’s your spreadsheet and intuition working together.
So start making decisions with your head and your heart and you’ll create the life and career you want (and is deeply true to you!).
If you want help practicing this in real time: that’s exactly what we do inside Ambition Reimagined. This is my flagship coaching program where you’ll build the strategy and the self-trust to choose your next chapter with confidence.
I have a few October spots open, so I invite you to learn more and apply[here]. I’d love to see if it’s a fit, so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start listening.
P.S., Tune in next week! I’m going to share my exact playbook on how to actually 𝘩𝘦𝘢𝘳 your intuition — it’s going to be a masterclass in how to strengthen your intuitive muscles, so you can find that sweet spot between your spreadsheet and gut.
Yes! This really resonated. Majo Molfino talks about the power of intuition in a way that was very helpful in her book Break the Good Girl Myth.
I loved this post, Cydnee. Thank you for your vulnerability and honesty. Intuition is so key in our decision making, and as you framed so well, really hard to follow! I still feel the tension all the time.