Today, South Africa celebrates the 20th anniversary of Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela's epoch-making February 11, 1980 walk to freedom after being imprisoned for 27 years.
Admired the world over for his vision of equality, pluralism and multi-ethnicity, he is also respected and loved and will live on in history for his vision of "colour-blindedness" to create a rainbow nation, his profound forgiveness of past hurts and also for his intuition.
I have never met the man and yet as a young child I grew up in a home full of nationalists knowing him well in the land of my birth, India, where "the other South African", Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, had victoriously fought for freedom.
The point here is that ‘life purpose intuition' made both Gandhi and Mandela the visionary men they became, men with a higher purpose who improved the world with maximum impact.
Surprisingly enough, Clint Eastwood's latest film Invictus, starring Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as Francois Pienaar, the captain of the then much-hated Springboks rugby team tells the story of Mandela's triumph in intuitively using sport to unite his country at the beginning of his presidency in 1994; despite the hatred and the mistrust that was very evident between the blacks (who apparently always rooted for the opposing team) and the whites who were fearful of an uncertain future.
The film is based on John Carlin's Playing the Enemy: Nelson Mandela and the Game that Changed a Nation, and the movie's title comes from a poem by the English Victorian poet William Ernest Henley who wrote in his hospital bed after he lost his foot. The poem and the rugby match run through most of this feel-good, must-watch movie.
The last verse of the poem that Mandela lived by aptly applies to all of us:
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul
And indeed we are the masters of our fate. Unfortunately, while we have mastered the art of using five senses - smell, taste, touch, hearing and sight, we have not learned to master our sixth sense - intuition, although we are born with it.
Like Mandela or any other successful leader or businessman haven't you sometimes met someone new and you get a positive or negative vibe that rings true in the long run? Can you immediately tell whether someone is lying or telling the truth? Can you feel that a loved one is hurting, even if you don't know yet that they are in pain?
If the answer to the questions is yes then you are using your intuition, albeit unknowingly, and maybe not at the level that most highly successful people who have found their life's purpose do.
It is true that our school systems, society and our cultures have espoused that we must make decisions based solely on logic, but logic does not work without our ingrained human intuition that helps us make a real difference.
So, check out if you have what it takes. Take the quiz and get your score at: http://daily.finerminds.com/lifepurpose/how-intuitive-are-you-quiz and find out at what level you are using your intuition and how to score at being the greatest you can ever be.
I did and there's a lot of work yet in store for me.
