Holy Instinct

Everything we have is a gift from Hashem Who creates, gives, takes back, and redeploys all the wealth in this world. We don’t do anything on our own. This comes straight from The Gate of Trust in Rabbi Bahya Ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart. We don’t make a living, Hashem gives it to us.

How can that be?

I work hard for my livelihood. I’ve done a lot to achieve the success I want in this world. How can you tell me that none of it is mine? How does G-d determine success in a world based on human action?

The wealth created that enables us to earn our livelihood comes from ventures, projects, and processes that originate with one big decision made by a powerful person. Most of us use charts, data, and power point presentations to guide the choices we make. We therefore assume that more powerful people have access to better information, and that makes it easier for them to come to the decisions they make.

Here’s the rub.

While every decision can be made from facts, the most important one follows a different set of rules. As decisions rise to the top, more sophisticated analysis with greater amounts of data will inevitably filter out most alternatives and whittle the final choice down to 2 or 3 options. This is why the one man at the top of the ladder makes the final verdict: According to the data, all these options are really good. Any one of them will work, and if the choice goes bad the person at the top is chided for not going with the other plan – which everybody will say “was the better option.”

At the end of the road, all the research in the world can’t tell you which path is the best to take next.

One man will make one decision that will impact millions of workers and hundreds of millions of people. The human ability to process, organize, and analyze the facts has maxed out. Now it’s time to make a choice.

He’s gotta go with his gut instincts.

As the leader, that is what he was ultimately hired to do.

He will act on a hunch, and use the massive amount of data his executives compiled for him to justify the wisdom on his “decision.”

Who gave him his gut feeling? Who puts thoughts in a man’s head? Who can create an instinct so powerful that the next step feels perfectly clear?

“A king’s heart is like rivulets of water in Hashem’s hand; wherever He wishes, He turns it.” (Proverbs 21:1)

The best salespeople on earth know the truth about decision making. We make decisions on emotion and use logic to justify it. If that is the case, then everything we have comes from a “kings instinct,” and that instinct comes from Hashem.

What would possess the son of a lawyer to drop out of Harvard University to create a business in Albuquerque, New Mexico right after his last business went bust? It takes a very powerful feeling of conviction. Where would that feeling come from?

Forty years later, that seemingly unnoticed hunch now employs over 118,000 people. It has made far more individuals wealthy through its ever increasing market value, now standing at almost half a trillion dollars, and its product has altered the lives of billions of people on earth over the last 2 generations.

The instinct which Bill Gates followed to create Microsoft contributes to the livelihood of each and every one of us. He Who gave such a powerful instinct to do something so unheard of is the Architect of that decision.

How many more like Bill Gates made earth shattering decisions based on their “instincts?” How much more do we owe to the Architect of everything?

That’s how Hashem works. Revealed and concealed all at once. Giving us everything as a free gift.