Originally published by Bruce Kasanoff on LinkedIn: Pick One: Divine Inspiration or Text Message?

Imagine that you've flown to a city in another country, to meet a wealthy potential business partner. Let's call him Chris Lee. Five minutes into your dinner with Mr. Lee, you get a text message from your boss. It says: The real Chris Lee was just found murdered. The other guy is an imposter. DON'T meet him!

Your brain is spinning. Murdered? Imposter? Will he kill me? What does he want?

The one thing you don't do: ignore the message and order another glass of chardonnay.

Let's go back and examine what just happened:

1. A vitally important message just travelled through thin air to help you.

2. You take the message seriously.

3. The information may save your life.

If you're like 99.9% of the human population, you don't know how this happened. I don't mean who murdered Lee or how your boss found out. I mean how a "text message" can travel thousands of miles in the blink of an eye.

But you still believe in text messages, right?

So let me ask you this: do you believe that other valuable information can pass to you through thin air, without technology?

Before you answer, I bet you believe that scientific geniuses sometimes wake up with a new insight in their brains, or that celebrity musicians wake up with a hit melody. You might also believe that 100% of these inspirations come from their subconscious mind.

I don't.

Although I can't explain it, I believe that occasionally we can access insights in mysterious ways.

This may sound a bit "out there" to some of you, so let me get to the point. Even if you believe that other people find career-changing insights this way, you probably believe it won't happen to you. We are much quicker to believe that Albert Einstein could find divine inspiration than a marketing manager at IBM. To the degree that we believe in such inexplicable insights, we tend to think they only happen to the top 1% of the top 1% of the top 1% of humanity.

Hogwash.

I am a big fan of books, lectures, videos, schools, education, smartphones, smart cars, and smart communities. But I also believe that from time to time, everybody has access to insights that come from a source we can't fully explain.

This belief makes me curious. It makes me willing to be quiet, to occasionally turn off all my devices, and to admit that not everything in our world can be explained by something written in a book or texted to my phone.

What do you think?

Images by Josué_Menjivar/Flickr

Bruce Kasanoff helps professionals like you find the right words to advance your career. Learn more at Kasanoff.com.