Do you use intuition to guide your decisions, or are you very much a show me the evidence sort of person? Personally, I like to think that intuition is my secret advantage. I have trained it carefully and learned to listen closely when my gut feeling tells me I am right or wrong.

It is the final hurdle when I am recruiting new team members or investing in a business. It’s my guide when I feel a bit fearful on the drive home at night, and in the days when my daughters were teenagers, it was my guide for whether or not I should be worried about a party they were at.

So why is it, you may ask, that one day, while paragliding, I found myself above the mountain, at the mercy of my reserve parachute, and drifting closer to the sharp-edged rocks below, wondering and praying that I didn’t land on them. What went wrong with my intuition on that day?

That accident happened because my determination to succeed and my ego overrode the messages my intuition was shouting at me.

I wanted to outperform my previous flights. I was determined to win. Determined to fly with the big boys. So I squashed the feelings of fear and anxiety that would normally have kept me safe, and blundered into an unsafe no-fly zone.

Luckily for me, apart from rattling my confidence, I was uninjured. I lost nothing and gained a valuable life lesson: In a war between intuition and ego, never let your ego win.

This applies to business decisions, to the appeal of a sexy car that you cannot afford or accepting a date with a handsome but riske stranger.

Your intuition wants to keep you safe. Respect it. Train it and listen to its wisdom – especially when the stakes are really high!