706: A lesson in perseverance and the power of intuition

Learn to listen to your inner voice. Whether you should follow its advice, however, is case-specific. (Erin Wildermuth)

It all started with a simple 30-day challenge: to move my body intentionally every day. No grand vision. No finish line in sight. Just a quiet promise to myself to show up, every single day, for my health and well-being. Thirty days became 100. Then 200. Before I realised it, I had reached 706 consecutive days of daily training mixed between running, strength training, yoga and hiking.

Every. Single. Day.

Until I didn’t.

It wasn’t laziness or a lack of motivation that stopped me. My young son had been hospitalised and I was travelling for work. That night, after getting home late, mentally and physically drained, I simply forgot to exercise.  It wasn’t a rebellion. It was just, well, life.

When I realised it the next morning, my heart sank. But oddly, it wasn’t shame or frustration that followed. It was something gentler: reflection.

I focused on the number 706.

For most people, 706 is just a number.

For me, it’s a marker of grit. Of grace. Of growth.

This number has intuitively been in my mind ever since I can remember. Whenever I struggled during a race or long run, I’d silently whisper to myself: “Just count to 706.” I never reached 706 - the discomfort always passed before I got there. Somehow, that number became my anchor. I didn’t choose it. It simply appeared.

People often ask about the significance of the number 706. I never had a good answer. The best one was usually: “Whatever the challenge is, it will be over before I get to 706 steps, breaths or minutes.”

Until now.

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The surprising meaning of 706

I looked up the numerological meaning of 706.

To my astonishment, it’s a number associated with inner strength, persistence and spiritual alignment. It’s about staying the course, trusting your path and building resilience through faith in yourself, even when no one is watching. 706 reflects the harmony between:

• Responsibility (7)

• Nurturing (0)

• Material grounding (6)

Discipline and grace. Perseverance and intuition.

I didn’t pick 706. But maybe, just maybe, it picked me.

Intuition: The quiet inner voice

Intuition is often described as a rapid understanding or decision-making process without conscious reasoning — a “gut feeling.” It’s part of what researchers call the adaptive unconscious: a set of mental processes shaped by evolution to rapidly interpret the world, detect patterns and help us survive.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, intuition is “the ability to understand or know something immediately, without conscious reasoning.” Most agree that intuitive responses show up as ideas or feelings that guide our thoughts and actions. But where does that come from?

It’s thought that we’re constantly, unconsciously, recognising patterns from the vast stream of sensory input we receive. What’s being recognised isn’t always clear, just the gist of something. The result? A vague perception of coherence. Not easily described. But embodied in a feeling. A nudge. A gut instinct.

The neuroscience of intuition

Intuition is intimately linked to our emotions, arising from complex neural circuits dedicated to the information processing of our feelings.

Studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have shed light on what’s happening in the brain when we make intuitive decisions. Intuition engages a network of brain regions that interpret complex emotional and sensory information. These include:

• The striatum (part of the basal ganglia): Crucial for reward-based learning and habit formation, it responds even to subliminal cues and underpins intuitive learning through subconscious pattern recognition.

• The amygdala: Tags emotional salience, especially fear, and helps enhance memory for emotionally charged events. It plays a key role in the “gut sense.”

• The insula: Integrates bodily sensations (heart rate and breathing) with emotional and environmental cues, contributing to bodily-based decision-making.

• The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC): Evaluates the emotional and reward value of decisions. It integrates signals from other parts of the brain, helping us navigate uncertainty and regulate emotional impulses.

• The premotor and parietal cortices: Engage in predictive simulations, helping us instinctively understand physical dynamics like how a stack of books might topple.

• The caudate nucleus: The brain’s intuitive “hot spot”. It becomes increasingly active with experience and helps detect relevant patterns unconsciously.

So, intuition isn’t mystical. It’s biological. Embodied. Trainable.

When should you trust your gut?

Being in tune with your intuition can be powerful. But there are certain considerations:

• Expertise matters: Intuition becomes more reliable as you gain domain-specific experience. Novices often mistake impulse for insight.

• Strong emotions can hijack intuition, especially when vmPFC regulation is compromised.

• Novel or unfamiliar situations: Analytical thinking is safer here since intuition doesn’t perform well in unknown contexts.

In short, intuition is real, but it isn’t infallible.

You can strengthen your intuition

Intuition is not just a gift; it’s a skill that can be improved. Behavioural expert David Pearson offers the SMILE technique to help distinguish true intuition from bias or impulse:

• S – Self-awareness: Know your emotional state. Stress clouds clarity - when we’re stressed or emotional, our intuition is compromised by those emotions. In that state, we shouldn’t trust what feels like intuition because what we’re doing is relying on emotional thinking, fear or paranoia.

• M – Mastery: Learning to use your intuition takes practice. Trust your intuition only in areas where you have experience. Don’t rely on your intuition if it’s the first time you are doing something or in a new situation.

• I – Impulse differentiation: Don’t confuse craving or instinct with intuitive insight. Impulses are reflexes, like irresistible cravings, but not intuition.

• L – Low probability alertness: Our brains struggle with chance so don’t mistake coincidence for intuition.

• E – Environment familiarity: Trust your gut in familiar, predictable settings, not in unknown terrain.

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What 706 taught me

Did I break the streak? Technically, yes. But more importantly, I didn’t stop.

I trained the next day. And the day after that.  The rhythm continues not because of the number, but because of what it taught me.

Life isn’t measured in perfect streaks or flawless progress. They are shaped by how we respond when the rhythm breaks. It is in the return. The recommitment. The quiet resilience of beginning again.

We often wait for big moments to reflect or restart — a Monday, a birthday, a new year. But sometimes, all we need is this moment. A single breath. A small decision to return to ourselves.

706 reminded me that perseverance and intuition are not opposites. They’re partners. One guides the heart. The other carries it forward.

So here’s to counting. To start again. To trust the path even when you don’t know where it leads.