Deep down within all of us is a fount of wisdom. This is called intuition. Listening to your intuition is a slow learnt process. It starts by recognizing that tiny inner voice or feeling that will tell you when you’ve done something you shouldn’t have. It’s an incredibly still, quiet voice and needs silence and concentration to hear it properly to begin with.

You might like to call it your conscience if you like, but deep down you know when you’ve done something bad. You know when you’ve got to apologize, make amends, put things right. You know. And I know you know. I know because we all know. There’s no getting away from it.

Once you start listening to that inner voice, or feeling the feeling, you’ll find it can help. It will become more than a mindless parrot perched on your shoulder, chanting ‘You messed up again’ after the event. The key is when you hear your intuition telling you whether something is the right thing to do or not – before you do it.

Try running stuff past your inner you before doing things and see what reaction you get. Once you get used to this, you’ll find it easier. Imagine, in any situation, that you have a small child standing at your side and you have to explain things to them. Imagine they ask questions – ‘Why are you doing that? What’s right and wrong? Should we do this?’ – and you have to answer. Only in this situation you ask the questions and you answer yourself. And you’ll find you already know everything there is to know and everything you’ll ever need to know.

Listen, and it’s all there. If you are going to trust any adviser, who will it be? It makes sense for it to be you because you have all the facts, all the experience, all the knowledge at your fingertips. No one else has. No one can get inside you and see exactly what’s going on.

Quick point of clarification here. When I say listen, I don’t mean listen to what goes on in your head. Now that really is where madness lies. No, I mean a stiller, quieter voice. For some it’s more a feeling than a voice – what we sometimes call gut instinct. And even if it is a voice, a lot of the time it doesn’t speak at all – unlike our mind which babbles on incessantly – and if it does, you can miss it in the torrent of words that our mind produces.

This isn’t about predicting what’s going to happen. You won’t discover which horse will win the 3.30 at Chepstow or who’ll score in the Cup Final. No, this is the important stuff. What we’re about to do, big decisions we have to make, why we are behaving in the way we are. You already know the answer, if you ask yourself.