“Talent hits a target that no one else can hit, genius hits a target no one else can see.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, German philosopher
An Ivy league degree is not the secret sauce of success.
Only you as a unique human mind are the secret sauce.
Our tenacity, grit, and discipline are secret sauces.
Our critical thinking and relationship skills, our real world experiences rather than old and outdated academic textbooks are the secret sauces.
Our willingness to unlearn the obsolete and uptrend rate of new learning is the secret sauce.
If we go to the core value of each human mind, success is all about our freedom.
Having freedom means we can choose whatever we want.
We can choose our places to live, careers to pursue, even our own customers, relationships, and experiences.
Freedom is success.
Freedom gives you the power to choose who you love, and when to leave if you need to.
We want to be free in all directions, but generally many of us want to be free mainly in four areas of our life: finance, health, relationship, and happiness.
Seth Godin, the author of new book “This Is Strategy” says, “We are free to choose what we want. Every strategy requires choice. And those choices often involve saying ‘no’ to things we could do, but won’t do.”
I strongly recommend to watch the documentary “Borrowed Future” as an example to understand how our freedom is paralyzed by the dark side of the student loan industry and how the system is built to work against us to kill our financial freedom.
At the moment finance is the number barrier for freedom for the public.
Imposter syndrome kills both excellence and genius
What is the biggest inhibitor of your freedom at the moment?
There could be many inhibitors for you but one for me was imposter syndrome which I didn’t know back then, and to be honest, still I have.
I’ve a doctorate in the field of my specialization, I’ve Ivy league postdoctoral training, I’ve multiple certifications and training.
I’ve taught and supervised thousands of students up to now, I’ve worked in multiple places, I’ve run multiple marathons.
I’ve a family with a wife and three kids. I’ve done hours of exercises and meditations in one sitting but still I feel I’m not qualified enough.
What is this?
Many of my close friends say I have imposter syndrome.
When I heard this for the first time many years ago, I was like what is this?
And one of my close friends reassured me that I have it.
He said, “Imposter syndrome is not any kind of mental illness, it’s a feeling of anxiety, stress, and especially of low self-esteem.
You have so much knowledge and real world experiences inside you to share with others but still you hesitate to do that, you feel inadequate.”
I said, “really.”
Few months ago I read a very fantastic book “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks.
This book is fascinating to describe human competence and genius.
Generally we all fall in the spectrum of some kind of competence in life, the only thing is that we sometimes don’t know where we actually fall in that spectrum.
That could be a zone of incompetence, competence, excellence, and genius.
Most of us live in the zone of excellence throughout our career because we become good in one profession and don’t want to know or explore our zone of genius.
We may not be aware of this genius zone in our lifetime if we are not conscious about it.
Because we have no clue of the genius zone in itself of how it appears and shapes in our lives, we never try to know it either.
The zone of genius is the area of innate skills and capacity rather than learned skills.
I am still not one hundred percent sure about it but what research is showing is that gradually learned skill dominates our life and innate skill disappears gradually over time if we don’t use it.
Some people take learned skill as a stepping stone to nurture and flourish the innate skill.
These people become great visionary and thought leaders like Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein.
Once we know this skill and recognize it, we can definitely sharpen it immensely.
And, most importantly, what I realized is that our imposter syndrome kills both our excellence and genius zones but it kills genius zones way faster.
The amazing thing is that the area of competence gives us linear progress but the area of genius gives us exponential progress.
If you really want to go deeper, please read this Time’s article by Walter Isaacson, he is also an acclaimed biographer of Steve Jobs and Albert Einstein, and an author of the new book Elon Musk.
Feeling of laziness and uninteresting work
One of the killers of not knowing the area of genius in our lives is our own feeling rather than truth.
We always say “I am lazy” but that’s not true if we go deeper to understand it.
Most of the time we are not lazy, we are just tired for various reasons.
Mainly, we become deprived of certain things like quality sleep, body hydration, good diet, and mental-physical exercise.
This bodily imbalance is more than a lazy feeling, it is more of a body exhaustion.
We always have to accept certain things in life because we are living beings.
Eight hours of quality sleep, a well hydrated and nourished body, physical and mental freshness from daily exercise and meditation are inevitable research proven facts.
These are the secret sauces not to have any lazy feelings.
Steve Jobs was a spiritual person, spent hours on meditation; Albert Einstein used to play violin and piano.
Why do you think these people spent time on these things?
Second reason for feeling lazy is we are not interested or excited about the work that we do.
Basically our body isn’t showing any lazy symptoms but we are not doing any interesting work for the mind.
Remember, doing interesting things or interesting work is very personal.
For example, I love to read about human psychology but one of my friends loves mathematics which is very boring for me.
My daughter spends hours in her design work without getting bored.
Interest is different for different people, please know it, from where the clue of genius opens.
Let’s see one more example which is also related to my interest.
I’m always excited about reading books, if the book is interesting to me.
Mostly I’m only interested in reading books on paper, they must be physical products for me.
I don’t read books digitally because I feel lazy and distracted. Digital books don’t interest me at all.
But, I don’t read physical newspapers, I read all of them digitally.
These kinds of habits are personal, unique and make our tasks interesting and exciting.
The bottom line is: if something is interesting then only we go deeper, and in this regard everybody is different for their specific task as the interesting task.
That is the beginning of habit creation in interest in our task.
Connection of interest with physical and mental well being
Remember we have to invest in our mental and physical well being at a higher level to do interesting work for a longer period of time.
How do you do this?
It could be anything as follows which actually I follow no matter what, and I have to do it everyday in some form.
I invest 20 minutes in a small walk everyday.
Or 20 minutes of short cycling everyday.
Or every alternate day in 4 to 6 miles running.
Or everyday in 20 minutes of yoga or exercise when I start my day.
Or every night before bed for 20 minutes of meditation.
And I also invest every weekend in either a longer hot shower or oil massage or sun bath or any social activities like cooking club, book club or any activity that is my area of interest.
Don’t take anything that you don’t like or you are not interested in.
And most importantly, I also invest my time on quality foods, especially varieties of vegetables and fruits throughout the day.
Remember we must have energy and vitality to do interesting things in this wonderful world and this is only possible by being healthy.
Always evaluate the interest based on the enthusiasm level that comes while doing the work, not according to the nature of the work that you are doing which somebody assigned to you.
Will Smith, actor and producer says, “Money and success don’t change people; they merely amplify what is already there.”
In my opinion, a healthy body and interesting work amplify both excellence and genius.
Interesting work amplifies innovation
When our work is not interesting to us, it’s hard to innovate.
When we talk about innovation, we always think about only technology but innovation is not about only technology.
Innovation is a mindset.
Technology is just one piece of innovation but innovation as a whole is development of new ideas and its incorporation to the mission of the work as we move forward.
Innovation is fresh thinking and direction for the future.
Technology is just a known unknown piece of innovation.
It is known because in many cases, we are certain that technology will develop and change society, human behaviours and psychology but, as an unknown part, we never know fully how it does the work.
Innovation is empowering people and developing skills.
Developing skill is another piece of innovation which is a known known piece of innovation.
It is a known known piece because there will obviously be challenges but we also know that we can acquire and master through training and knowledge to combat these challenges.
Innovation could be in anything like process, structure, pricing, product, or services development.
Innovation is a flexibility and is not only a promise, it is also a result.
Innovation is 24/7 work, never stops and never ends even if it doesn’t produce results within a specified timeframe.
Conclusion
The world is changing faster and faster than we ever imagine, we must change with it otherwise society will change accordingly and leave us behind.
Remember, today’s world is run by storytellers and storytelling is an important skill to master.
It’s not manipulation, lying, and exaggeration, it is another kind of human innovation to influence our society.
The innovation of storytelling is to create an emotionally and rationally strong case for new ideas and thinking.
So in today’s AI driven world, the skill of storytelling is another tool in our innovation toolbox.
Remember, AI can provide information but AI cannot become emotional and empathetic, can not generate interest and curiosity in us, only you and I can.
Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of “Made to Stick” say beautifully “simple” is finding the core of the idea and for our idea to endure, we must generate interest and curiosity.”
Yam Timsina, PhD, writes primarily on health basics, scientific progress, social upliftment, and value creation.