Yes, You Are a Genius
Whether You Know it Or Not
Claiming the Extraordinary Life You Were Born to Live
Susanna Lange & Otto Siegel

You Are a Natural Genius

We believe that everyone has a natural genius, and that means you too. For 27 years we have been working in Germany, in Brazil and in the U.S. and have found the same results everywhere.

Whether coaching individuals who have high IQs or average IQs, the first thing they usually say is: What does genius have to do with me? I am definitely not a genius. It doesn’t make any difference if I am a genius or not. If I were a genius, I or someone else would have seen it by now! I would be more successful or more intelligent, or I would have a higher IQ. And even if what you say was true and there is a genius hidden somewhere in me, I don’t want to know because it only comes with trouble! Some well-known geniuses are weird or work too hard or are scrutinized by the public—none of that seems attractive to me. Most of all, this is probably just another sales gig. You probably just want to sell me something that I really don’t want or need.

This is what we hear over and over again. But the truth is, everyone with whom we have worked has discovered a genius hidden in them. Once they were able to identify and own it, they could apply it intentionally and they made quantum leaps in their professional life and personal relationships.

Genius isn’t just found in the Mozarts and Einsteins of the world. It’s also in you. Albert Einstein said so himself: “There is a true genius in everyone.”

Einstein should know. He was expelled from three high schools and was working as a low-level employee in a Swiss patent office when he published his paper “The Special Theory of Relativity" in 1905. By the way, he won the Nobel Prize in 1921.

Does that mean that you’re on your way to becoming a physicist who changes the history of science? Yes, if that is your personal area of genius. What if it isn’t? Well, if you try to become the next Einstein, you’ll probably end up bored, frustrated and generally dissatisfied, just like you were at your last job.

Forget the images of what it means to be a genius. Genius is personal. Genius is a set of exceptional skills written in the DNA of every single human being. So unless you are a member of some other species, you have genius inside you too. It’s as unique and as natural as your fingerprints, the shape of your ear lobe, or any other physical feature.

Most of us have been taught that genius is only for a few, so we have been trained to overlook, ignore and even suppress our own natural genius. But every single one of us has had moments of genius in which we make something happen so easily and effortlessly, it seems almost by accident.

The Sweet Taste of Clarity

It’s time for a definition. Perhaps two, because one definition cannot contain all there is to understand when talking about genius. So let’s look at two definitions for the word “genius” and you can decide which speaks most strongly to you.

Genius: A person who performs at an unpredictably amazing level seemingly without effort.

Genius: A person who knows his or her unique set of talents, creates the perfect environment to express them and excels beyond all expectation.

Another way to understand natural genius is to ask the question, “If you were baking a Genius Cake, what would the ingredients be?”

Get out the mixing bowls of your mind and the spatulas of your synapses, because here is your recipe:

Mix in equal parts passion for life and hunger for excellence.

Pour in a fascination with a specialization in your field.

Blend in something you love working on intensely.

Add something that’s simple and obvious—to you.

Bring together one part focus and two parts persistence.

Combine curiosity, exploration and a willingness to shake things up.

Finally, stir in help from others to help realize it all.

There you have it—your recipe for a Genius Cake. Once you bake it and take a bite out of it, you’ll realize that you’ve always been waiting for this cake; it’s a taste that will change your whole life.

The Ease of Genius

There’s a sense of grace and speed about genius activities. Visualize a skier going down a beautiful, snowy slope. The skier is exerting himself, breathing hard, but is by no means laboring or struggling. He has gravity on his side. He has momentum. And before he knows it, he’s at the bottom of the run.

In this same way, you can complete tasks at a rate you may not have thought possible. You can break the rules of how to do what you’re doing, always on the side of ease, expansion and excellence. Other people can’t understand how you do what you do, and sometimes you can’t either. You’re simply operating within your genius.

So if you are not enjoying your business or job every day, this should be telling you something. It may mean you are working way under your potential—that you haven’t even touched your natural genius yet. Unfortunately, this is the status quo of today’s workforce in general. For the most part, we are working hard to do the right thing, but we don’t even want to know what we are best in or how we can contribute most!

But if genius moments are so natural, easy, elegant and enriching, why aren’t more people aware of their genius? The trouble is, most of us were never taught what genius really meant. Even worse, people have generally been steered away from their genius in one manner or another. We like the way the brilliant inventor and futurist Buckminster Fuller puts it:

All children are born geniuses; 9,999 out of 10,000 are swiftly, inadvertently de-genius-ized by grownups.

Genius is Not Hard Work

We can speak of this from personal experience. If you stop and think about it, you may very well be able to do so as well. Here’s Otto’s story in a nutshell:

“In 1977, I was teaching an introductory chemistry class to 14-year-olds in Munich, Germany. The content was new to the students and required a different way of thinking. I did my best to help the students follow. I noticed one girl in the last row by the window reading a book under her desk. To show her she’d better pay attention, I put a challenging question to the class.

She raised her hand, responded correctly and immediately returned to her reading. I asked a couple more questions. Same story: she answered and turned right back to her reading. After class, I asked her what the book was.

She was shy at first because I had caught her. But when she saw I wasn’t angry, she brightened up. It was a book by the spiritualist writer Carlos Castaneda, and she gave me a spontaneous lecture on why I should read it right away. I was in shock. She had offended my belief that learning had to be hard. She had answered tough questions without even making an effort. And I had stumbled over my own genius, which is identifying the exceptional talents of others—just four weeks into my teaching career. How long did it take me to act on this? Oh, only 18 years!

You see, I had a mortgage to pay and a wife to please. And above all, I had resistance to my own core talents. No one had ever taught me to go that deep. Things always take longer when we do them alone.

But I can tell you that in the next 17 years of teaching, I saw the same story repeated over and over again. There was something that stood out for every student—a high performer bored to tears, or acting like a clown, or developing Attention Deficit Disorder just to distract themselves. Or a low performer hiding and embarrassed about not fitting in. Each had an area of genius, but typically it was not a subject in school. School was way too limited.”

The Difference Between You and The Well-Known Geniuses

The only difference between you and the people we typically come to think of as geniuses is that they were more driven to pursue it; or they might have had more support, or they might have been just at the right spot at the right time with their unique abilities so they couldn’t help but realize them. For those well-known geniuses, expressing their genius was not a luxury. They had an intense need to satisfy this specific core set of capabilities. What about you?

Here is where you can start. Ask yourself:

· What is my unique set of genius abilities?

· Which environment brings them out?

· How and where can I intentionally leverage them?

If you don’t know the answers to these questions, your genius is still dormant.

But why would you even want to pursue your genius? Isn’t it easier to simply try to fit in and be happy within normal standards? The answer is “no.” Geniuses who don’t live it often become frustrated on one level or another. They blame their job, their parents or other circumstances for their frustration. Unless they can nourish their core talents, they will never be satisfied. Otto is a perfect example:

“Until I gave up traditional teaching for Genius Coaching, I was never really at ease. I heard that little voice constantly, “There must be something more than this.” I was full of complaints about the school, the system and the world at large. But once I came to understand my genius, my resentment of school and society evaporated.

“I started working as an educational consultant with the natural genius of smart children. Parents came with intelligent kids who couldn’t function in school. The assumption was these children were slow learners, when in fact they were too fast. They first needed to learn how to slow down before they could excel at school.

School could only provide about 10% of the stimulation these kids needed. The rest had to be addressed outside of school. So it was natural for these children not to engage fully in school activities, which they experienced as boring in the first place. They didn’t need ‘learning-aids,’ they needed to be helped to understand their own exceptional talents and then figure out a strategy, with their parents, as to how to exercise these talents.

“I worked with children of all ages, typically from 6 to 22. It was amazing to see these children turn their lives around. But an even more remarkable phenomenon emerged from this transformation. Their parents started coming to me for help too. They felt they also had exceptional talents that they never learned how to use. This was when my understanding of genius began to be clarified.

“It’s not just the kids who do brilliantly in school. And it’s not just those who do horribly. Genius is in every single person. This realization was breathtaking for me.”

Discover Your Unique Set of Genius Abilities

Genius is the expression of our unique set of exceptional abilities. The trouble is, we don’t always take the time or have the encouragement to find out what those genius abilities really are. Often, we are drawn to a particular area of work that somehow helps us bring out our genius, but unless we intentionally dial in, we remain on the periphery of our genius and never hit the bull’s-eye.

If you are one of the many who doesn’t really know your unique set of exceptional abilities, review the following list of 5 clues for natural genius. Think about what you do that fits some or all of these criteria, and you can start glimpsing what your genius might be.

5 Clues for Natural Genius

1. You do it easily

2. You feel a deep satisfaction

3. You are recognized with a natural authority

4. You dismiss acknowledgement easily because you seem to do it too effortlessly

5. You don’t understand when others have a much harder time doing the same thing

Go through all areas of your life and examine them for clues of your genius. Ask yourself: Where did the 5 clues for my natural genius come out

· When I was a small child?

· When I was at school?

· With which particular group of people?

· Under which circumstances?

· When I am doing business?

· When I am with my family and friends?

In Otto’s case, teaching allowed him to be in the neighborhood of his natural genius without actually pursuing it. To be able to go all the way with his genius, he had to risk stepping out of the school system to start his own consulting practice. Genius doesn’t fit into all the neat little categories of professions that already exist any more than it fits into the subjects taught in school. Genius is so personal that it cannot be mass-produced or satisfied in a standardized way. Genius has to make its own place in the world. That alone is enough to stop most of us in our tracks, but we still hear that inner voice insisting: “There must be something more than this.”

Here’s an example of when your inner voice is trying to be heard. Marcia* came to us thinking she needed “Frustration Management” coaching. Although she was a highly successful vice president of operations for a healthcare marketing company, Marcia was tired of the day-to-day grind of putting out fires and of giving so much to an organization she really didn’t believe in. Even though many people work for companies they don’t truly believe in, it bothered Marcia a lot, and that caught our attention.

We discovered that Marcia is a certified herbalist and a master in the healing art of Reiki. Ironically, she had always considered these talents as side interests. Without even knowing it, she had built a career in the healthcare industry bringing her close to what her genius really is—helping people reveal their self-healing powers. Now she is developing a new business based on her passion, and although it is challenging and even scary at times, she is operating according to her true genius. She is skiing downhill.

Finding Your Genius Game

Genius needs the right environment to express itself. If you play a game that is too small, your genius has no reason to show up. If you play a game that is too big, you usually freeze and your genius abilities can’t express themselves either.

Finding the right playground for your genius is essential. You can be smart, experienced and talented, but if you have a business or job that doesn’t require your smarts, experience and talents, they atrophy.

Susanna experienced this firsthand:

“My first job in corporate America was as an administrative assistant. I had had a successful career as an account manager in Germany, and I had coached children to achieve better performance levels in school. Most of those skills were not required in the administrative assistant position. In fact, my own way of thinking was considered a fault. As the assistant, I had to follow someone else’s agenda instead of my own. I had to be good at proofreading and grammar and I had to do tons of details without ever really knowing why. I did not do well in this position and for sure my genius didn’t show itself to me or to the people around me. Luckily, I was able to move on to greater playgrounds soon after that.”

A Common Ground Named Desire

While your genius is as unique as your DNA, there are traits commonly shared by all people who are manifesting their genius. Primarily, they have a bone-deep desire to challenge their exceptional abilities and develop them. This passion carries them through barriers they face and brings them in contact with others who will encourage them.

In the case of Mozart, his father supported him from the start. This enabled a much faster development of his genius. Therefore, by the age of six, Mozart was performing on the piano, and at the age of ten, he began composing. Few are so fortunate to have our genius made apparent and nurtured at such an early age.

The Payoff of Passion

Genius is hidden because most people never learn what theirs is. Instead, they perform on the periphery of their genius, but not in the core. This impacts more than just their enjoyment—it affects their earning power. Genius is often associated with sacrifice, but quite the opposite is true. It’s those who resist their genius who pay the price, working in jobs just to cover their bills, but never truly prospering.

Manifesting your genius means learning what it is, applying it in a field that matches it and benefiting from becoming an expert or specialist. In the professional market place, it’s the specialists who command the highest fees. They are also the ones who love their work. You don’t find geniuses “in action” satisfied with just paying their bills. They may enjoy their lifestyle, but they don’t live for it. Why is that? Because they are fully alive in their work and it means something to them.

So many of us sleepwalk through our professions, driven by the need for financial security or recognition, but not satisfying our core passion. Geniuses are on fire. They are positioned to be the most successful people in the world. Geniuses can measure their reward in terms of income, quality of life and personal satisfaction. It’s quite a compelling equation.

The Spark of Common Sense

When you look at it clearly, you can see that natural genius is simple. Genius doesn’t get all tied up in analysis paralysis, where you scrutinize a topic, event, emotion or person to such an extent that you become stuck. Any action or creative thought is stymied when your brain goes around in endless loops. That’s because its ability to shift from input mode (examination) into output mode (action) never happens. It’s like driving on an endless onramp but never reaching the highway.

When you hit your natural genius stride, you often bypass analysis entirely. I recently spoke to a businessman who established a restaurant franchise and is now selling them all over the country. I asked him what makes some people buy his franchise and not other franchises.

He mentioned the price and value of the offering, but then he stopped and said that many of the people who end up buying his franchise say they do so because “it just feels right” to them. This might sound reckless or irresponsible, but his franchisees are typically experienced investors. This is the entrepreneurial genius in action. Many of us get “gut feelings” about doing some sort of business, but the entrepreneur has the confidence and wisdom to act on it.

Check Your Ego at the Door

Natural Genius is actually the healthiest state for mind and body. Real genius and ego have nothing to do with each other. In fact, nothing blocks the emergence of our genius more than our own professional egos. That’s because the ego is afraid to lose what it has, no matter how meager or unsatisfying it may be. Otto can use himself as an example:

“In Germany, being a teacher is a good and well-respected profession with a great salary and guaranteed employment. So instead of moving on to Genius Coaching sooner, I struggled to be the best teacher I could be. I was never happy, but my ego was afraid of losing my status. Teaching was well accepted. I got a lot of recognition but little satisfaction, and not a Euro more for all my efforts. To give that up in order to work at something innovative and unproven was daunting. In the end, though, my natural genius urge won out.”

Ego also enters the picture when a person develops his or her specialty area to a genius level and then automatically assumes that they can perform at that level in other non-related areas as well, not recognizing the boundaries of their talents. Salvador Dali was a genius. He initiated surrealism as an entirely new style in painting. His surrealist paintings broke many existing perceptions of what painting could be about. But as a businessman, he was a mess. In fact, he almost ruined himself, thinking he was as brilliant at business as he was at painting. Fortunately for him, he married a woman who took over and saved his business affairs.

Geniuses usually don’t operate by themselves. They require the support, nurturing, and yes, the natural genius, of others. Under the old interpretation of genius, they are loners who operate in isolation, removed from a world that can’t understand them. Our culture idealizes the myth that only a few geniuses exist and these are super heroes to be put on pedestals. This ego-building myth has nothing to do with the reality of a true genius—one who exceeds commonly held standards in his or her area of expertise and who needs others supporting him or her on a daily basis. The loner geniuses are often held to be on the verge of madness. But what triggers mental disease is not genius; rather, it’s the resistance to one’s natural genius and the isolation that often accompanies it. This is why genius is truly the healthiest state for mind and body to be in. Genius is not a professional ego trip, it’s the end of the ego trip.

Mining for Genius Gold

Genius comes with responsibility and accountability—if you don’t take action you pay a price. You might get away with a mediocre life for a while, but there’s a deep unhappiness that’s always present. Even when you’re happy, you’re unhappy.

Your natural genius is not a burden; it’s your goldmine. Sometimes you have to dig deep. Usually you have to remove some rocks and earth to get to the gold. And the longer you’ve been here, the more layers there may be to remove. The point is to not focus on the worthless dirt and rock. Keep your eye out for the glint of gold. It’s in you—you just have to get clear about what you’re looking for.

Contents

Foreword
by Dave Lakhani, Author of Persuasion The Art of Getting What You Want and The Power of an Hour: Business and Life Mastery in One Hour A Week

Introduction

Chapter 1