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HOW TO BECOME A GENIUS
Build AQ, Not IQ or EQ
We get transfixed on the idea that genius comes from IQ and IQ only. Yet, those who are truly genius don’t always have the highest IQ’s but they are able to do something that others can’t.
Too many people have become ingrained to think that deliberate practice and mastering a craft will be all towards becoming a genius at something. These people are likely lacking in their own AQ to realize that IQ and persistence alone aren’t enough. They certainly help, but they aren’t the key attributes.
So, what is AQ? You can learn a lot more about what AQ is and how it helps you here, but simply put, your AQ (Adaptibility Quotient) is your ability to adapt to and thrive in an environment of change.
In terms of how to become a genius, then you NEED this, almost more than IQ and EQ.
Yes, Einstein had exceptionally high IQ, and it certainly can help, but contrary to popular belief, your IQ isn’t really what will make you a true genius, at least it won’t in the near future.
Maybe we need to redefine what we mean by genius, and moving forward into our future world, there will be many AI robots capable of doing tasks that even those with the highest IQ won’t be able to do, and therefore the term genius changes somewhat, and it becomes our ability to think beyond what AI can do for us.
So, you simply have to be adaptable with a high AQ if you want to know how to be a genius today. The good news is, unlike IQ which becomes fairly fixed and crystalized with age, AQ can be developed, at any age.
It’s not just about being motivated or commited to something. This is a pretty washed-out modern viewpoint that people accept as fact because it’s regurgitated so much. That’s the problem with today’s social media fueled world, we end up taking popularity over competence, trend over seeking what is actually right for us.
All this does is add baggage to our onion, and leads to more work in peeling it off and getting to our genius core.
So, the second step to finding your genius is to start thinking differently today, about what preconceptions you have. In some ways this is an extension of Step 1’s throwing away your current baggage of thought, but in order to build up your AQ you have to adopt a different approach to how you currently look at something.
The problem with the deliberate practice approach is it itself becomes ingrained and repeated practice before long. You have to keep things changing, so the thinking that you just stick at your craft until you excel is actually quite old thinking, derived from the times not-so-long-ago where status-driven ‘orange thinking’ ruled everything (see Understanding How Spiral Dynamics Can Change Your Life to learn more).
This is not to say deliberate practice isn’t useful, it certainly is, but you need to mix it up with completely different and seemingly unrelated forms of practice, which helps you build your adaptability.
For example, instead of spending hours on hours learning to play songs on a piano you can practice closing your eyes and picking out different sounds in a park (for developing your ear for when playing piano later), or try dexterity techniques to build up the elasticity of your fingers. You don’t even have to be near a piano to learn how to improve at it.
If you think of successful athletes, races aren’t won on the track, they are won in training, and part of that training can be visualization techniques to see the race happen before it does so they can adapt to something that might change in the race and be prepared for it.
IQ again won’t help you here. You can spend hours on hours trying to teach yourself to learn in theory, but often what happens is your brain shuts down at certain points because it either lacks stimulus to keep it engaged, or you just burnout as you don’t really know how else to approach the same hurdle.
It’s the equivalent of Edison deciding to go back to the drawing board with the same idea that didn’t work and persisting without thinking differently.
What it leads to is ingrained routines but not adaptable progress. It’s like someone becoming amazing at one song on the piano, because they practiced it over and over, but then having no clue how to take that into another song or create their own. The best musicians are the creative ones who can adapt, as adaption and creativity go hand-in-hand.
We can arguably blame school for such linear ways of thinking. We are taught that hard work and routines pay off. They do in routine jobs that don’t require any flexibility, but those jobs that traditionally required IQ are only going to become less and less common as AI is built to deal with routine tasks.
Find A State Of Flow (It Doesn’t Have To Be Comfortable)
Lots of the advice you hear today is how you need to find a comfortable place in order to find your inner-zen, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that bringing out your genius works in the same way.
Actually, our best ideas come out when we have to adapt to the unknown, not settle in the comfortable familiar. We see things that we need when we need them, not when we are too comfortable.
A major problem with a lot of the advice you hear today about finding your flow is that it often comes with this assumption that you have to be comfortable whilst within it. If we look a little deeper though we find the opposite to be true.
We don’t push ourselves to a new limit if we are content with where we are. Think about exercise for a moment. You may struggle to motivate yourself to start a challenging run, but once you have done it your body feels better for it, and if you can get your mind to a point where you just keep pushing yourself despite the pain then you are in a state of flow. Flow is when the world around you disappears and your focus is purely on that moment, and that doesn’t always have to be comfortable, but it is progress.
Our comfortable modern world leads many to instant gratification (one of The 15 Greatest Social Challenges Of Our Modern Times). It’s too easy for us to lay in comfort and just buy what we need at the press of a button, with it here the next day.
Even work environments today ensure their workers are pampered to the max. This is not conductive to pushing ourselves to improvement, as it’s too easy to stay within the confines of comfort. When you are brought up in this environment then it’s no wonder you become prone to seeking instant gratification.
Flow is not found within this area though. It is found through delayed gratification. It’s where the resulting experiences of pushing ourselves past our limits give us a sense of accomplishment.
It can feel even better after we achieve something we’ve earned rather than with instant gratification, but because the journey to finding it is generally harder then we often simply give up before the reward is gained, and only remember the pain of trying but failing.
It becomes far easier to seek instant gratification, but we simply don’t grow from something that is so easy to obtain.
It’s this modern tidbit obsession that has led to the notion that things like finding our inner creative genius are as simple as reading an article and then it’s done. It’s why you find people scrolling for hours for information but spending very little time on the process of implementing it. Today’s world is too busy with all the information to put it to good use and therefore delayed gratification isn’t sought enough.
Patience is a virtue but a virtue than isn’t patient these days.
So, this explains why people might think they are genius when they aren’t, or why they may band the word around like hot cakes labeling everything as genius from a better than average song to a technical assistant working at Apple.
So, how do you bring out your creative flow?
You can start by getting yourself to resist instant gratification, and to keep going at something when it starts getting hard. It’s like training a muscle, your most effective gains are the last two reps when the strain is there.
However, it’s not just about working hard. The reason you need to learn to adapt to different environments and situations first is because you will ultimately be seeking your comfort zone as soon as something gets hard, so you need to adapt your mind against quitting at this point.
This isn’t to say you have to always be uncomfortable in order to find your flow. There are also some useful methods that you can utilize in bringing out your flow easier, so long as you still persist when the hard part, and real growth, occurs.
Envision A Different Future
Tomorrows world is a very different one to the one we know today.
As technology as developed over the past century we have seen monumental shifts in how we interact and live, and this is only going to continue at a faster rate into the future.
Therefore, learning to envision the future is a skill which adaptable people possess and which puts them in an advantageous position.
If you consider the great visionaries of our time like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk, you might think they are one-off geniuses who can see things other can’t, and while they may have indeed been fortunate to help an ideal blend of surroundings in their upbringing to bring out that creative vision (or more to the point, not have it suppressed), they certainly aren’t the only people who can envision a different, and better, future world.
So, why else should you try to envision tomorrows changing world?
When you attempt to create something that doesn’t exist yet you give birth to the opportunity for your mind to create beyond what it already knows.
This is effective learning.
Too often we seek to learn from history or facts that have been and gone. This certainly is useful in formulating knowledge that teaches us not to run across a road without looking for cars etc. Experience does save our life, but it also can stop us from visualizing a better one.
Humans are curious creatures, but also creatures of comfort. It’s that battle between the two that stops some very smart people from realizing their genius potential.
Society prefers worker bees. It prefers stability over the unknown. It merits systematic doers and followers over rebels with ideas. So, it doesn’t surprise that comfort tends to win over curiosity, or indeed that popularity (the ability to fit in to a social structure) triumphs over competence in today’s world.
However, tomorrows world is different, and it’s a wonderful opportunity for those who merit curiosity over comfort. The popularity era of today (where we think life is about obtaining status, ease and even virtue signaling) will hit a point where it’s not enough to just be perceived as being popular, and instead the ability to learn and adapt quickly to changing conditions will become the key skill that is most desired.
It already is fast becoming a key sought after skill in the workplace, but there are far too many people locked up in thinking they have to build their IQ (or EQ these days) and just show how popular or relevant they are, rather than their ability to truly solve problems. It leads to a wealth of protest marchers who then have little idea what to do next.
The world needs more adaptable people but in order to bring that wave about we need to first learn to drop our egos that bury us in the notion that all that matters in life is the notion of becoming well known, respected due to status, or safe.
When we consider what is needed to actually learn and adapt to something new, it’s our curiosity to consistently improve that prevails, and not our platform that we hide behind.
The thing is, many of us have the ability within us to think differently and to find our inner genius. We just become trapped to today’s popularity first thinking. Move beyond that and we are free to expand our minds to new horizons. (It’s why today’s celebrity culture is hindering humanity, not helping it).
Learning how to become creative and innovative in our thinking is part of Richly’s ‘The Creative Eye’ and ‘The Future Us’ training programs, but getting into a habit of thinking differently, nurturing curiosity, and seeking to solve problems and add value are good starting points.
When we try to envision a different future we are building up our highest level of thinking, our ability to create something new, and this helps accelerate learning as we don’t just copy what is already common knowledge, we seek beyond this and focus on learning about what is to emerge.
It’s being ahead of the game. It really is a game changer.
Simple Ways To Start Thinking Creatively & Originally
Here are 5 effective habits that help bring out our creative and innovative thinking potential each day.
Give Yourself Whitespace
One of the best things you can do each day to bring out your creative juices and make sense out of confusion is to simply take a shower. Why? A shower provides the perfect environment for not only cleansing off daily baggage but also to also ideas and thoughts to collectively group and make sense out of each other, which is whitespacing.
The result is often you have even more ideas after you’ve allowed you head to drift off in the shower. It’s a bit like meditation but focuses more of active accumulation and formation of ideas, which is a geniuses best friend.
Pick Up A Creative Hobby
Creativity seems to come in two forms. Artistic creativity and creative ingenuity. Whilst most geniouses possess the latter (or both), artistic creativity is also important.
When we are expressing ourselves creatively we release endorphins that make us feel good and we activate our potential to be productive rather than passive. This just might spark your ability to find your inner genius.
Become A Problem-Solving Genius Everyday
A genius is undoubtedly a problem solver at heart. If they didn’t seek out problems to solve then they would just be content with the way things are and wouldn’t fuel their minds to think of creative solutions.
Other than being adaptable this is arguably the most important trait of a true genius. They spot problems as opportunities, and even if they aren’t entrepreneurial, they see problems as an excuse for their curiosity to go into overdrive to figure out why something works.
Sometimes this can be from reading and researching, but a real genius takes learning to a new level by creating their own solutions to problems.
It’s a great technique to get you into the flow of thinking deeper.
To become a problem solving genius, you have to look around for problems to solve. What can you see around your current environment? What product, service, or interaction could be improved and how?
For those really wanting to get to grips with this, as many companies need to these days, and even more so in the future, then you can join ‘The Future Us’ training program.
Change Again (& How To Become A Genius Overnight)
We should know by now that being a genius isn’t something you are just born with, but something which can be refined, but to do so you have to keep your mind sharp and keep adapting to new and emerging ideas.
No genius just did the same as everybody else, yet most people feel the need to copy and gain validation from everybody else.
That’s really what separates a genius and someone who isn’t there yet. They simply think for themselves and allow themselves to explore their world between their ears. Others may read something like this and want it to be backed up by evidence or quotes and so forth, but all that does is reaffirm the follower mentality.
Of course, we can all learn from each other, and inspire each other, but to truly be a genius you really have to start thinking for yourself.
The moment you fall into a pattern of passive thinking the less you have the ability to think originally. Therefore, the final step creates a loop back to the first step.
We have to challenge our thinking and bias again. Once we become comfortable in something that was originally a challenge it no longer promotes original thinking. Instead, we fall into habitual patterns and autopilot mode.
So we have to ensure rotten layers aren’t building again and to peel them off when we can. When in the habit of change then we can enter our flow states much easier without restriction or doubt, and this gives us more time in the kind of state that starts building more genius and original thoughts.
But what about becoming a genius tomorrow?
Well, of course, it’s not so easy to change your habits so suddenly, but the moment you choose to actively change the way to go about things and become actively involved in the decisions you make then you already start the change.
Daily productive activities such as meditating or drawing can help bring your mind to more creative states, but to bring yourself to genius levels you have to really stretch your thinking beyond what you are comfortable with and beyond what is conventionally already known, so adopting the steps above consistently help bring your mind to the level of consciousness that helps you find your inner genius.
Admittedly, it might not be by tomorrow, but if you adopt the mindset that you CAN be genius each day then tomorrow will come sooner than you think.
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