Inform Yourself

My good friend Jay Niblick, founder of Innermetrix International, recently completed a study called The Genius Project. His study became the basis for his latest book, What’s Your Genius?

In order for anything to evolve the conditions must be right. All the potential in the world might be lying in wait inside of you, but if the conditions aren’t right than all of that potential will never be realized. You have hidden within you infinite potential, but the principle condition that must be present in order for you to realize this potential is a belief system that supports your freedom to control your own destiny, not your dependence.

Who’s In Charge
Most likely, your current belief system allows you to suffer from your own legacy of dependence. If you depend on the company, or the world, to tell you how to succeed than before you even start becoming more self-aware you need to examine your belief system about who’s in charge of your own success. The question you must ask yourself is, “who’s in charge of you?”

The first common problem with many inauthentic people is that they have a belief that the company or the outside world has more control than they do over their life. There is a term in psychology called locus of control. It speaks to a belief about whether the outcomes of our actions are contingent on what we do or on events outside our personal control. Authentic people believe that they have control over their life and destiny. They have an internal locus of control. Most inauthentic people, however, tend to have an external locus of control and so they share a common belief that they are less in control of what happens to them. The way individuals interpret such events has a profound affect on their psychological well-being. If people feel they have no control over future outcomes, they are less likely to seek solutions to their problems.

This is why it is crucial that you start to believe in your own ability to control your life, your performance and your success. You must stop depending primarily on the “one best way” according to others, and create your own best way (a “my best way”). Perhaps your best way is not very far from theirs. Perhaps your best way is just a minor tweak on their best way, but it is your tweak, not theirs, and as such it will be more effective because it factors in your self-knowledge and your own talents.

Taking charge of your success and level of authenticity doesn’t have to involve radical change or a revolution to overthrow your manager or even quitting your job necessarily. Sometimes it just means focusing more of your efforts in areas where you get in the flow, and always looking for ways to outsource any responsibilities or duties that prevent you from being in the flow. Of course, if your role never puts you in the flow than it is probably such an inauthentic role for you that you may never reach the 5th level of performance. If this is the case then your best bet may indeed be to quit, but most of the time little changes can make a huge difference. Right now we’ll talk about how to change your role without leaving it. At the end of evolution #3, if you need to change the role itself, we’ll discuss some things to help you with that too.

We all have many roles or titles in life (e.g., husband/wife, father/mother, employee, friend, etc.) but in order to really take charge of your life you need to add one more. That new title is what I call the SEO or, Self Executive Officer, which simply means that you will be the boss of your own life from now on. The exercise for this section will take you through creating a job description for your new role as SEO.

Think of a time when you knew that another route was the better way to go, but your company didn’t agree. What did you do? Can you think of a time when you didn’t become your own SEO and as a result, your success was limited? And if you had gone ahead and done what you thought should be done, and it worked, what would the benefits have been versus the fact that you didn’t follow directions? The question to ask yourself, when you contemplate being your own SEO is, “Are you your own jailor or angel?”