Inform Yourself

Now that you have worked your way through developing your definition of Your Blissful Life and discovering Your Genius and the roals you need to be in so you are most authentic and producing at your highest levels ever, the logical question that follows is “So, how do I get there?”

The first step in getting there is taking responsibility for your own success! No one is going to grab and lead you by the hand and make it happen for you. YOU must make it happen for you! You must take responsibility for your transition to authenticity and your success.

In order to make your transition a reality, the vast majority of individuals will need assistance. They will require someone to hold them accountable for achieving their success. They need someone to hold their feet to the fire. They need someone to tell them what they need to hear, NOT what they want to hear! Most individuals are unable to hold themselves accountable for their own transition. It is hard work and requires much reflection and honesty with one’s self. The majority of the population will not hold themselves accountable but rather let themselves off the hook. This reason is to do so is human nature. Change is hard! Our self-talk (that little voice in the back of your head) wants to keep us safe and secure at all times. Yet in order to get what you want, you must get outside of your comfort zone. When we get outside our comfort zone we learn and grow.

The person whom you select to assist you in holding you accountable goes by many names Accountability Partner, Coach, Mentor, etc. Although the names may be familiar to you, the roles for each are vastly different. Here is a simple definition of each:

1. Accountability Partner: An individual with whom you share your prioritized list of actions to be taken who will hold you accountable for completing each action item.

2. Coach: An individual with specific training whom you share your prioritized list of actions to be taken who will hold you accountable but can also assist you in discovering;
a. other actions that may need to be taken
b. the strategies you must employ in order to overcome obstacles
c. teach you new strategies where necessary depending on their
training and expertise

3. Mentor: An individual with whom you share your actions to be taken however this individual has already been where you want to go. They act as your guide and lead you as they walk in front of you through the process or processes they utilized in order to achieve their success. They have been where you want to go and assist you in avoiding miss steps along the way.

Note that differential between the three different types of individuals you can choose to assist you in your transition. Which one is the right one for you? Each type of individual has specific advantages and disadvantages. Be honest with yourself. No one knows you better than you!

Be open, be honest, and take responsibility for your accountability so you achieve your success! You determine your success or not!

To date we have focused more on what individuals need to do in order to achieve higher levels of performance. While we will re-visit this from time to time however we are now going to start to focus on what organizations need to do to attract, develop, and support its greatest asset in performing at a higher level so the organization performs at a higher level.

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? I have worked with Jay for many years assisting organizations and individuals achieve a higher level of performance.

When Jay started his own company his father gave him a card with a simple message scribbled on it. It was a rather famous quote by Henry David Thoreau that reads, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.” He still has this card in his desk and it does inspire him to continue to drive towards his dreams, not just settle for what he gets. His hope is that in these pages you’ve taken a journey. I hope that you have evolved and that you’ve re-learned something about yourself that has always been there and discovered the self-respect and courage to admire and respect that Genius. Finally, it is my sincerest hope that you now know who you are and what unique and great potential you possess, and that you will use this knowledge to confidently head towards the direction of your dreams.

To that end, we’ll leave you with one last suggestion. We’ll keep this as simple as possible:

• Just do what is you and don’t do what isn’t you
• Just follow your quiet path and don’t blindly follow the path of others
• Just do what comes naturally to you and refuse to do what doesn’t
• Just accept the best for yourself – never settle

Originally this conclusion was five pages long. In it Jay summarized pretty much everything we’ve talked about from the first post, trying to create a nice simple flow from beginning to end, but when he looked at it he decided what was really needed, what he thought was the ultimate benefit of any conclusion, was a simplified message that was so salient and cutting that you would be able to state it in a single sentence. He decided that to best serve its purpose, the conclusion had to be something simple that, like the natural talents this book is about, would allow you to benefit from it almost effortlessly.

After reading through the entire work, that message jumped out at him. Simply put, to conclude, the single message you the reader should take away from these posts is:

Just Do You!

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? I have worked with Jay for many years assisting organizations and individuals achieve a higher level of performance

Role Flexibility

When we start talking about making changes to your role, this assumes you have a certain amount of flexibility in your role. If you work for someone else, or have a job in a company where your role is not completely your own to modify and change as you see fit, you need to achieve some level of role flexibility. Role flexibility is simply the level of ability you have for changing your role, what responsibilities you have, the tasks and duties that you are expected to perform. Entrepreneurs have high levels of role flexibility, and the higher up you get in management the more flexible your role typically becomes as well. Even if you don’t have as much flexibility in your role as you might like, there are things you can do to change your roles to make them more authentic.

If you don’t have much role flexibility, and you can’t make much change to your role, one of the best ways to convince your manager or organization that doing so would be in their best interests as well is to share a copy of Jay’s book (What’s Your Genius) with them. It’s imperative that you get some flexibility in your role because unless you are already in the most authentic role possible, if you can’t remove responsibilities that rely on your non-talents you wont reach higher levels of performance and definitely won’t reach the 5th level.

Of course, as Michael Lorelli said earlier, it really is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, so if you need to move some things around, lean on someone else, swap tasks (where someone else picks up some aspect of your work and you help them out with things they aren’t as good at) do it! If you don’t think your company will let you modify your role, don’t ask – just give it a try. Why are we suggesting you do something without permission? Because you are your own SEO! You are the one responsible for your success – no one else. Of course if you have flexibility use it, but if something in your role depends on one of your non-talents, and you can’t get “permission” to offload that responsibility somehow, it is better to offload it without permission and improve your performance than continue to depend on it and give up performance. Trust me, if you take initiative and figure out a better way to get results, and when you deliver those results, any problem management would have with how you did it shouldn’t be an issue. If it is, than it may be time to ask yourself if the role is the right one for you.

Remember, geniuses refuse to settle, and everyone Jay interviewed agreed that sometimes you just have to leave a role if it is too far from what you need it to be. Michael Lorelli represents these geniuses well when he states, “If your role is just too inauthentic you either have to suffer through or change roles because you can’t change your DNA.”

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? I have worked with Jay for many years assisting organizations and individuals achieve a higher level of performance

Just Do the Math

To reach the point where you are truly authentic, where you fill a roal, you have to modify your existing role. You do this by stripping away, slowly, your dependence on non-talents one at a time, and increasing your dependence on your talents, one at a time. It’s really as simple as addition and subtraction. Add dependence on one talent – subtract dependence on one non-talent. Your journey to authenticity, and the 5th level of performance, is a matter of adding and subtracting, adding and subtracting, until you are sufficiently authentic and there are no more talents to become dependent on or no non-talents to stop depending on. I guess you could argue that the formula for becoming an authentic genius would be:

((+1)(-1))∞ = 5th level performance

• Add one talent
• Subtract one non-talent
• Repeat

We talked about shedding responsibilities or tasks from your role if they don’t rely on your talents, but sometimes you might have to add new responsibilities or duties that do rely on your talents. If it possible that your role was created without considering your natural talents and non-talents, it is just as likely that it doesn’t allow you to maximize all of your talents as it is that it expects you to rely on your non-talents. These new duties or responsibilities might need to be created and this is one of the ways in which you can create a more authentic role for yourself. The same three C’s of becoming authentic apply in this aspect as well. Through complimentary collaborations, being the one who a responsibility is delegated to or changing the way the role is done, you can add new opportunities for you to be a genius too.

~ Starting now, set to making these changes in your current roles ~

Do whatever you can to shed your reliability on that first non-talent you just wrote down above (your minimizer), and do whatever it takes to increase how much you rely on that one talent you just selected (your maximizer). I say “first” non-talent and talent because once you manage to add and subtract to your current role, your task will be to return to your report and select another talent and non-talent to repeat the process with.

As I said, it is actually that simple. At least the objective is. I wish I could help you specifically with what actual changes to make, and how to shed reliance on non-talents and add reliance on your talents, but the specifics of your job will dictate how you do that. In a blog or book form, unfortunately, there is no way I can hold all the information I need to suggest how you do that, but with what you’ve learned so far you should have everything you need to determine that for yourself.

While a blog or book won’t be able to interact with you enough to help you with some of the specifics of changing your life to become more authentic, we have created some programs where you can get that level of individualized, interactive help. Check out the additional resources page at http://www.whatsyourgenius.com for links to where you can get this level of personal help.

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? I have worked with Jay for many years assisting organizations and individuals achieve a higher level of performance.

Unleashing Your Genius

“Deep within man dwell those slumbering powers, powers that would astonish him, that he never dreamed of possessing; forces that would revolutionize his life if aroused and put into action.”~ Orison Swett Marden

So, how do you jump? How do you take the work you’ve done so far in these posts to change your perspective on success and your role in it, and actually pull the trigger? It is a surprisingly simple process actually. It’s simple because you have already done the bulk of the work, and it’s simple because when you align your job with your talents better your performance will increase almost by itself. It does this because these are your natural talents. You don’t have to work as hard to be better when you rely on what your brain already does well. This is what we have been talking about all along.

It came to you with little to no effort because that’s how your subconscious mind works. Before any change can take place in the world, it has to take place in your mind, and hopefully by now you have experienced a change in how you think about yourself, your value, your talents, your path and your success/happiness. Taking that first step in the real world involves using the exercises you have already completed as fuel for the practical steps you are about to start taking. You will need to have your Genius profile (you should have this if you worked through the previous posts. If not, get this at http://www.whatsyourgenius.com) handy for this next step.

To start unleashing your genius I want you to look at pages six & seven in your Genius profile. There you will find the lists of “strength areas” and “specific strengths or talents.” In my prior posts I had you circle those talents that you were dependent on in your current role. Pick just one of the talents that you did not circle and this will be the one you will work to maximize your dependence on first. On the same pages you will see “weakness areas” and “specific weaknesses or non-talents.” I also had you circle those non-talents or weaknesses, which you were dependent on. I want you to select just one of those that you did circle, as this will become the first non-talent you will work equally as hard to minimize your dependence on. I recommend you select these talents and non-talents based on which ones are most relevant to the roles you fill right now. Go ahead and look at your Genius profile and select these items right now (i.e., one talent and one non-talent), and write them down in the space provided below.

Write the title of those two items down in the appropriate spaces below, then add a definition for each in your own words.

My Maximizer (Talent):

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

My Minimizer (Non-talent):
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________