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?

“Gnothi Seauton” – Know Thyself. These words were inscribed above the entrance to the temple of Apollo at Delphi, the site of the sacred Oracle in Ancient Greece. People who visited the Oracle sought to find out what their destiny was or which course of action they should take in some particular matter. Ironically though, those who entered seeking guidance failed to truly understand the real meaning of the message right above their own heads. The message “Know Thyself” didn’t mean know for yourself – by asking someone else. It meant know of yourself as in “the answer lies within.” The best answers as to your destiny, or how to proceed, lie within you and the only way to get those answers is to know yourself by developing your own level of self-awareness. Your destiny is written by your own hand. While you may have been created with certain talents, what you do with those talents – your destiny – is up to you.

Aristotle said in the first line of the Metaphysics, “Man, by nature, desires to know.” Few would argue with this, but the key to success has a whole lot to do with what we know. The conventional belief on being successful focuses on having as much technical and factual knowledge as possible. A good lawyer must know the law, and a good scientist must know his or her science. While true that one should possess a significant amount of knowledge for the specifics of their job or work, the Genius Project highlighted self knowledge as another kind of knowledge that is even more important to success. Self knowledge involves a keen understanding of and awareness for one’s own self (e.g., talents, limitations, motivations, etc.).

When Descarte said, “I think, therefore I am”, he may have been correct, but knowing “I am” is quite a different story than knowing, and being honest to, what I am. To become self-aware you must transcend the simple awareness of “I am” to understand “what I am.” There is a whole lot that goes into what you are. You are a wonderfully unique and singular mix of physical, emotional and spiritual content. You are your emotions, your experiences, your genetics and your dreams. As a matter of fact, you are so much that a definitive understanding of exactly what you are is just impossible. The one aspect of what you are, however, that we are concerned with can be defined and known. That aspect is your normal mental habits for thinking and making decisions.

Self-awareness is the combination of these desires to know and acknowledge what you are. Yes, we need to know, and yes we need to know what we are, because this is the first evolution in your journey to becoming more authentic and eliminating The Problem from your life. Unlike the natural talent that it seeks to understand, self-awareness itself is actually an acquired skill. You can develop it, and it increases the more you practice it. This is great news because self-awareness is one of the keys to achieving the highest levels of performance. As self-awareness increases, so too do people’s levels of satisfaction. People with higher levels of self-awareness take time to first learn, and then understand, their natural talents. They recognize the situations that will make them successful, and this makes it easy for them to find ways of achieving objectives that fit their talents. They also understand their limitations and where they are not effective and this helps them understand where not to go or how not to be as well. Those who understand their natural talents are far more likely to pursue the right opportunities, in the right way, and get the results they desire.

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?

One of the things that many people tend to accept is the goal of becoming “above average.” Many people actually set a goal to be considered above average. Being above average is safer than being the best. Being the best puts the spotlight on you, requires more bravery and often more self-honesty. For some - those who don’t want to stand out, those who are insecure or doubt that they really deserve to be great - being told they are above average allows them to feel good about themselves without having to be the best. Being above average is secure, whereas being great is always more tenuous (e.g., Maybe next go round I wont be the best”). Being great requires that you challenge yourself, which is hard. Being mediocre and settling is easier.

The problem with being above average, though, is that it becomes a pair of padded handcuffs that hold you back and prevents you from becoming the genius you could be. But, just like the leech that numbs you while it sucks your blood, being above average allows you to feel just fine with yourself while the opportunity to become a genius is drained right out of you. Be just average. Be below average. At least that hurts enough that most people react to the pain and try to improve. Being above average is that dangerous middle ground that isn’t as painful as below average, but not as hard and scary as being the best either. Its siren call can actually be very strong for a lot of people, and once you’re there you can become so hypnotized that you loose all interest in anything else. Cover your ears and don’t listen to that sweet, pain-free call of mediocrity.

The most successful people among us don’t accept mediocrity. They don’t accept learned helplessness. They don’t accept that they are flawed. They refuse to accept being just another runner in the race and if they can’t be the best then they change races and find one where they can be. They seek out environments where their talents can make them the best, not just above average.

If you can’t be the best in what you do – get the hell out! Do what Seth Godin talks about in his book, “The Dip.” Seth’s advice; “Quit for all the right reasons.” Don’t waste your potential genius. Don’t settle for anything less than what you deserve. Don’t settle for being anything other than a genius at what you do.

You Get What You Accept

The second common problem we’ve witnessed among people who are inauthentic is that they settle. The geniuses we studied don’t settle. They are unreasonable in their expectations, regardless of what the culture says. They force life to work with them on their terms, not the other way around. They know what they are good at and what they like to do and they refuse to allow themselves to get into work or roles, or relationships for that matter, that force them to be unhappy being something they are not.

Just after college Jay went to work for Johnson and Johnson as a surgical sales representative. He was struggling as a sales person. It wasn’t that he wasn’t a good sales person, or that he wasn’t smart or hard working enough, but that the sales process he had been taught wasn’t a good fit for his natural drivers and talents. His motivations weren’t the same as most of the other sales reps. One day he was telling his sales manager, Rick Gilson, how unsatisfied he was with my own results. Rick told him something that day that seemed rather insignificant at the time, but later his words would take on a life of their own. Rick, in what Jay believes was his sensitivity to his own realization that perhaps he was not being authentic, said, “You get what you accept.”

When you really think about it, this disarmingly simple thought is actually one of the most powerful concepts you can own. It is the realization that you are in control; that you are the master of your own destiny, and this grand idea holds the power to set you free from any inauthenticity you have. The concept of “you get what you accept” is the great elephant, and when you truly grasp this concept you realize that whatever your condition in life, you alone are ultimately responsible for how you deal with it. And this realization should move your world because it means that you just put yourself in the driver seat.

Our legacy of dependence teaches us that in many ways we are not primarily responsible for our success. If we follow management’s rules, and do things as dictated, then we should be successful. Instead, our primary responsibility is simply to follow directions as perfectly as possible. We aren’t controlling our own path to success, just fulfilling the prescribed path chosen for us by others. Our only success is in how compliant we are.

You are the only one who really can be responsible for your success – including defining what success is to begin with. And if you are the only one responsible for that success, and you don’t
have it, then you are the only one who can do anything about it. A significant part of breaking that legacy of dependence means assuming full responsibility for your success, or lack thereof. As scary as this might seem to some, it is also incredibly liberating to realize that it really can be that simple.

We don’t live under a totalitarian regime. You are not forced into one role or one job for life. You are free to do whatever you want, wherever you want, and as organizations become enlightened and start to realize that geniuses drive their own cars, they too will start to allow you to control more of your own destiny within the company. So, if you are unhappy with where you are in life, just remember - you get what you accept.

Geniuses don’t place their success at the feet of others, they accept it themselves and they absolutely refuse to settle because they know they get what they accept and they accept only the best for themselves…and they get it.

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?”

The Genius Project: The Solution!

Over all the years that we have been professionally working to help people improve their performance through better understanding how they think and make decisions, we’ve personally worked with over 10,000 individuals. While not all of these people were being inauthentic of course, a great many were, so we had to develop a system to help them put an end to their own legacy of dependence and learn how to become authentic.

While the system has been around for some time, in honor of Jay’s new book he’s given it a brand new name. He now calls it the “5th Level Performance Program.”

The 5th Level Performance Program
Unlike the training and development programs I mentioned earlier, the 5th Level Performance Program does not start with the false assumption that you need to change who you are, because you are not flawed in the first place. The only thing this program seeks to change is how you are, because the only flaw in your life has probably been how you apply yourself.

The 5th Level Performance Program consists of three main sections or what we call Evolutions. Jay borrows this title from his days in the military. Instead of putting us through training stages or phases, our instructors in the Navy and Marines called them evolutions. Their use of the term was intended to signify the act of improving, not just changing. A stage or phase signifies a distinct time period in a sequence of events, but it doesn’t necessarily indicate progress or betterment. Evolution, on the other hand, is what happens when something passes by degrees to a different stage – in an ongoing process of improvement.

The sections of the 5th Level Performance Program are:
• Pre-evolution - creating the right conditions for your evolution
• Evolution #1 – Know Thyself (Socrates)- becoming self-aware
• Evolution #2 – Choose Thyself (Kierkegaard) - finding your authentic path
• Evolution #3 – Create Thyself (Mirandola) – becoming authentic

Our use of the term “evolutions” in this program is very much the same as Jay’s former instructor’s in that by following the lessons in his book, and by using the online 5th Level Coaching tools that you will have free access to, not only will you change; you will change for the better.