Practical Genius (3 page)

Why did it take darkness for me to see the truth about my life? Saint Paul’s similar experience notwithstanding, I can only say that there is tremendous power in the absence of the sensory influences that ordinarily dictate our lives. During my recovery, I was sleeping in the guest room, away from my husband and toddler and away from the world. In the darkness and quiet of those three days, I could see, smell, and taste the future I wanted for myself in a very precise, very detailed way.

During my first night of darkness, I saw myself as a child living my childhood memories. I remember seeing my great-grandmother in a hammock in her wooden home in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. I don’t know if it was the meds I was on, a message from God, or just a surreal journey down memory lane, but it was powerful. “If I never see clearly again, at least I have seen my memories,” I remember thinking.

On the second evening of darkness, I began to vividly see my future. I saw myself traveling and speaking with large groups of people all over the world. As if I were watching a movie, I saw this character Gina, who was happy, with long moments of quiet, living a life free of anxiety, stress, and that horrible case of shingles that I had only just recovered from right before my eye surgery.

On the third afternoon of my darkness, I listened to dozens of online talks from the influential TED Conference for inspiration, and I realized that what had happened to me was my very own Jill Bolte Taylor “stroke of genius” moment. Do you know Jill Bolte Taylor? She is a renowned brain scientist who found her life turned upside down when she suffered a debilitating stroke in 1996. Her amazing book,
My Stroke of Insight,
recounts her recovery and the insights she gained into the brain’s workings from the inside out. The talk she gave about it at the 2008 TED Conference (look it up on TED.com) was phenomenal, and as I listened to her remarkable talk and others that my husband had selected for me, I realized a change was coming. A big change. And I was beginning to see how it was going to happen.

In my dream state, I could feel myself well up with possibility, with a clear image of where I should be,
who
I should be. I knew that what I was seeing represented a radical change for me and my family. The only thing I wasn’t seeing yet was how exactly to get there from the dark place on my foldout couch.

But one word kept coming back to me over and over again: genius.

I talk a lot about “genius” in this book. What does that word really mean? Read on, because I think you’ll find that the definition isn’t exactly what you may think.

Traditionally the definition of genius has meant you were gifted with an exceptional skill or talent or a ridiculously high IQ—and if you didn’t meet one of these criteria, you were just another ordinary Joe.

Originally derived from the same Latin root as the words “gene” and “genetic,” the first definition of genius referred to a spirit given to every person at birth. From there the word “genius” came to mean a spirit in general, as in the fairy-tale “genie” or “jinni.” In 1711, Joseph Addison wrote an essay, “On Genius,” which was published in
The Spectator
and defined genius as “exceptional talent”—a definition that popularized the word. According to Addison, there were two kinds of genius—natural and learned—and the greatest of geniuses were those
born
with natural talents (compared with others, who had to develop their genius the hard way). He offered William Shakespeare as an example of a “true” genius and Aristotle as an example of someone who merely
learned
to be a genius.

Later, in 1869, Charles Darwin’s half cousin Francis Galton the founder of eugenics (meaning “well born”) wrote the first social-scientific attempt to define and explain genius. Galton’s somewhat arrogant obsession was to improve “the breed of man,” and he coined the famous phrase “nature versus nurture.”

History’s varying definitions of genius all make it sound pretty darn exclusive. If this is to be believed, only 0.1 percent of us are eligible to enjoy the benefits of genius, which means the rest of us miss out. I don’t think so!

As you read this book, you are not allowed to think of your IQ score or your SAT score or any other standardized measurement you have locked in your memory. Some people can’t remember their mother’s home phone number but can tell you on a dime what they scored on their SATs. That’s scary. We have given way too much importance to those kinds of numbers, but that’s for someone else’s book to debunk. My quest is not to bash the standardized testing industry but to reprogram you to consider a new approach to identifying and
cultivating your genius. And not the E = mc
²
kind of genius, but the kind that sparks to life of your own volition.

Many of us do not live up to our potential simply because of insufficient motivation or belief in our own powers. Others fail due to adults’ inattention to our potential in childhood. And when someone is granted the title “genius,” he is then motivated to perform at his highest ability and granted greater trust in his mastery. Think about how your life would have changed if as a child your natural genius had been acknowledged and nurtured and been the core of your personal development. Instead, traditional education prioritizes standardized tests as the measure for intelligence and aptitude, and as a result we have been holding ourselves back for centuries.

Imagine how the world would be if everyone believed they had a spark of genius within them. Individuals, communities, even whole societies would begin to make better, bolder, more confident choices rather than just accepting the status quo. Children would grow up playing with their genius while their parents nurtured it. Schools would be organized differently if we operated from the basis that every child has genius within. Businesses would be able to cultivate genius across the organization rather than for only a select few.

Everyday geniuses can be found on campuses, within corporations, and on playing fields around the world. Some are teachers, at-home moms, or executives who focus on doing things their way. Take Ursula Mejia-Melgar, who had a passion for an unusual combination: food and chemistry. Instead of ignoring either her strength as a scientist or her creative passion for food, Ursula married them with great ingenuity and energy, and the result is a kick-ass career with General Mills, a giant corporation that believes in both sides of Ursula and recently sent her on her first long-term international assignment to Switzerland to work on a innovative partnership with Nestlé.

Or look at Brian Bordainick, a twenty-five-year-old teacher in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans who began his career during the
immediate post-Katrina era and decided to set out to do the impossible: build a football sports stadium with zero funds and a fierce determination. His mission was to get kids off the streets and give them a field to play and dream in. Brian set his young mind on a “field of dreams” and succeeded in raising $2.5 million in less than two years, after most people said he would never be able to pull it off. The stadium is being built at the time of this writing.

Ursula and Brian are people who are leveraging their skills right alongside their values and passions and changing people’s minds about what is possible. They both innately operate from a genius zone and do not compromise one side of themselves for another.

Every genius thinker looks at what someone else is looking at and sees something different. When I consider the contemporary notion of genius, I see something different, too. So let’s begin by taking back the word and redefining it in a practical way. No more lofty, fancy, scientific definitions, visuals, or preconceived notions allowed. I want you to let go of that limited, flawed definition of genius and acknowledge that we possess the ability to discover what I call “practical genius.” In fact, we all have our very own innate genius, an intellectual sweet spot located somewhere between our heart and mind. As you read this book, you will discover how to find that sweet spot and maximize the returns on your most precious capital—your Practical Genius.

This book will challenge you to think, act, and measure your abilities in a different way than anyone has ever asked you to before. The changes I am suggesting will be directed toward improving yourself, your existing ideas, and how you go about sharing them with the world. When you do that, you will be able to develop better programs and products. You will be able to change companies and communities. You will be able to improve schools, have better relationships, and ultimately become an entirely transformed professional and person. Rather than continue to channel your abilities toward the narrowest of purposes, I am going to push you to expand your knowledge, passions, strengths, and creative abilities to levels you may not have known existed within yourself.

If you’ve spent too many hours wondering exactly what your life’s purpose is, please allow yourself a sigh of relief. You have finally picked up a book that will offer you a contemporary, perfectly practical, and deeply meaningful way to answer that question—and do something extraordinary about it.

I knew it was time for me to let go of the nine-to-five and create a new kind of working life—one that would let my own brand of practical genius thrive. And I had a pretty clear vision of what kind of business I wanted to create for myself. Now I needed to put this plan into action.

So on January 1, 2009—when my vision recovered and I was truly “seeing” my life for the first time in years—I quit my comfy corporate job as a global marketer to become “a free-spirited but fiercely focused mistress of my own destiny.” That’s what I wrote down on a Post-it note my first day of self-employment. But, uh—what did that really mean? How I was going to, you know, make
money
?

Corporate Gina used to sneak out of bed at 2
A.M
. to write, read, and explore. I felt I had to do that “fun” part of my life in the off-hours. But I was tired of silencing my creative curiosities, quenching them only in the dark of night. I knew I had to bring my creative spirit and my passions into the light of day. What I soon learned was that there are a lot of people like me out there: people who are not satisfied to leave a huge part of their personalities behind every day when they leave for the office. People who want to find a way to be happier in their work and their lives. I decided I could help them.

My passion was to spend my days teaching, writing, and motivating others to unleash their genius. Since I had spent fifteen years of
my professional life helping companies market and brand products, I thought, “Well, if I can help companies brand and launch products successfully—why can’t I help launch
people
?”

The human mash-up of my “softer” qualitative assets (the community organizer, leadership development trainer, and inspirational catalyst—the more emotional and passionate side of myself), combined with my “harder” quantitative assets (the sharp, strategic, highly skilled corporate Gina who had succeeded in the business world for more than a decade), resulted in something new: a coaching and training practice that would empower people to discover and market their own distinctive assets. (More on “soft assets” and “hard assets” in the next chapter.)

It was a great idea, I thought, and with my business plan in hand, I was ready to find clients and launch my new career. The world, though, just wasn’t cooperating at first. The
nerve
of the universe to launch into a full-on economic crisis just as I was having my epiphany!

Still, with great excitement (and, I’ll confess, a small loan from my mom), I set out to launch my new company—Genuine Insights, named for the moment of my own epiphany. With the recession now in full thorny bloom, I lit out on my yellow brick road, intending to pull every motivated seeker I could find into the journey with me.

They say that a recession is a great time to start a new venture, and I have to say that in my experience it’s true. It’s a fertile time for risk and exploration. Somehow, for all of the desperation in the air, there is also a great deal of creative impulse and a unique sense of promise. I actually didn’t have any trouble finding clients who were ready for the life-changing transformation I knew I could help them achieve. Finding them was the easy part.

But shortly after I began working with them, I realized the sad truth: that most of my clients had absolutely no idea who they were or what they stood for. They had come to me because they knew they were missing something, but they didn’t know what it was. How
could I help people build brands around their human assets if they had no idea who they really were?

That’s when I realized that “it” was the unique selling proposition for each of us—the place where all our contradictions converge, the precise spot where the hard and the soft assets we all possess meet and reveal the wide world of potential in each of us.