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November 4 - November 19, 2021
The bridge to your Zone of Genius is a set of questions to ask yourself. Actually, ask doesn’t quite capture the flavor of how I want you to use the questions. I want you to wonder about them.
What do I most love to do? (I love it so much I can do it for long stretches of time without getting tired or bored.)
What work do I do that doesn’t seem like work? (I can do it all day long without ever feeling tired or bored.)
In my work, what produces the highest ratio of abundance and satisfaction to amount of time spent? (Even if I do only ten seconds or a few minutes of it, an idea or a deeper connection may spring forth that leads to huge value.)
For many years now, I’ve spent at least an hour every day meditating and letting my mind roam freely. Setting aside time to do this every day is a practical way to make good on my commitment to one of my highest-priority activities.
It takes a certain ruthlessness to set a priority and stick to it.
What is my unique ability? (There’s a special skill I’m gifted with. This unique ability, fully realized and put to work, can provide enormous benefits to me and any organization I serve.)
how to live in the Zone of Genius: get out of the box and onto the spiral.
I think of the Zone of Genius as a continuous spiral. You go higher and higher every day as you expand your capacity for more love, abundance, and success.
By contrast, I think of the lower zones as boxes. For example, your Zone of Excellence is a space in which you know how to function so well that you can attain great ...
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Navigating the upward reaches of a spiral is different from navigating around inside a box.
organize your inner operating system around what I call a Central Guiding Intention.
I expand in abundance, success, and love every day, as I inspire those around me to do the same.
As you learn to navigate the updrafts of the Genius Spiral, your flight will be smoother if you get nimble at what I call “the Enlightened No.” You produce an Enlightened No when you turn down something that doesn’t fit into your Zone of Genius.
Commitment works as a springboard to your Zone of Genius. The moment you make a sincere commitment to living in your Zone of Genius, you propel yourself in that direction.
In the Zone of Genius, you don’t care about getting approval, getting control, getting even, or any of the other get-oriented goals of the ego.
For your life to work harmoniously, you need to develop a harmonious relationship with time.
In business as well as life itself, it’s easy to get so bogged down in handling details that you don’t have time to make new creative breakthroughs.
You’re where time comes from.
As Meyer Friedman, MD, pointed out in his classic book, Type A Behavior and Your Heart, typical heart patients have a marked sense of time urgency. They’re in a race with time, and their hearts show the wear and tear of it.
Part of growing up is discarding the personas that aren’t contributing to our happiness and success in life.
Quit thinking time is “out there.” Take ownership of time—acknowledge that you are where it comes from—and it will stop owning you.
ownership. If there is any part of ourselves or our lives that we’re not fully willing to accept, we will experience stress and friction in that area. The stress will disappear the moment we accept that part and claim ownership of it.
The moment you stop complaining about time, you free up the necessary energy to mount a similar campaign on the inner plane.
One particular phrase I’d like you to eliminate is this common one: I don’t have time to do that right now.
you’re telling a polite lie to avoid saying, “I don’t want to do that right now.”
Be on the lookout constantly for complaints about time that come out of your mouth or go through your mind. As you spot them and eliminate them one by one, you will grow steadily less busy while getting a great deal more done.
A vast amount of energy can be liberated in relationships by dropping the habit of projection. As mentioned, projection occurs when you attribute to others something that’s true for you inside yourself.
Relationships—healthy ones, that is—exist only between equals.
When both people are not taking 100 percent responsibility, it is an entanglement, not a relationship.
If we always have to be right, for example, there is no room in the relationship to be happy.
Make sure you take plenty of time for yourself, in a space apart from your partner.
Put a priority on speaking the microscopic truth, especially about what is going on in your emotions.
When emotions are in the air, as they often will be in close relationships, don’t try to talk yourself or your partner out of them.
It’s the act of stifling and concealing feelings that causes problems in relationships.
Give yourself and your partner plenty of nonsexual touch.
After soaring to a new height of intense intimacy, bring yourself back to ground in a positive way.
Cultivate at least three friends with whom you can form a No-Upper-Limits conspiracy.
I also know, from painful experience, that the moment my attitude of cheerful humility slips into self-righteousness or arrogance, the universe will just as cheerfully step in with an unexpected way to make me humble again.
The universe will teach us our lessons with the tickle of a feather or the whomp of a sledgehammer, depending on how open we are to learning the particular lesson.
The Upper Limit Problem is our universal human tendency to sabotage ourselves when we have exceeded the artificial upper limit we have placed on ourselves.
The first barrier is the false belief that we are fundamentally flawed in some way.
The second barrier is the false belief that by succeeding, we are being disloyal to and leaving behind people in our past.
The third barrier is the false belief that we are a burden in the world.
The fourth barrier is the false belief that we must dim the bright lights of our brilliance so that we won’t outshine someone in our past.
