Awaken Your Genius Quotes

“So be you—unapologetically and spectacularly you.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“A life lived carefully is a half-dead life Because the purpose of life isn’t to be fine It’s to be alive”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Stop trying to predict the future. Create it instead.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“When I say authentic, I mean living a life according to your own metrics, not someone else’s.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Comparison is the thief of joy.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Focus on things that age well.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Write one true sentence” was Ernest Hemingway’s remedy for writer’s block.14 It’s also the key to finding your voice. If you speak your truth—if you share what you really see, feel, and think—it will be uniquely yours.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“It’s only in the unconventional places that you’ll find the connections—and ultimately the targets—that no one else can see.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“But it’s better to be uncomfortably uncertain than to be comfortably wrong.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“If there’s any shame, it’s in not promoting something that can move others and enrich their lives.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Once you know what the principle is—once you know the why behind the tactic—you can create your own extraordinary how.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Remarkable happens when you stop copying others—especially your own past self—and start making the art that only your current self can make.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Belonging is being accepted for you. Fitting in is being accepted for being like everyone else. If I get to be me, I belong. If I have to be like you, I fit in.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Great new things are happening quietly inside of you.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Being idle isn’t the same thing as being lazy. A vacuum isn’t something to be automatically filled. As the saying goes, it’s the silence in between the notes that makes the music. It’s only by letting go that you can receive and by becoming empty that you can be filled.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Creativity isn’t produced—it’s discovered. And it happens in moments of slack, not during hard labor.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“the goal is to be more intentional and less impulsive.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“0.8 * 0.2 = 0.16. There’s now a Post-it note on my desk with that equation. It serves as a constant reminder to live deep instead of operating at a fraction of my capacity.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“There must be intention to your attention and purpose to your focus.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“The goal isn’t to reconcile the contradictions or resolve the oppositions. It’s to embrace them. It’s to live with them. It’s to realize that light can be a wave and a particle.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“It is the mark of an educated mind,” Aristotle once said, “to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“To argue, and win, is to break down the reality of the person you are arguing against. It is painful to lose your reality, so be kind, even if you are right.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Perception shapes reality. We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“When you’re not changing who you are, you’re choosing who you are.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Once you prune what’s no longer serving you—once you stand naked before the wind with layers of old skin shed—you’ll begin to see yourself.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“I am here today to cross the swamp, not to fight all the alligators.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“How would you like to spend your limited time here on Earth? Do you want to look back on your life and realize that you spent huge chunks of it keeping up with the Kardashians? Or do you want to focus on what matters and create art that you’re proud of? Remember Annie Dillard’s timeless wisdom: “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Be careful if you find yourself in a place where only acceptable truths are allowed. Taboos are a sign of insecurity. Only fragile castles need to be protected by the highest of walls. The best answers are discovered not by eliminating competing answers, but by engaging with them. And engagement happens in groups built, not on taboos and dogma, but on a foundation that celebrates diverse thinking.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Research shows that people are biased in their expression of empathy. The members of our own tribes get empathy. Others get a punch to the gut. We belittle them (I told you so). We ostracize them (If you’re not with us, you’re against us). We ridicule them (What an idiot). We see others, not as people trying to make sense of the same elephant from different angles, but as morally corrupt or unintelligent.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary