“Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.”
—Steve Maraboli
There are two ways to find your genius. The first is to hope and pray for the right circumstances and opportunities and that all the stars will align in the right way at the right time. It does happen. It happened for Beethoven, Bobby Fischer, Leonardo Da Vinci, and others. The other way to find your genius is to adopt the right mind-set, do the right things, and manipulate your circumstance to align the traits you possess in such a manner that optimizes your potential.
There are no accidents in life. The universe is governed by laws, and there never has been a law of accident or coincidence. However, there is cause and effect, the law of action and reactions (Newton’s third law), or however you want to understand it. What’s important to understand is that your actions have causative effects on the world around you. Therefore, deliberate actions can have a calculated and predictive effect on your environment. If you jump out of a moving car, you will roll on the ground. If you bang your head on concrete, you’ll have a headache. I think you understand my meaning.
So the key is to manipulate your own perspectives, beliefs, and actions in such a way that elicits your desired results. This means that you become your own agent for change, regardless of what perceived obstacles you encounter. I wrote “perceived” obstacle because this is about perspective.
Very seldom will the easy road lead you where you want to go. None of us is born with the requisite tools needed to be successful in business. We develop those traits that collectively become our genius through life experience. There will always be some degree of success and failure. It depends on the hardness of your head. If you have a very hard head, expect more failures than most. If you learn and adapt quickly, you can mitigate and minimize a lot of your losses.
You also have to be willing to stand on your own at some point. There is a time for collective action, but there is a time to skin your bottom on the ground, by yourself, to learn life’s lessons.
And there’s no time like the present. The worse your circumstance, the more opportunity you have to learn. This is because there will be more obstacles and a steeper slope to climb.
DR. ERIC SNOWDEN 