Tapping Your Inner Genius: How to Unleash Your Creative Mind

HJ: We have been led to believe that genius is a gift that only a few lucky souls posses — an incredible capacity of the mind for intelligence and thought.  However, the truth is that we all can tap into the realm of genius level inspiration, creativity and even thought — especially concerning those areas in which we are uniquely gifted, which again, we all posses.  While we typically interpret genius in a mathematical or artistic sense, it is not confined to these areas/fields.  The possibility for extraordinary inspiration, achievement and creativity exists in any area of our lives and in any field, hobby, passion or career.  While the outward manifestations may be different and each unique, the recipe for unleashing ones inner genius — their inner creative mind — is always the same.

Below you will find 5 steps towards accessing your genius and true creative power.  The only thing we will add to this message is that there is one fundamental trait you must posses or begin to cultivate in order to truly embrace the aforementioned qualities in their fullest sense.  This is deep self-trust.  Doubt of any kind will only impede ones genius and creative potential. The development of a profound sense of self-trust will give rise to ones intuition, which is the true source of all genius and inspiration.  Once you have established a deep, lasting connection to your intuition, you are, in every sense, unstoppable.

– Truth

You Are a Genius: 5 Steps to Creative Freedom

By Mark Matousek | Huffington Post | Mark Matousek

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You are a genius but probably don’t know it. Each of is born with a specific gift that exists nowhere else in all of creation. In ancient Rome, it was well understood that everyone had his or her own genius, a spirit whose sole purpose is to inspire our lives and guide us to our destiny. But we have forgotten this wisdom.

We’re told that genius is miraculously rare, instead — think Leonardo da Vinci or Stephen Hawking — and based on bizarrely high IQs. But genius, in truth, has more to do with desire, courage, passion and focus than it has with psychological testing. Genius informs the voice of your deepest self — the still small voice within — that guides you forward in mysterious ways having little to do with conscious will and much to do with learning to listen.

What gifts are you here to offer the world? No one else can do it for you. “There is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique,” as Martha Graham knew. “If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.”

Your genius may have nothing at all to do what we call the creative arts. There are genius nurses, genius firemen, genius parents and genius accountants. Genius relates to the how even more than to the what. When we bring light to the world — when our actions increase beauty, truth and love — we know that we’re following our genius.

I see this in students every day. They come to my course on awakening genius, longing for creative fulfillment. Though outwardly successful, well-educated, well-meaning people for the most part, they describe feeling off center when it comes to their deepest gifts. They long to bring their genius to life, they can hear the whisper but not the words. My job is to help them listen more closely and learn to respond when the message gets clear. It’s a skill I’ve learned through trial and error over 30 years of being a writer. You need nothing more than creative discontent and determination to wake yourself up from the trance of personal limitation. Here are five essential steps for awakening the genius inside you:

1. Get Quiet 
Language is a magnificent gift but can also be a great limitation. Brilliant as the thinking mind is, our intuitive, sensory, non-verbal intelligence is even more powerful. While the logical portion of our brain processes about forty bits of information per second, the nonverbal portion processes about eleven million bits per second. When it comes to creative insight and wisdom, we “know” far more than we think we do. Flashes of creativity tend to arise out of moments of stillness and silence.

2. Locate Desire 
When we get quiet, we become aware of an interior landscape suffused with potential. The lifeblood of this creative landscape is desire. Desire is the vital force that through the green fuse drives the flower. Desire carries the seeds of invention, nourishes the roots of transformation, and enables us to bring forth our unique vision. Many of us never acknowledge the full force of our own desires nor the life-changing wisdom they offer.

3. Practice Focus 
The world is full of highly-creative people filled to the brink with ideas and potential who never bring forth their genius because they don’t practice one-pointed attention. Unable to choose where to place their focus. Convinced that desire will focus itself, they sacrifice prodigious powers of choice, specificity and immersion, wandering from goal to goal and wondering why their inherent genius never quite manifests as they hope it will.

4. Accept Your Gift 
The sense of being more oneself while doing a particular thing is an indication of meeting your gift. We do not choose our genius, it chooses us. In the same way that we can’t choose whom to love, we can’t dictate our own aptitude. Impulses beyond the mind, located deep in the heart and gut, impel us toward what life wants to give us. This isn’t an effortless process. Once we discover our aptitude, it takes hard work to bring what’s inside us to fruition (just as we must work at relationships in order to practice love).

5. Be Courageous 
Fortune favors the brave, but we tend to underestimate the importance of courage to self-realization. Aptitude is just a beginning, a seed of possibility. Without the courage to nurture our gifts, and trust fully our inherent brilliance, we are unlikely to fulfill our potential. Remain loyal to your creative impulses, stand up to your inner saboteurs, risk the unknown (and possible failure), and marshal the nerve to begin again. Leading an authentic life isn’t easy. Living your genius comes at a cost. Saying yes to our deepest desires requires that we say no to others. Like every committed relationship, the marriage to genius is demanding.

It also gives your life its meaning. If you doubt this is true, give these steps a try. They’ve saved me, creatively, again and again. Not only do they help to awaken our genius. They also lead to our deepest joy. When we know our genius, we know why we’re here.

Mark Matousek is a bestselling author, teacher, and speaker whose work focuses on personal awakening and creative excellence through self-inquiry and life writing. He brings three decades of experience as a memoirist, editor, interviewer, survivor, activist, and spiritual seeker to his penetrating and thought provoking work with students. His workshops, classes, and mentoring have inspired thousands of people around the world to reach their artistic and personal goals. Join me for Awakening Genius at The Omega Institute in Rhinebeck on October 6 and The Mandala Center in Raton, New Mexico