What He Didn’t Find

Before we talk about what my good friend Mr. Jay Niblick did find in the Genius Project, let’s look at what he did not find because it’s actually quite important as well.

After crunching all of that data, and conducting all of those interviews, what he did not find was a single attribute, or natural talent, that showed up as being more responsible for success than any other, at least not on a universal scale. It turns out that being better at seeing the big-picture (the natural talent known as Conceptual Thinking) is not more likely to make everyone successful than being better at seeing the small picture (the natural talent for Attention to Detail). Neither does being better at understanding others (Empathy) have any greater impact on success across the board than does being great at doing what you are told to do (Following Directions).

Sure, in some roles a specific set of attributes may be more critical to success than others. We see this all the time in the job benchmarking work we do with our corporate clients. For example, possessing the natural talents for understanding and persuading others is crucial in most sales roles, but when you look at non-sales roles those talents may have little impact on success. Yes, some natural talents may indeed be vital in certain roles, perhaps even lots of roles - but not all roles.

While finding out which talents play an important part in any single role is beneficial, that’s not what the Genius Project was designed to do. The Genius Project wasn’t meant to understand what talents might make someone successful in any single role. The question he wanted to answer was, “could he find natural talents that are a common denominator among all successful people, in all roles, industries, markets, levels or locations?” In order to answer this question he was looking for natural talents that showed a high correlation with success in all the roles andall the successful people we studied. And guess what…he didn’t find any.

That’s right. He failed to find any single natural talent that was the key differentiator between success and failure in all cases. This is great news, however, because if this was the case, and he did find talents that must be present in order to succeed, and you happened to not possess such talents, you would pretty much be out of luck. If he had found certain talents as mandatory for all success then only people with those certain talents would be able to achieve the 5th level of performance and become geniuses at what they do. But thankfully that’s not what he found.

What He Did Find

When I say that he didn’t find any natural talents, however, that doesn’t mean he didn’t find anything at all that correlated with the most successful people, just no natural talents. What he did find in the Genius Project were two acquired talents, and these two acquired talents were present in all of the successful people, and quite absent in those who suffered from The Problem, individuals who struggle with feelings of frustration, lack of fulfillment and dissatisfaction with their personal performance and success.

These two acquired talents are called self-awareness and authenticity. We’ll get into the differences between natural and acquired talents in my next article, but suffice it to say that natural talents come from the way you think and make decisions and acquired talents are the knowledge, experience and skill that you develop throughout your life. If natural talents are engrained in you early on in life, acquired talents are added later.

Acquired talents are just that - acquired. They are those things that you do very well because you learned to do them very well. You weren’t born with these talents. You acquired them through gaining knowledge and experience. Unlike the natural talents we studied, the two acquired talents we found to be so common among the most successful people can be developed through conscious effort. These talents can be learned, and in so doing, you can become much more successful.

As I said, all of this is great news because it simply means that regardless of the natural talents you do possess you can take whatever those fixed talents are and become more successful with them. This means that the playing field is level. Genius performance isn’t reserved for just those with IQ’s above 140. It isn’t just for those who were lucky enough to be born with certain talents. Everyone possesses his or her own unique set of talents, so anyone can become a genius at something. It just requires that you develop the acquired talents we discovered in his study, and I’ll show you how to do just that in my future articles.

Let’s look at those two acquired talents now, and don’t worry if the following brief definition seems a little shy because you will become a whole lot more familiar with these two acquired talents as you progress through this and my future articles.

Acquired talent #1. Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness looks at how aware people are of their own natural talents and non-talents. For example, does John know he has a great natural talent for strategic thinking that makes him a genius for seeing the big-picture and making accurate long range plans? How aware is Mary that her greatest natural talent is for empathizing and understanding others? Self-awareness also looks at how well a person understands their non-talents, so while John knows he has a natural talent for strategic thinking, is he also aware of his lack of natural talent for paying attention to details, or being empathetic.

Being self-aware is being aware of your own true potential and this is a beautiful thing. In F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, The Great Gatsby, Jay Gatsby is described as having, “something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life.” When a person has high levels of self-awareness, they too seem to hold a heightened sensitivity to all the promise they contain. They know very well what they are and are not good at, and what potential lies within them. When a person has low self-awareness, on the other hand, they do not have a clear sense of their natural abilities. They do not possess a significant level of sensitivity to their own true potential or promise.

If self-awareness is knowledge and understanding for your natural talents and promise, than in order to realize that promise you must possess the second acquired talent we discovered, which deals with the way you apply those talents. We call this second acquired talent Authenticity.

Acquired talent #2. Authenticity

Authenticity, at its simplest level, is “being true to you.” Knowing your strengths and weaknesses (self-awareness) is only half the picture. Properly applying that knowledge to your life is the other half. Setting goals that capitalize on your natural talents is being authentic. Finding a job that depends primarily on your natural talents is being authentic. Working from your strengths is being authentic.

The opposite of being authentic is being inauthentic. When you are aware of your natural talents and non-talents, but fail to incorporate this knowledge into what you do and how you attempt to achieve success, you are being inauthentic. When you allow yourself to fill a role that requires you to excel in your non-talents, you are being inauthentic.

So, of all the people he studied and all the various aspects of those people we looked at, the only two things that showed up as being really different between the most successful and the rest were their level of understanding for the natural talents and their ability to act on this awareness, to incorporate it into what they do and how they do it. The message in this study then becomes, the more completely you know your own natural talents and non-talents (i.e., are self-aware), and the more honest you are about this awareness, and the more you use it to determine what you do and how you do it (i.e., are authentic), the greater your satisfaction and performance will be.

Figure 1 below demonstrates the simplicity of this concept.

Level of Self-Awareness  +  Level of Authenticity  =  Level of Performance

Philosopher G.E. Moore puts it as simply as anyone could. He said, “Everything is what is it, and not another thing.” In other words, we are what we are, and not what we are not. We are our natural talents and our non-talents, and the more aware of these we are, and the truer we are to this fact, the better we perform. Trying to be something we are not is fruitless. If your natural talent is not for strategic thinking than the more your success depends on this ability, the more you are likely to suffer from The Problem.

~ Only when we are what we are, and our roles and objectives are true to that - only then can we reach the 5th level of performance ~

There are three Universal Laws: The Law of Attraction; The Law of Deliberate Creation (sometimes referred to as The Science of Deliberate Creation), and; The Law of Allowing (also referred to as The Art of Allowing).

The Law of Attraction is very simple…that which is like unto itself is drawn. This is the most powerful, all-encompassing of the Universal Laws. It is the Law to which everything that happens can be attributed. We have no influence over the operation of the Law of Attraction. Like gravity, this law is always at work. Just as “what goes up much come down” is a persistent, ubiquitous consequence of gravity, the manifestation of those things upon which we focus is always the outcome of the Law of Attraction. While we cannot change the Law…we can change the things that “we throw up”, or the things we focus on, and in so doing we change “what comes down”, or the manifestations that we experience.

The Law of Deliberate Creation says that we create that which we think about. If we can deliberately focus our thoughts on that which we desire, we can create any outcome that we want. If we can focus on a pure desire for 68 seconds, we can begin the manifestation of that desire.

The Law of Allowing states that when we are in vibrational alignment with our desire, it will, at that point, come into our existence. The “trick” to allowing is to give up the needing, the fear, the want, the control and simply allow our expressed desires to be delivered by Universal Power. As physical beings, we tend to be “wired” to be control oriented. We want to influence the way something happens. We have a need to worry something until it happens-or not. Unfortunately, most of our worry focuses on the absence of something, or on the presence of a desired something and while our stated desire may be for what we want, our alignment is with that which we do not want…and so we get stuck.

It is important to recognize that our ability to desire something ensures that we can have it. Once we have expressed our desire, it goes into vibrational escrow until we allow ourselves to feel good and come into vibrational alignment with the positive expression of our desire.

It can be a challenge to “not think about something” and while we can force ourselves to focus on the affirmative side of our desire for periods of time, that is difficult while we are in our conscious state, since we are continually reminded about what we do not have.

Meditation quiets the mind. It stills the active, conscious thoughts and allows us to stop resisting. Active, guided meditation can provide us with focused periods of pure thought about our desire, without the tendency to drift back to the “side”. Passive meditation allows the simple quieting of the mind…and so allows our vibrational level to rise naturally to the level of our desires.

In passive meditation, one simply sits quietly for 15 or 20 minutes, breathes normally and focuses on one’s breathing. When thoughts drift in, and they will, they are simply released and focus returns to the breathing. It may be helpful to use quiet music or sounds of nature in the background. Today it is also possible to find binaural beat or brainwave entrainment audio accompaniments to meditation which very effectively help draw the mind into synchronized theta levels (which are the same as those when we are in the dream state) and allow very effective quieting of the buzz of conscious thoughts. Doing passive meditation once or twice a day will be of tremendous value in the Allowing process. During these quiet moments the pure value of our desires are allowed to manifest without the confusion of conscious thought, and so manifestation can come much more quickly.

Active, or guided meditation takes the form of holding an intent to think about a specific thing, like our desire, as we go through the meditative process. Now, instead of focusing on our breathing, we focus on our desire. This is very powerful. Again, it is possible to find audio aids which can, in semi-hypnotic ways, guide you into meditative relaxation and the absence of conscious noise and facilitate the focus on a specific desire. Exercising this form of pure thought powerfully influences the manifestation of desires.

Meditation helps us escape from the conscious blockages that impact our ability to effectively allow that we are trying to deliberately create by capitalizing on the Law of Attraction. Anyone who wishes to take control of their “manifestational life” should begin an active, daily program of meditations.

While the level of academic excellence is consistent between any college in Australia, Fiji and New Zealand, students are well served researching the institutions, the programs offered and the location before deciding upon any one school. Much like choosing a university at home, finding a good fit requires some matching what is needed to what is offered.

Evaluating the Schools

In Fiji, New Zealand and Australia, colleges have a distinct culture of their own, as is the case with any university. Students interested in studying abroad, as a result, should consider the size of the school, average class size, teaching style, etc. The goal is to match the ‘vibe’ of any school with the student.

To determine whether a particular New Zealand college or a school in Fiji or Australia is a good choice, students should consider how their learning style, personality and preferred environment needs are met by it. If a student feels more comfortable in smaller classes, for example, focusing on smaller colleges in Australia or the other countries that provide this environment is best.

Using the school itself as the initial criteria for evaluating a college in Fiji, Australia or New Zealand helps to narrow the options and focus your search.

Research the programs

After identifying the desired environment and culture of a New Zealand, Fiji or Australia college, the next step is to determine which offers a program that meets your academic goals. In some cases, this may be clear cut, determining whether or not an ecology program is offered, for example. Students with more specialized academic needs, however, need to identify which Australia college or other school provides relevant programs with a more finely-tuned focus. Some schools offer unique, specialized programs not available at other colleges in New Zealand or even in the region. This can be a deciding factor depending upon a student’s academic goals.

Consider the location

In addition to the school and the program, the location of a college in Australia, New Zealand or Fiji should be given some consideration as well. Some are situated in major cities, while others are located in smaller communities. Some are near the region’s spectacular beaches while other Australia and New Zealand colleges are further inland. The location of a school can effect the type of programs offered, but it can also effect how well it meets a student’s needs.

The experience of studying abroad most certainly is an academic experience first and foremost, however, it is also a cultural life experience. Students need to consider how well a college’s location meets their needs from this aspect as well.

By taking considerations of the university, program and location into consideration, it becomes easier for students to identify which college in Fiji, New Zealand or Australia is the best fit. The better a school fits the student’s needs, the more positive the experience of studying abroad will be.