Discovering my Zone of Genius

I just found something that I’ve been searching for for nearly three years.

I call it The Golden Thread – that unique and beautiful filament that almost invisibly connects the various elements of your life and work.?The one factor that pulls your passions and interests and achievements together under one unifying glow that makes them all make sense as individual parts of a beautiful whole.?

Three years ago, I read “The Big Leap” by Gay Hendricks. ?When he described the zones in which people work, I instantly realized something about my life.?He wrote in detail about people who work in their zone of incompetence, of those who work in their zone of competence and of those who work in their zone of excellence.?Working in a space where your your skills are on display and those around you see, and appreciate, and benefit from what you do seems to be a pinnacle place.?But he spoke of one more zone beyond that place of good, of excellence, he introduced me to the concept of having a zone of genius. In reading about the zone of genius and the way it calls people to step forward into their unique gift in a way that nobody else can do, I immediately understood that I had built my coaching business solidly within my zone of excellence.?I knew it was good, in fact, it truly was excellent, but I also knew that there was something more for me.?I felt the undeniable call to step forward into that space of more and to live and work in my zone of genius.?

Reading that book (twice back-to-back, I might add – something I’ve done only one other time in my life EVER) changed the course of my life.?I stopped pushing so hard to build the business I had created, and I started to look for that zone of genius within myself and within my work.?I could feel it when I was doing it.?I knew I sometimes stood smack-dab in the center of my zone of genius.?I just could not see it.?The adage of not being able to see the forest because of all of the trees.?That was me.?I was the person who was standing the in middle all of the trees and I just couldn’t see the forest through the leaves.

I couldn’t see it.

?And when you can’t see something, there’s no way to force it.

So, I had to embrace the certainty that I was being called into my zone of genius – a zone of genius that I knew was profound and powerful.?At the same time, I had to embrace the uncertainty of when and how I would see it.?I had to be at peace with the fact that although my zone of genius was well within my field of vision, it was out of my line of sight and the past certainly wasn’t visible to me. ?I had to embrace this dichotomy without, even for a second, wavering in my conviction around the existence of this elusive thread.?Without doubting its magnetism and without ignoring the undeniably central role it did and would play in my life.

And then it happened.

In a powerful call with a powerful coach I realized what my zone of genius really is.?

I help people break themselves free of the standard.?Stop measuring themselves by the wrong yardstick.

I have the courage and I give others the courage to challenge the conventional standard.?Not for the sake of just being a disruptor or for the sake of some misplaced individualism.?Not because I dishonor the past or the way you’ve gotten to where you are but because I profoundly honor the person, the department, the business.

There is a very clear method to my genius.

I get to know who someone is, where an organization is, what someone's trying to accomplish or what a business is trying to achieve and then I take a hard look at the how of it.?I look, without judgment, at the nuts and bolts, all of the data, all of the approaches, the results, what's going in, what's coming out, how you are getting there or how you are not.

And then I ask, “Is what you're doing, working for you? Is how you’ve designed your business helping it go where you want it to go now? Is the inner working of this department still allowing it to achieve its potential??OR Is the way you've always done things choking the life out of your future potential??Is the way you've always shown up, the skills you've always used, the expectations you set for yourself or other have set for you, are those exactly the thing that are being the straight jacket that's binding you – that’s keeping you away from the success that you could have?”

If the answer to any of that is yes, if it sparks any sort of awareness that it really isn't working.

Then comes the boldness.?

?I say, throw away the yardstick.?Get rid of the standard.?Challenge it.?Change it.

Just because you've always done it this way doesn't mean it's the right thing for you today. It means it's been the right thing for you up until now and maybe it is no longer its time.?It is time to dream a fresh, to renew your vision, to think of new ideas. It's time to reconsider the standard. It's time to rethink your approach. It's time to shed the skin of who you used to be and to step into a whole new, better, bolder, more complete expression of who you are today.

?Do not let who you've been, what you've been -- whether you're a business or an individual or department – do not let that define who you become.

?Do not limit yourself by confining yourself to the restrictions of what you've always been or what people or businesses or standard conventions and paradigms have always been.

?You have to set yourself free of that in order to become who you're intended to be today.

?Not who you hoped you would become years ago, but who you want to be today – whether as a person, a department, a company.

?The way to free yourself, the way to burst through those limitations is to set aside the standard of what you thought you wanted to become, or what someone else thought you should become, or what other people in the organization thought that this department ought to be.

?It’s ok to honor their contribution, to honor the contribution of your past self, and also to dream afresh, to build it anew with the same beautiful building blocks reimagined.

I am not saying throw away your past; I am saying honor it. ?

Respect it.?Love it.?Embrace it.?Look at those beautiful building blocks that your path to this moment, your work until now, your systems, your processes, your people, your history have given you and reimagine how they could be used. Maybe they need to be reshaped, maybe they just need to be reorganized. Maybe they need to be polished. Maybe they need to be set aside completely because they've had their moment and it’s time to start again from a new level.

?The how of it is not the only concern here.?It’s the what of it.?What do you want to be and is what you're doing today, allowing you to be it?

?Our call ended.

?And I was stirred.?

?I felt the movement of my soul and I had to capture it.?So I put the recording back on and I spoke it.?I described how it felt to look at all of the disparate and seemingly disconnected elements of my work: I had led departments, and done sales, and taught sales, and coached people, and written a poem, and written a children's book, and built a business and it all had felt so ununified, so haphazard.?And yet it hadn’t felt so haphazard, it had felt really congruent to me and very, very expressive of all the different facets of who I am as a person.

?Yes, it has been me doing all this stuff at different stages and moments in my life, but until that moment I hadn’t seen how it connected together and made sense as a whole.

?How the willingness to challenge the standard, to examine exactly where you are now, and where you want to go and to see if the standard is the way or the obstacle and then, without judgement or blame or shame or fear to boldly create, recreate or re-embrace the standard.?That is my way.?That is my zone of genius.?That is my gift to give.?

?I clicked the button to end the recording and a wave of joy, of relief, of overwhelming gratitude swept over me and enveloped me.

I burst into tears.

?In that moment I knew I had found it.?I have been gifted with vision.?The trees had cleared.

?My heart was overflowing as were the tears that streamed down my face.

?I stood up from my desk and I fell to my knees.

?I lifted my face to the heavens and outstretched my arms to embrace the divine, to stretch myself out, to feel the energy that was surging through me in every space of my earth body, every space of my soul.

?I had found it.

?I had seen it.

?I had finally been able to give voice and shape and understanding to something that I’ve known in my bones.?That I’ve felt in my soul.?That’s been pulling on my heart, that’s been imbuing my work, that’s been so present to me and yet so elusive too.

?This was the day I discovered my zone of genius and embraced it.

?I found the central theme in my life’s work.?

?I saw My Golden Thread.