Hidden Genius by Polina Marinova Pompliano
Juan Carlos Zambrano
Gerente de Finanzas @ Tecnofarma Bolivia | Coaching ontologico
Introduction
I had stumbled upon something I like to call people-focused learning, the notion that people and their stories are at the center of any learning pursuit
This type of learning goes beyond historical events.
If I want to improve my decision-making or develop mental resilience, I can choose a person who best embodies the idea about which I want to learn. From there, I’ll immerse myself in their stories and begin searching for their hidden genius, the differentiator that makes them truly exceptional. It could be a mental framework, a practical tidbit, or a timeless piece of wisdom that casts them as luminaries of their time
I’m not the only one who subscribes to the people-focused learning style. Some of the world’s most successful people discovered their own hidden genius by first studying the genius of those who came before them.
The late basketball legend Kobe Bryant says that when he was a young player he went to G.O.A.T. Mountain (an acronym for Greatest Of All Time) to speak to players like Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird
Before you read the coming pages, I want to be clear what this book is not. It is not a compilation of traditionally successful people who are portrayed as unblemished heroes worthy of worship. This book is about learning, not idolizing
Remember, if you could follow in the exact footsteps of someone who has achieved the upper echelons of success in your field, would you? While reading this book, I encourage you to ask yourself: Am I willing to make the same sacrifices, the same missteps, the same trade-offs? With the good comes the bad
If there’s one thing I’ve discovered after years of learning about people it’s this: A person’s life is never linear. It looks more like a winding, tangled web of ups and downs than it does a straight, predictable line. No matter what life serves up, however, we can almost always extract lessons about what to replicate and what to avoid
Keep in mind this important distinction: Idolizing traps you into imitating perfect versions of imperfect people. Learning, on the other hand, allows you to observe, synthesize, and pave your own path
This book will expose you to the hidden genius of a wide variety of people whose journeys have taught them practical lessons you can apply to your own life if you so choose. There is no perfect human being, but I believe that we can all learn from each other’s most fulfilling successes—as well as our most devastating failures
The people featured in this book will offer tools to help you boost your creativity, strengthen your relationships, and improve your decision-making. I invite you to come with me on a learning journey that will ultimately lead you to discover your own hidden genius
Chapter 1: Unleashing Your Creative Potential
Making a Connection
In the 1500s, Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci used a process he called connecting the unconnected, which meant finding relationships between two totally unrelated subjects
Leonardo discovered that the human brain naturally forms relationships between two disparate inputs, no matter how dissimilar. In other words, if you focus on two subjects for a period of time, you will see relationships and form connections that trigger new ideas
This sort of divergent thinking that Leonardo Da Vinci describes is supported by neuroscience research. Roger E. Beaty is the author of The Creative Brain
Beaty went on to say that the common ingredients for creativity—whether you’re a scientist or an artist—include flexibility of thinking, the ability to make connections.
As another modern creative genius named Steve Jobs said in a 1996 WIRED interview: Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.
Manufacturing Creativity
People used to say creativity came from God. Today they talk about the muse (a phrase that remains steeped in divinity, deriving from the Ancient Greek Muses or goddesses of inspiration).
But, as Stephen King wrote in his memoir, On Writing, There is a muse, but he’s not going to come fluttering down into your writing room and scatter creative fairy-dust all over your typewriter or computer screen. He lives in the ground. He’s a basement guy. You have to descend to his level, and once you get down there, you have to furnish an apartment for him to live in.
Creativity is less a fleeting moment of inspiration and more a muscle that can be trained through consistent exercise. People like to think the creative process is romantic, Achatz says. The artist drifts to sleep at night, to be awakened by the subliminal echoes of his or her next brilliant idea. The truth, for me at least, is that creativity is primarily the result of hard work and study.
Failing into Success
What does it mean to create original work? I’m talking about the groundbreaking, mind-exploding, revolutionary kind
I attended a conference in 2019 where writer Tim Urban gave the keynote speech. In it, he explained just how hard it is to create original work in the face of conventional wisdom. When you’re trying to create something truly original, you make a bunch of mistakes, he said. Originals are a mess.
Let’s take a look at someone who revolutionized the animation industry
Ed Catmull, who had a doctorate in computer technology, co-founded animation film studio Pixar alongside Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986
He believes the big, juicy failures are where true, groundbreaking originality lies. During the creative process, Catmull encourages his team to experiment, fail, and learn over and over again until the film reaches their desired level of quality.
Catmull’s greatest, most practical piece of advice is this: Aim to fail the ‘elevator test.’
Catmull says if you can pass the elevator test, your idea is probably derivative of what’s been done before. In other words, it’s not as original as you think.
Original creators typically have three characteristics in common: They have a unique point of view on the world. They are confident they can achieve an ambitious goal. And finally, they are willing to fail spectacularly in the name of creating something revolutionary
Bits of Genius
Embracing risk in creativity can require a degree of mental toughness, of course
Chapter 2: Mastering Mental Toughness
Mental toughness is an elusive thing. Is it a mindset? Can it be achieved without undergoing severe stress and trauma? Why does it seem like some people have it and others don’t?
What exactly is it that links ultra-runners, Navy SEALs, and Holocaust survivors?
The definition of mental toughness varies depending on who you ask, but one commonality is the ability to endure.
And enduring pain, discomfort, and uncertainty for long periods of time doesn’t happen by accident
Manufacturing Hardship
David Goggins was in his early 20s, suffering from asthma, a learning disability, a stutter, and crushingly low self-esteem, when an evening on the couch began an unexpected journey. You could call it Couch-to-4,000 pull-ups. It ultimately saw him endure three Navy SEAL Hell Weeks, more than 50 endurance races, and obtain the world record for most pull-ups in 24 hours (4,030 to be precise).
His first tool came from the Navy. He dubbed it The 40% Rule.
It’s simple: When your mind is telling you that you’re done, that you’re exhausted, that you cannot possibly go any further, you’re probably only actually 40% done
The second tool Goggins used is what he calls the accountability mirror. It’s a way of undergoing controlled emotional pain
When Goggins decided to become a Navy SEAL, he looked at his reflection and said, You’re fat, you’re lazy, and you’re a liar. What are you going to do about it?
This sounds harsh, but Goggins says that he needed to face his insecurities in order to overcome them. And the second half of that statement—the focus on remedies—made it something more than self-criticism. He pasted sticky notes around the outside of the mirror outlining the steps he needed to take to achieve his goals
Third, Goggins decided to do something that sucks every single day—because suffering begets growth
This way of thinking puts you on the offensive and gets you out of lazy, comfortable routines. I brainwashed myself into craving discomfort, Goggins adds
Think of it as stress-testing yourself
You can artificially manufacture hardship. And by creating some intentional friction in your life, your mind will be better prepared for heavy experiences you may have to endure in the future.
On the flipside, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim’s mind—a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailers when we choose the confines of the victim’s mind.
If you don’t give in to victimhood, you can develop a kind of mental resilience that will carry you through the most difficult situations.
Personifying Pain
Can you become immune to pain?
Most of us are conditioned to think we need to avoid pain at all costs. But what happens if you personify pain and see it as a friend rather than an adversary?
Dubbed The Queen of Pain, Amelia Boone is a corporate attorney at Apple by day and an obstacle endurance racer by night
When the pain levels began to feel insurmountable, Boone knew that if she lost control of her mind, she would inevitably lose control of her body. So she used the technique of making friends with pain.
I don’t ever want to see pain as an adversary. Pain is your friend. Pain gives you cues. Pain tells you what you need to focus on, she says. During races, I’ll literally talk to different body parts: ‘OK foot, you kind of hurt right now.’ If I personify pain, I can think of it as separate from me. And if I make friends with it, then it is just something there to guide me—and teach me.
Goggins is an expert at self-talk, and he’s convinced himself that pain is a gatekeeper that holds the key to the greatest things in life. Pain, he says, unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance, and beautiful silence.
Masters of suffering don’t see pain as discomfort or torture that happens to them. They see it as a living being that lets their mind in on the secret that takes them to the next level.
Developing an Alter Ego
If you ever spend time with David Goggins, or watch him in conversation, you’ll notice something unusual from time to time
He sometimes refers to himself in the third person
This isn’t an accident. Nor is it arrogance. Instead, it’s part of a deliberate strategy to create a separate identity that distances him from his past of bullying, fear, and abuse
I had to create ‘Goggins,’ he explains, because ‘David Goggins’ was a weak kid. I wanted to be proud of who I was.
Goggins likes to say he was built, not born
Immersing yourself in your feelings can lead to unhealthy mental rumination, so creating a little bit of distance from the self can help us better regulate our emotions. One way people can create a temporary alter ego is through illeism—the act of referring to oneself in the third person
Self-distancing is also a helpful strategy in helping us manage our emotions better. When you create an alter ego, it actually feels like we have a choice, and we’re not identifying with who we are in that very moment but that we have a choice to be who we want to be, says mental performance coach Lauren Johnson. When we distance slightly, we give ourselves the ability to choose.
The point is that you’re not permanently tethered to the identity you currently have—you can alter it to get closer to the person you want to become
If you don’t break, you’ll transform. As Goggins says, Life will always be the most grueling endurance sport, and when you train hard, get uncomfortable, and callus your mind, you will become a more versatile competitor, trained to find a way forward no matter what
Bits of Genius
Toughness is essential to human flourishing—but you can’t flourish without strong relationships with other people
Chapter 3: Unlocking Healthy Relationships
To optimize for a great partnership, though, all of those things need to evolve in the long run. As the pandemic showed us, relationships of all kinds can become strained. Marital and workplace conflicts have been on the rise, with people’s stress levels exacerbated by unpredictable economic ups and downs.
There are relationship masters and disasters. Let’s examine the secret ways of thinking the masters use to nurture healthy, fulfilling relationships.
The Compound Interest of Trust
Name a relationship in your life where you trust someone who is inconsistent. You can’t. That’s because we can’t rely on people—whether in work, business, or family—who repeatedly break their promises
Trust is the bedrock of any relationship. It’s built out of long-term consistency, commitment, and communication. And we need it more than ever. Esther Perel is a psychotherapist who has devoted her life to coaching couples through all the intricacies of intimacy and connection
We seek comfort, connection, and most importantly, trust
What if I told you there is a formula for earning trust?
Here’s the thing: Trust cuts across the familial and the collegial. If you’re dating a new partner, you need to figure out if you can rely on them to build a healthy relationship. If you’re an investor, you need to be able to evaluate whether a founder is trustworthy before you invest your money in their company. In both cases, you’re optimizing for the long term, but how can you build trust with the limited and incomplete information that you have today?
Compounding growth happens when an asset’s earnings—such as interest—generate additional earnings over time. Long-term efforts, Ravikant explains, aren’t just good for compounding interest, they’re also effective for compounding trust in situations of goodwill, or love, or relationships, or money. The more you invest in a relationship, the more trust interest it pays.
The more consistent the action, the faster the compounding
In other words, the two key ingredients for trust are time and consistency. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman says the formula for earning trust is as follows:
Trust = Consistency + Time
In simple terms, it goes like this: If you consistently do what you say over a long period of time, then trust is inevitable. As time goes by, the goodwill between the two partners will compound at a faster rate
The result? Mutual trust
Mutual trust allows you to make decisions, seal deals, and enjoy relationships without constantly questioning the other person’s motives
Defusing Conflict
One person who knows a thing or two about listening is former hostage negotiator Chris Voss. As the FBI’s lead international kidnapping negotiator
As he begins talking to one of the bank robbers, he identifies himself and immediately begins employing several strategies during the conversation.
First, he manipulates the tone of his voice because Voss believes this is the most important tool during a negotiation. He uses a technique he calls The Late Night FM DJ voice,
The reason it’s effective is because it hits the mirror neurons in your counterpart’s brain and triggers a neurochemical reaction that calms them down
Next, Voss begins mirroring the hostage-taker by repeating his statements as questions. When the bank robber says, You guys chased my driver away, Voss responds with, We chased your driver away? Mirroring is an effective technique that can be used to build goodwill and gather information. You mirror someone by repeating several key words they used in their last communication. (i.e: I had a really hard day because of all the stress I’m under. Response: The stress you’re under?) It’s a useful tool because it keeps you emotionally sober while allowing the other person to continue talking.
Finally, he begins labeling. He tells the second bank robber, It wasn’t your fault, was it? and You regret this happened, don’t you? Both of these questions insinuate he got roped into a bad situation. Labeling is used to verbally identify and name your counterpart’s emotions
Using both mirroring and labeling in the same conversation defuses negative feelings, ensures the other person feels heard, and allows you to better understand the context of the other person’s feelings
The reason Voss was able to get the bank robbers to surrender and free the hostages is because he did what most of us don’t do in the midst of a high-pressure conflict—he listened
In turn, the negotiating tools mentioned above can be used across any situation in life. If you’re able to master the art of listening, you can successfully defuse conflict with your coworker, your spouse, even your teenage daughter.
Sharpening Your Relational Skillset
A loving partnership is a constant work in progress, and there’s always room for improvement.
You may not be perfect, but you can improve. You may not always get it right, but you can practice until you do.
Psychologist John Gottman has spent more than 40 years studying divorce prediction and marital stability
In his most famous study, Gottman set up an apartment-like laboratory called the Love Lab at the University of Washington
From the data he gathered, Gottman separated the couples into two major groups: the masters and the disasters. He found that the masters were still happily together after six years, whereas the disasters had either broken up or were chronically unhappy in their marriages
The first is to make sure that your relationship follows the 5-to-1 ratio
Here’s the crazy thing about any relationship in life: It’s the mundane moments that determine its health and longevity. One of his most concrete findings is that happier couples had a ratio of five positive interactions to every negative interaction. The interactions don’t have to be grand gestures.
That’s because this magic ratio enhances the positivity in your relationship
Second, Gottman says he can distinguish between the relationship masters and the relationship disasters based on whether couples answer each other’s bids
He refers to bids as the random requests for connection partners make throughout the day. Say that your partner is a car enthusiast and notices a vintage Chevrolet Corvette on the road. He might urge you to look by saying, Look at that car! Even though it may sound trivial, your partner is requesting a response, or making a bid for emotional connection. Happy couples acknowledge and respond to each other’s bids even if it’s just for a quick moment
Finally, Gottman says the skill of repairment is crucial in the formation of a long-lasting relationship. But what if you just had a big blowout fight? Is it too late?
Don’t worry—even happy couples have ugly screaming matches and stonewall each other. They do many of the same things unhealthy couples do, but at some point they have a conversation where they recover from the argument.
The difference is that healthy couples have effective strategies to repair the conflict quickly rather than letting it fester
In other words, building skills around communication, trust, and conflict resolution are the key to a happy partnership
Bits of Genius
Trust compounds. And there’s someone we trust above all others: Ourselves. But what if we’re not always worthy of trust? What if we’re not a reliable narrator? How do the world’s most successful people ensure they are better storytellers in their own lives—and as professionals or creatives hoping to help and influence others?
Chapter 4: Telling Better Stories
As humans, we tell stories about everything from the traumas of our childhoods to our hopes for the future. Stories determine what is beautiful, who is successful, and why our problems matter
Have you ever considered that your life has a protagonist, supporting characters, an interesting plot, obstacles, emotion, and conflict? Our lives possess all the elements necessary for a compelling story—but who is telling it, and which parts do they choose to emphasize?
A story can change depending on the narrator—and that narrator may not always be trustworthy
The final words in the smash-hit musical Hamilton are: Who lives, who dies, and who tells your story? As people leave the theater, they are left wondering, Who tells my story?
It’s an important question to answer, because if you don’t learn how to tell a compelling narrative about your own life, someone else will.
Taking Control of the Unreliable Narrator
As storytellers, we distort, we deny, we embellish—yet we have absolute trust in our tangled beliefs. Very few of us rigorously fact-check and verify the stories we tell ourselves. And we tend to listen to the main character alone
As a therapist, Gottlieb says she helps patients edit the stories they tell themselves. In many cases, using logic isn’t enough. In her TED Talk, she explains how two sets of facts can be twisted, emphasized, or minimized depending on the person telling the story. The way we narrate our lives shapes what they become, she says. That’s the danger of our stories, because they can really mess us up, but it’s also their power.
In her years speaking with patients, Gottlieb noticed that most people’s stories tend to circle around two key themes: freedom and change. Contemplating the former makes you feel helpless, trapped, imprisoned. The latter makes you feel the sharp blade of uncertainty. In order to free yourself, you need to venture into the unknown
Try this exercise: Start with a blank page and write about a situation that’s making you anxious. What have you been telling yourself? Who made you upset? What is the problem? Now, take out another piece of paper, and write about the same situation from the perspective of a different character in your life.
Gottlieb asks, What would happen if you looked at your story and wrote it from another person’s point of view? What would you see now from this wider perspective? Sometimes, the story you’ve been telling yourself about your life doesn’t reflect reality at all.
This exercise is powerful because it allows you to poke holes and identify your blind spots. When there’s uncertainty, Gottlieb says, we try to fill in the blanks so we feel like we have more control. Unfortunately, we don’t fill in the blanks with something positive, she adds. We tend to fill in the blanks with something terrifying.
Focusing on Conflict and Intent
One of Sorkin’s most popular films is The Social Network, the film that dramatizes the founding of Facebook. When Sorkin was writing the screenplay, two lawsuits had been brought against the company, and the plaintiffs and defendants ended up telling three different versions of the same story.
Sorkin didn’t want to pick one version of the truth. I liked that there were three different, and oftentimes conflicting, versions of the truth. I wanted to tell all three versions
When telling a story, it’s important to remember that conflict is the key ingredient of any narrative
But there’s a catch: Conflict is nothing if it isn’t laced with intent
Sorkin’s hidden genius is that he never tells the audience who a character is but rather shows them what a character wants. This is important because it introduces intent. In other words, what lies behind the character’s action? Why are they motivated to do what they do?
Here’s Sorkin’s simple test for storytelling: You don’t have a story unless you can use the words but, except, or and then, which means an obstacle has been introduced and now there’s conflict. In other words, you need to ask yourself: What does this character want, and what is standing in their way of getting it?
Finding the Extraordinary in the Mundane
Ultimately, we are all ordinary people with the power to tell extraordinary stories—all that’s required is a genuine curiosity for our fellow humans. That’s where the juiciest, most interesting details hide
Stanton uses the following three questions when he meets a stranger: 1) What’s your biggest struggle? 2) How has your life turned out differently than you expected it to? and 3) What do you feel most guilty about?
But it’s not the questions that elicit vulnerability—it’s being completely present and genuinely curious. It’s what my college professor wanted me to understand: Ask great questions, and you’ll get great stories
Bits of Genius
Becoming a master storyteller can have profound benefits for ourselves and others. But we’re not always the narrator. Sometimes it’s important to let others have the floor. That’s more important than ever when it comes to being an effective leader—as the world’s most successful leaders know
Chapter 5: Becoming a More Effective Leader
We often imagine leaders to be those heading large corporations or taking soldiers through war, but the truth is you’re a leader if you’re a parent, a teacher, or an older sibling
Inverting the Pyramid
Many leaders think of themselves at the top of a pyramid, and as a result, employ a top-down approach at their organizations.
But what if there was a more efficient and innovative way to manage a team?
In a bottom-up management approach, the ideas, values, and strategies come mostly from the employees who are the lifeblood of the company, while the C-suite executives offer support and resources to help the team execute plans quickly.
Famed restaurateur Danny Meyer has weathered multiple crises as a leader, including the 9/11 attacks, the 2008 financial crisis, and most recently, a global pandemic. Like Ek, he sees himself as a bottom-up manager who subscribes to the concept of ‘servant leadership.’
Servant leadership was popularized by the late Robert Greenleaf, who believed that organizations are at their most effective when leaders encourage collaboration, trust, foresight, listening, and empowerment
Experimentation is often the first thing to freeze during a crisis, but Meyer believes it’s the difference between life and death for a business. He often tells his staff, Make new mistakes every day. Don’t waste time repeating the old ones.
When I asked him about his mistake-making philosophy in an industry that requires a certain level of consistency and perfectionism, he told me it was simple: If you have a culture of fear where people are afraid of getting in trouble because they made an honest mistake, you’re going to have a much lower rate of innovation
By flipping the pyramid, Meyer is able to foster growth, authority, and leadership in the very people who are the lifeblood of the restaurant
Systematizing Your Life
Shopify founder and CEO Tobi Lütke is obsessed with using systems to solve problems in business and in life.
He has a simple rule about efficiency: If I have to do something once, that’s fine. If I have to do it twice, I’m kind of annoyed. And if I have to do it three times, I’m going to try to automate it.
The biggest advantage Lütke says he’s had as an entrepreneur is that he started out as a programmer, because programming taught him to think in systems. By default, most people think about cause and effect, but the world doesn’t work like that. The world actually works in systems—it is loopy, not linear, he says
First, let’s note the difference between an outcome-based mindset and a systems-based mindset
Say you make a mistake. An outcome-based mindset would prevent you from making that one, specific mistake again—while a systems-based mindset would prevent you from making that specific mistake along with hundreds of future similar mistakes because you’ve figured out the root cause of why you made the mistake in the first place
Lütke offers this great piece of advice: Always understand the system of how you got to where you are.
Systems also act like a map that can guide you out of moments of adversity. In a systems-based organization, information flows freely and there’s a clear blueprint for problem-solving.
Now, let’s apply systems-based thinking to your own life. In what situations could you adopt a systems-based mindset? The key is to start with the goal (or outcome) and work backwards:
Systems-based thinking forces you to get off autopilot, investigate the processes that run your life, and set your sights on the actions within your control.
The Power of Invisible Leadership
Mark Bertolini doesn’t match the image you have of a buttoned-up, clean-cut Fortune 500 CEO
Known for sporting tattoos, leather jackets, and a large skull ring, Bridgewater Associates co-CEO Bertolini is a self-described radical capitalist.
领英推荐
He realized that the employees of a company are not merely a tool of capitalism. He learned that they are the cornerstone of any organization, and without an engaged employee base a company is bound to fail.
Exceptional leaders, Bertolini believes, do two things: 1) They understand their employees’ needs and 2) They get the hell out of the way.
This experience taught Bertolini the value of earning a living, why entitlement will never get you anywhere, and how a true leader is intimately aware of his employees’ needs
Bertolini learned the second leadership lesson after he began studying Eastern religions. He was inspired by a passage from the foundational Taoist text, the Tao Te Ching, attributed to philosopher Lao Tzu
Bertolini thought about how he could apply it to business leadership. He came up with The Four Levels of Taoist Leadership.
This is the Tao Te Ching passage that inspired Bertolini’s leadership philosophy:
When the Master governs, the people are hardly aware that he exists. Next best is a leader who is loved. Next, one who is feared. The worst is one who is despised. If you don’t trust the people, you make them untrustworthy. The Master doesn’t talk, he acts.When his work is done, the people say, ‘Amazing: we did it, all by ourselves!’
Bits of Genius
Providing support and perfecting processes as a leader is all well and good—but what about making the big decisions that no one else can make? What about the defining calls in your personal life? The world’s most successful people have tried-and-tested methods for that too, as we’re about to find out.
Chapter 6: Taking Risks in Times of Uncertainty
Uncertainty is constantly lurking in our everyday lives—even in areas we don’t think present any risk. But if we approach our lives as risk technicians, evaluating our choices and aiming to mitigate uncertainty, we’ll become better decision-makers overall
Building Competence
During a regular dive in the sea, Alexey Molchanov can go 131 meters deep (about 43 stories) while holding a single breath for nearly five minutes.
He has a simplified three-part process on building competence before a stressful event—whether it’s preparing for a dive or an important presentation at work
First, breathing is an indicator that tells us whether we are calm or stressed. He recommends observing your breathing pattern, which will tell you if you have smooth, deep breathing or shallow, panicked breathing
Second, he says our anxiety elevates when we see a problem as a life-or-death situation that needs to be solved. Instead, Molchanov recommends shifting your perspective to see it as a challenge that you will enjoy overcoming rather than a situation you must suffer through. Try to feel pleasure through the process, he says
Third, focus on one task at a time. Rather than seeing a problem as a big complex tangle of varying tasks, Molchanov says you can calm yourself by asking, What is one single task I can focus on accomplishing in this next moment?
Competence and calm are built one breath at a time—and not just in freediving
Calculating Risk
Ukraine. Afghanistan. Iraq. Darfur. Libya. Syria. Lebanon. South Sudan. Somalia. Congo
Over the past 20 years, war photographer Lynsey Addario has covered every major conflict and humanitarian crisis on the planet, capturing destruction and pain through the lens of her camera
There’s a difference between calculated risk-taking and reckless risk-taking. The former relies on making good decisions with limited information while the latter throws caution to the wind for no good reason
Looking at your life through this mental framework can help you make some big decisions and take a calculated risk instead of an impulsive one.
But here’s the hidden genius of the world’s most competent risk-takers: They understand that even if they adequately assess risk and make all the right moves, success is anything but guaranteed
Accepting the Dark Side of Risk
In a blog post titled, The Three Sides of Risk, author and investor Morgan Housel posits that there are three distinct aspects to risk-taking: 1) The odds you will get hit; 2) The average consequences of getting hit; and 3) The tail-end consequences of getting hit.
It’s the tail-end consequences of risk that matter in the long run, which he calls the low-probability, high-impact events. They are the hardest to control but the ones that matter most
The point is this: When we think we have become masters of chaos, life has a way of humbling even the most competent risk-mitigators. And if we survive, there are an endless number of lessons we can learn from the experience.
As big wave surfer Garrett McNamara puts it, I think you’re a master when you realize you know nothing.
Bits of Genius
Getting comfortable with risk and making effective decisions is nothing, of course, without vision that can be trusted
Chapter 7: Clarifying Your Thinking
Do you really believe what you believe? What would it take to change your mind?
So we stick to our beliefs—no matter how wrong or outdated—and forge ahead. Why? Because we’re searching for social acceptance and identity validation, much more so than truth. As James Clear wrote, Convincing someone to change their mind is really the process of convincing them to change their tribe.
Changing your tribe may seem like a herculean task, but there’s value in seeing reality more objectively. Clear thought prevents us from falling for false narratives, keeps our ego in check, and most importantly, allows us to think for ourselves
Legendary investor Charlie Munger has an iron prescription to make sure he doesn’t become a slave to his beliefs. I’m not entitled to have an opinion on this subject unless I can state the arguments against my position better than the people do who are supporting it, he says. I think only when I reach that stage am I qualified to speak.
Battling Blind Belief
Many times, we find ourselves digging our heels in the ground even when there’s evidence that contradicts our belief. This feeling of believing that you should believe something—despite realizing it’s ridiculous—is what philosopher Daniel Dennett calls belief in belief.
This phenomenon isn’t only reserved for religions or cults. It also appears in everyday life. Dennett explains that the entire financial system hinges on belief in belief. For instance, politicians and economists realize that a sound currency depends on people believing that the currency is sound—even if there’s proof to show otherwise
Why does this happen? In large part, because the human brain craves predictability, and it feels betrayed when trusted sources change their positions. To ease the discomfort, we’ll go to great lengths to make sense of the inconsistency
When someone acts in unpredictable ways, we don’t change our beliefs. We simply change our interpretation of their actions to make them more congruent with our existing beliefs
Approaching the world with a healthy dose of intellectual humility and skepticism is a good thing—even if it may not be popular. As historian Daniel J. Boorstin said, The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance—it is the illusion of knowledge.
Striving for Intellectual Humility
Julia Galef wants you to imagine for a moment that you’re a soldier in the midst of battle. You attack, you defend, you protect, but mostly you want to win.
Now, imagine playing a different role: a scout. Unlike the soldier, your goal as a scout isn’t to defend one side over the other. Instead, you’re there to understand, survey the terrain, identify threats and obstacles and come back with a map that’s as accurate as possible
She often uses the soldier and scout roles as metaphors for how all of us process information and ideas in our daily lives. The two mindsets demonstrate how clearly we see the world
Let’s explore several strategies that Galef recommends to help us become more rational and improve our judgment as individuals
The first is to evalute the current state of your beliefs. In her podcast, Rationally Speaking, Galef often asks her guests the following questions: What have you changed your mind about? and What do you think are the strongest arguments against your view? These two questions help her subjects become intellectually honest by confronting their own preconceived beliefs and prejudices
Next, she recommends divorcing your beliefs from yourself. In this visualization exercise, Galef suggests picturing the belief that you’re defending in an argument as existing a few feet away from your body
The reason it’s helpful to personify your beliefs in such a way is that it doesn’t feel like a personal attack
Third, she recommends celebrating being objective, not right. Congratulate yourself when you’ve evaluated an argument as dispassionately and fairly as possible instead of congratulating yourself on simply being right. The ultimate goal should be moving toward the truth, not validating the ego. The latter is driven by emotion, the former by rational thought.
Finally, stop labeling your counterpart during an argument: Oftentimes, the way we label people can lead us astray. Imagine if you could hear a political candidate’s ideas coming out of the mouth of someone of another race and gender. If things (or people) were packaged differently, could we hear them differently?
Galef believes so. When you’re feeling frustrated, irritated, or hostile toward a person with whom you’re arguing, try this mental exercise: Take the words they say and visualize a friend or family member that you respect saying the same things. Try to evaluate the arguments as if they’re coming from someone you like more, and I think you’ll find it much easier to consider them fairly than you otherwise would, she says.
Remember, changing your mind is a feature, not a bug
Thinking for Yourself
To change your beliefs, you must first understand what it is you believe
In a blog post titled, The Four Quadrants of Conformism, technology investor Paul Graham says most people fall into one of four categories: those who are aggressively conventional-minded, passively conventional-minded, passively independent-minded, and aggressively independent-minded.
People who are aggressively conventional-minded not only believe that rules must be followed, but that those who break the rules must be punished. On the other hand, those who are passively conventional-minded make sure they follow the rules and worry that those who break them might be punished
The passively independent-minded are those who don’t really give much thought to the rules at hand. The aggressively independent-minded are the ones who constantly challenge the rules and often intentionally defy the authority figures who implement the rules in the first place.
Thinking for yourself requires a certain level of humility and acceptance that you might change your mind as you receive new information
Galef recommends using a powerful paradigm of thinking called The Bayes Rule, a formula that describes the probability of an event based on prior knowledge of the conditions that might be relevant to the event
In essence, it tells you how to weigh evidence and change your beliefs
Here’s how Galef recommends you use it: Understand that your beliefs are grayscale—and that your confidence in them can fluctuate as you learn new things. Next time you think you agree with a political party 100% of the time, ask yourself: What do I actually believe, and can these new facts help update my belief system?
Graham suggests you use a similar mental framework that involves treating beliefs like a puzzle. Whenever someone makes an assertion as a fact, ask yourself, Is that true?
The end goal is not to find flaws in the things you’re told, but to find the new ideas that had been concealed by the broken ones. So this game should be an exciting quest for novelty, not a boring protocol for intellectual hygiene, he writes in a blog post called How to Think For Yourself. And you’ll be surprised, when you start asking ‘Is this true?’, how often the answer is not an immediate yes. If you have any imagination, you’re more likely to have too many leads to follow than too few.
Independent thought is hard and messy and often unpopular, but it’s also liberating. We trip up so many times because we care about the crowd’s opinion and believe in whatever the intellectual mob deems worthy. There’s a right time to get married, have kids, quit your job, build a company, and eat pizza with a fork and a knife.
Who decides that? Hopefully, it’s you
Bits of Genius
Clarity is vital—but what is it in service of? Self-improvement can be a positive end in itself. But there’s more
Chapter 8: Building an Engaged Community
When you think about loneliness, you probably don’t picture a superhero.
We yearn to combat loneliness and be a part of something bigger and more purposeful. So how can you strengthen your existing ties as a community member? Better yet, how can you build a loyal and engaged community of likeminded people from scratch?
Combating Loneliness
First, let’s discuss the difference between loneliness and solitude. You may be thinking, But we’re all part of so many social networks! How is it possible we’re still in desperate need for human connection?
Much of our isolation is self-inflicted. We long for company yet we rejoice for alone time
Our culture sends contradictory messages because it doesn’t know the difference between solitude and loneliness. Solitude helps us regulate emotions, while loneliness dulls them. John Cacioppo, a professor who studied the effects of loneliness, said, There is a big difference between objective isolation and perceived isolation, and perceived isolation is loneliness.
I interviewed Laura Entis, a writer who has covered loneliness in its many forms for years
Entis explained that it helps to first evaluate the nature of our relationships. If we have few relationships but find them personally satisfying, then we are unlikely to feel lonely. Loneliness only occurs when there’s a discrepancy between the relationships we want and those we feel we have, which is why some people can lead truly solitary lives without being lonely, she says.
This explains how people with money, connections, and fame can find themselves in a bottomless pit of loneliness
we can combat loneliness by building a community with strong social ties
But here’s the thing: We already exist in a world with countless communities. It’s not only community we’re seeking—it’s belonging, loyalty, and meaning
Building Loyalty
In a hyperconnected world, we point to our social media followings and tout our abilities to build a community of loyal followers.
So if you’re wondering whether you have built an audience or a community (no matter how small), ask yourself: Am I communicating in one direction where people are only listening to me or are the conversations often dynamic and happening in a circle between multiple people?
Audience refers to the group of people who may be interested in the content you produce—they consist of the people who listen to your podcast, who read your newsletter, or who follow you on Twitter. Your community consists of likeminded people who are driven by a mutual purpose or interest and they devour the content that you produce while also interacting with you and other community members on a regular basis.
So what does this mean on a smaller scale? When you’re building a community from scratch, you’ll want to do three key things that build lifelong loyalty: 1) overserve your community members; 2) build goodwill; and 3) create moments of serendipity.
After the meetup, one reader who participated in the Kenya event emailed me and said, We met up as readers, and ended up as friends.
Remember, community isn’t about follower count or audience size. Community is about connecting and building loyalty among people whose paths may have never crossed otherwise
Forming an Emotional Connection
In 2012, Facebook conducted a study in which its data scientists manipulated the news feeds of 689,003 users. One set of users saw only negative posts for a full week, whereas the other set of users saw only positive posts. The goal was to measure how this affected their moods.
What the data scientists discovered was evidence of emotional contagion. Just like you can catch a bad cold, you can catch a bad mood.
in the scientific journal, The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. These results indicate that emotions expressed by others on Facebook influence our own emotions, constituting experimental evidence for massive-scale contagion via social networks.
Loneliness exists within us all, and strangers act as mirrors in which we see our own imperfect reflections. As we become emotionally invested in those strangers’ stories, we build a tight-knit community predicated on a larger purpose
Bits of Genius
You don’t just want to create your own community, of course. You want to be part of others’—and a truly discerning and engaged content consumer, able to cut through the noise and get the most out of what you read and watch
Chapter 9: Optimizing Your Content Diet
One of the biggest realizations I’ve had in the last few years is simple but overlooked: What you eat is who you are, and what you read is who you become
While most of us are willing to invest in our health, we often neglect our content diet—the information we feed our brains with on a daily basis
It’s easy to fall into a spiral of consuming junk food content, sensationalist articles and social media posts that plunge you into destructive thought patterns. So can we inch toward leading healthier lives by optimizing what our bodies and our brains ingest? How do the world’s most successful people do it?
Upgrading Your Mental Software
When SpaceX CEO Elon Musk talks about the mind, he likens it to a computer.
There’s our mental hardware, which is the raw intelligence and natural talents we’re born with, and then there’s our mental software, our belief systems and thought patterns. The software, he believes, is the most important tool we possess as human beings
In a tweet, Musk suggests that people need to develop better mental firewalls for the information constantly coming at us, adding that a course on critical thinking should be a requirement in middle school. Who wrote the software running in your head? Are you sure you actually want it there?
In something he calls the theory of maximum taste, New York Times columnist David Brooks says that each person’s mind is defined by its upper limit—the best content that it habitually consumes and is capable of consuming
This theory is based on the idea that exposure to genius has the power to expand your consciousness, he writes in a column titled, A Commencement Address Too Honest to Deliver in Person. If you spend a lot of time with genius, your mind will end up bigger and broader than if you spend your time only with run-of-the-mill stuff.
Think about this question for a second: Is the upper limit of your mind lower than it used to be in college? If you do an honest audit of your content consumption, you’ll find the answer.
Conducting a Content Audit
First, I conducted a content audit: I took an honest look at the content I consumed on a daily basis. What do I read? What do I watch? What do I listen to? Who do I hang out with?
Then, I made a few rules: I would read fewer surface-level news articles and more long-form profiles. I would watch less reality TV and more documentaries. I would limit my conversations to 10% small talk and 90% substance
Finally, I made it practical. I deleted a few social media apps from my phone. I stopped mindlessly scrolling. I used Pocket and Notion to save interesting articles, podcasts, and video interviews I wanted to watch
If you go about your day without a content strategy, you run the risk of falling into an echo chamber full of one-sided opinions. On the internet, we are part of social media platforms that often confirm our existing beliefs. If you type a question into Google, you’re served the most popular queries
So how do you discover new content that will cultivate fresh new ideas?
Author Malcolm Gladwell says you need to create an environment that facilitates falling into intellectual rabbit holes.
Here’s how he suggests you do this: First, take a walk through towns or buildings that pique your curiosity and notice things you haven’t noticed before. Next, go to the library, identify books you’ve liked reading in the past, and look around them on the shelf to discover something new. Finally, look at the footnotes in books or articles because they often lead you to other sources that can help you learn the subject more intimately.
When it comes to your brain, you need to get off autopilot
Choosing What You Inject into Your Mind
After conducting a content audit as outlined in the previous section, start with rearranging your physical environment to make it more conducive for generating ideas. When I spoke with James Clear, he told me that he had 17 books on his desk. I try to sprinkle good sources of information all around, he says.
He has books on his desk, next to his bed, and on top of the coffee table in the living room. I’m never far from a good idea, he said. Most of them aren’t mine, but they’re always there for me to build upon and soak up and think about and iterate on. That’s how I think about optimizing my environment for having good ideas.
Remember, ideas are the lifeblood of human progress—and those ideas aren’t typically found in the mainstream. As author Haruki Murakami said, If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
Bits of Genius
If ideas are the lifeblood of human progress, have you ever thought about what idea you embody? Our identity can be easily overlooked
Chapter 10: Discovering Your
Here’s a mind-bending fact: Biologically speaking, the person you are today is not the person you were in your childhood. Most of your body parts have regenerated over the years—the lining of your stomach renews every few days, your bones every decade
In his TED Talk, psychologist Dan Gilbert makes the following observation: Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished. The person you are right now is as transient, as fleeting and as temporary as all the people you’ve ever been. The one constant in our lives is change.
In other words, it’s possible to be the creator of your identity—the person you are today does not have to be the person you become tomorrow.
After studying the paths of so many successful people, there’s one question left to answer: What does your own hidden genius look like? And how can you unlock it?
Rejecting Labels
Sometimes, we voluntarily label ourselves, and sometimes society labels us. When we do it, labeling can act as a compass to our values. When someone else does it, a label can be a lifelong prison sentence.
In the 1930s, linguist Benjamin Whorf proposed the hypothesis of linguistic relativity. He believed that the words we use to describe what we see are not mere labels: they actually end up determining our reality and view of the world
Reclaim and reframe the labels society has attached to you.
We can move past labels by starting to see the world through what I call a curiosity filter, an outlook driven by asking questions and listening with purpose.
Remember, every time you slap a label on someone without being curious about their experience, you filter what you see. You make your world smaller, simpler, and less reflective of reality. As novelist Toni Morrison once wrote, The definitions belong to the definers, not the defined.
Realizing Who You Are Not
Francis Ngannou is the heavyweight champion of the world. In mixed martial arts circles, he’s known as the baddest man on the planet, and that’s for good reason.
In order to understand who you are, you must first understand who you are not.
Once he vowed to do things differently, Ngnannou began embodying a version of his ideal self. He knew he wanted to be a professional athlete, so he began behaving like a professional athlete. In Cameroon, people drink a lot of beer. A lot, he says. But because I had a dream of becoming a boxer, I wanted to get myself ready to get disciplined even though I had never seen a gym in my life.
And finally, Ngannou did what all successful people do: They bet on themselves.
Because of the winding and unpredictable nature of his life, Ngannou has learned one thing: He gives himself permission to fail because he knows he has the skills necessary to course-correct. I know that if I fail, I can start over and over and over and over. I have that skill, and you can take everything from me, but you cannot take that.
It may sound simple and straightforward, but few people have the courage to do what Ngannou has done
Once we’ve reached a certain level of success, we get comfortable and complacent. We wrap our identities around jobs, relationships, and material possessions—all things we could lose. Over time, we begin to trust ourselves less, and leave our destinies in other people’s hands
It’s the one thing preventing us from unlocking our own hidden genius: We are scared to bet on ourselves
Betting on Yourself
At the top of my list of biggest pet peeves is the question, What’s your five-year plan? Not because it’s a bad question and not because it comes from a malicious place, but because nothing ever turns out exactly how we plan it. At least it hasn’t for me.
You are most powerful when you tie your identity to your own name
Remember, there is no bad time to bet on yourself. Start a newsletter, a passion project, or a new venture that lets you tie your identity to something that actually matters—your own name. Nothing is more liberating.
As a wise philosopher named Beyoncé once said, I don’t like to gamble, but if there is one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.
Bits of Genius
Conclusion
How do i define success? That’s the question that changed the trajectory of my life. In January 2020, I was riding the subway home from my job at Fortune magazine when I read the Anna Quindlen quote mentioned in the last chapter: I am successful on my own terms. Because if your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all.
The truth was that I didn’t feel successful on my own terms. I still saw success as a measure of status, money, and achievement. I didn’t realize that the universal hidden genius across many of the exceptional people I had studied was this: Success is personal.
To actor Matthew McConaughey, success looks entirely different. For him, it’s the measurement of five things: 1) fatherhood, 2) friendships, 3) career, 4) being a good husband, and 5) the state of his mind, body, and spirit.
But I like to think of true success as the result of challenging but meaningful work.
The myth of the overnight success is just that—a myth. There are many ways to define success and even more ways to attain it, but the key ingredient to fulfillment is action
As Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said, There’s a huge distance between success and failure, and only a few actions that move you from one to the other.
Below, I’ve transformed the ten chapters into ten key questions that will help you discover your own hidden genius:
iBook Store
YouTube with the author