You, The Edison

Tapping Into Your Genius

If you were Edison, how would you approach challenging problems ?

It depends.

If you were Edison, and you were working on a problem that was well within your intellectual abilities, you would continue to do what you probably do on a regular basis - analyze, study, research, think, discuss, document, iterate – and get to the solution.

However, if you were Edison, you would do something totally uncanny when you figured out that you have reached your wit’s end and you need a new shipment of fresh ideas. This is what you, the Edison, would do on hitting a dead-end :

You would take a power nap, and get into a state called the “hypnagogic” state. Hypnagogia is the state of consciousness just prior to falling asleep. This is the state of mind most suited for auto-suggestions and creative thoughts.

You would get into this power nap, perhaps in a seated manner, with your two hands by the sides of the chair, each hand holding a steel ball. Right below the hands you would have kept two metal saucers. As you would fall deep asleep and reached a point of dozing off, the balls would fall off your hands into the saucers making a loud clankering noise that would wake you up. You would then quickly grab a pad and a pencil, and jot down the memories of whatever you were thinking at the point of waking up.

Later, when you were wide wide awake, you would go through these notes, try to connect them to the questions you were seeking answers to, record the inights, and plan for the future course of action in your problem-solving process.

Edison did this for decades, three times every day and it is not difficult to believe that with such consistency, he must be a total adept at remembering the thoughts that passed through his mind between the wakefulness and the sleep state.

Edison's statue at Fort Myers, Florida, honours the memory of Edison with respect to his naps, hypagogia and steel balls by displaying a steel ball in the fist of the statue.

Every genius and super-achiever has had a personal go-to technique that served as their methods for supercharging their peak performance.

Everybody loves good fairy tales

This anecdote might come as a shot from the blue. This is not what we remember Edison for. Edison is most well-known for two of his quotes :

a)??????The one he told a reporter who asked him about his 10,000 failed attempts while creating an electric?bulb – “I learnt 10,000 ways of how not to create an electric bulb”.

b)?????The famous definition of “genius” – "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration".

These anecdotes create an image of Edison as a lone worker, living permanently in his laboratory, moving from one experiment to another all the time, without feeling disappointed or discouraged at the failures.

Consider this : how many hours do you think it would take to conceive, plan and execute one experiment towards inventing a light bulb ?

How long would it take to carry out 10,000 such experiments?

How many years would have Edison taken to conduct 10,000 failed experiments ?

These are not the questions you are supposed to ask when somebody reads out a good motivational quote to you. Such motivational quotes make for good journalism, good "quote" collection, good motivational speaking, and good pep up talks. Through these quotes, a teacher would love to sing paeans to Edison’s commitment, discipline, sincerity, hard-work, dedication, patience, perseverance, and what you may – notwithstanding the fact that Edison’s own teachers had massive contempt for him. Nor is any current day teacher likely to have any word of encouragement for a student who tried hatching eggs by sitting on them, as Edison did as a child.

Much of what we are told about the greatness of the greats make good folk-lore and gripping urban legends. I wouldn’t mind anyone chiming such folk-lore to emotionally rouse their audience, but for one very strong objection.

Such myths alienate us from the geniuses, and we fail to benefit from their real skills. Their real skills remain hidden from us and we keep trying to emulate the fluff.

Such myths make the geniuses appear to have such unbearably boring characteristics and unlivable lives, that no one in his right minds would want to be anywhere close to becoming a genius.

Is it worthwhile spending your precious life conducting 10,000 failed experiments to create a light bulb? Even if you learnt 10,000 ways of how not to create a bulb, as per the famous Edison's quote, how would this knowledge enrich our lives in any way ? It's far more worthwhile to rush for the next movie or grab that next peg of whiskey.

The way geniuses have been presented to the world, our ordinary lives appear far more enriching than the lives these geniuses lived. These do not inspire anyone to want to become a genius.

The genius "touch"

However, the geniuses were not such drab and dead people. They didn’t lift themselves by their shoelaces and carry themselves to work day in and day out. They didn’t numb their emotions so as to move from one failed attempt to another.

Geniuses were fueled by great passion. It was the surge of inspiration that drove them from one idea of another.

How do we feel when we get a bright idea ? It may not be a world-changing idea. It may be something very silly. For example, you may just be bothered about how to find a way to watch a movie amidst a very tight schedule at work. You are stuck on this thought, discussing with your group of friends, and not able to find a way out. And then, suddenly, you get a brilliant idea of what to tell your boss and slip off the office.

The moment this idea strikes - and everyone else agrees to the idea- it brings a surge of exhilaration to all involved. Not because of what the idea may fetch for you, but because the process of a bright idea emerging in our neurology itself is a fascinating, inspirational experience.

Any bright idea, big or small, gives us a very expansive feeling. An idea evolves in our neurology as a result of the formation of a large number of synaptic connections, and in turn results in the secretion of many happy hormones and a gush of adrenaline.

Getting an inspired bright idea energizes and rejuvenates us at all levels of our existence.

That is what geniuses experience all the time – brilliant flashes of insight and inspired ideas – which fill their bodies and brains with a surplus of the right kind of hormones. While they appear to the rest of the world as carrying an array of tedious and insipid personality traits, geniuses are actually manifestations of a hyper-surge of inspiration and a hyper-active mind. The flashes of insight give them addictive kicks, that make them yearn for more.

What, then characterizes a Genius ?

In addition to an enhanced intellectual capability, there are 3 factors that characterize a Genius :

(a)???They acknowledge the limitation of their conscious capabilities.

(b)??They acknowledge the presence of an infinite reservoir of abilities within themselves.

(c)???They have found a hack to tap into this infinite reservoir of abilities and extract ideas at will.

That's what helps them accomplish far more than their conscious intellectual abilities.

What would happen if we believed that we should only carry as much luggage that we can lift ?

If we restricted ourselves with this limitation on our physical ability, we wouldn’t be able to carry much on our trips and travels.

However, we know that with the use of the right “technology”, what we can lift is immaterial and doesn’t influence how much luggage we can carry with us. By putting wheels to our suitcases, and tugging the luggage in trolleys, we can carry far more than we can lift.

In this case, we use our physical strength not to lift the luggage, but to move the contraption that is doing the carrying for us.

That is precisely what differentiates a genius from us.

We restrict ourselves to our perceived capabilities. When we reach the end of our conscious abilities, we feel it is time to pack up and go home.

On the other hand, when a genius hits the end of his conscious abilities, he taps into the infinite reservoir of abilities, and extracts ideas and thoughts that move him forward.

In this stage, a genius uses his conscious intellectual ability not to think of the solution directly, but to manage the process of tapping into his infinite intellectual reservoir which in turn provides him the solution.

All geniuses have had their own secret “technologies” to tap into their infinite potential. They had their own metaphorical wheels and trolleys to carry far more than what they could lift. They had discovered, either by design or by accident, ways to create much more than what their perceived limited abilities would allow them to.

A very large number of these are well-documented and pretty well-known – but not popular – because they do not make sufficiently interesting, emotional or gripping stories.?

In our future articles, we would explore a lot of such geniuses and their secret hacks into the subconscious.

Everyday Genius - Thinking Thoughts vs Receiving Thoughts

Can we utilize these revelations to bring a genius touch to our every day tasks ?

If you ever get a chance to experience a ReInvent seminar, you would get a first-hand experience in exploring the intricacies of how our minds creates thoughts. It is a fascinating journey to discover how thoughts are created and organized, how they emerge into our consciousness, and how they evolve to a bright idea. An understanding of our mental ecosystem allows us to learn how to manoeuvre our ways through the world of accelerated learnings, creative ideas and innovative solutions.

However, even at a very simplistic level, it is not very difficult to be aware that we can broadly classify thoughts into two categories :

(a)???Thoughts that we “think”

(b)??Thoughts that we “receive”.

Thoughts that we “think” at a conscious level are primarily those thoughts that pertain to analysis, logic and reasoning. We start with a familiar information, and process them step by step to create new thoughts by executing simple transformations on the thoughts at hand.

This thinking process requires mental effort, tires you out, and causes a lot of stress. This thinking mechanism is applicable in domains where we are dealing with familiar concepts, and all we need is some analysis, some computation, some reasoning, some checks and balances. Much of what we do on a day to day basis may be well taken care of by this approach.

However, this mode of thinking CANNOT be used for solving complex problems, especially those requiring new ideas, creative thinking or innovative solutions.

Thoughts that we “receive” come from a deeper source than our?conscious thinking mind. Receiving thoughts is an effortless, but a very inspiring and exhilarating experience.

Contrary to what we may expect, studies show that in the most inspired creative state (referred to as the "Flow" state), the brain activities are minimal.

The mechanism of "receiving" thoughts energizes and excites us. Instead of tiring us out, it literally lights us up and expands our consciousness. At a biological level,it secretes happy hormones. This is how creative thoughts are generated. These creative thoughts could pertain to our every day tasks, giving us brilliant directions on how to organize our work well, enhance our productivity in small little ways, or it could pertain to innovative disruptive ideas for creating new corporate strategies.

Role of the Conscious Thinker

The conscious mind plays an important role in the process of "receiving" thoughts as well, but not as of an active thinker. The role of the conscious mind, in this case, is to create the right environment and channels for the thoughts to be received.

To give a real-world analogy - in the process of "receiving" thoughts, the conscious mind plays the role of a brilliant and inspirational team leader, who is backed by a team of bright professionals (the subconscious mind) who actually execute the task at hand.

If the conscious mind interferes too much with the subconscious mind, or tries to play the role that is designated for the subconscious to play, it hampers the process of “receiving” thoughts, as much as a micro-manager would hamper the productivity of his team by interfering too much or trying to execute those tasks that he doesn't have proficiency in, simply because of a lack of trust.

This is the secret of transforming “ordinary” thinking into "genius" thinking.

The process of "receiving" thoughts enlivens us and rejuvenates our mind. A mind that indulges solely in the process of "thinking" thoughts is very likely to burn-out and end up in a mental fatigue. This is the rampant cause of below-par performance in professionals who only carry out mundane tasks.

Inspirare - the Divine Guidance

The idea of “receiving” thoughts is not a modern day invention. Ancient Greeks, as early as 500 BC, believed that the inspiration for originality came from heavenly creatures – the "Muses" – who were regarded as supervisors of human creativity. The process of someone getting a bright original idea was referred to as “being kissed by the Muse”. The creative process required the creator to create the right "environment" for being kissed by the Muse.

Socrates wrote that inspired thoughts originate with the gods. He defined “inspired thoughts” as ideas that come to a person when he is not being rational, but he is “besides himself” and “bereft of his senses”. According to him, the gods take away reason before bestowing the gift of inspiration. Hence, according to Socrates, “thinking” might actually prevent the reception of inspired revelations.

In the context of the modern psychology, this symbolizes the roles of the conscious and the subconscious levels of mind. In a thinking process, the responsibility of the conscious mind is to create the right environment and wait, so that the subconscious mind gets the opportunity to organize itself, connect dots, and weave thoughts into a flash of creative insight, that can be received by the conscious mind.

Thinking is at its best when it is executed as an orchestration between the conscious and the subconscious minds, each playing its own part, without interfering with each other's task.

That’s how we can bring a touch of genius to our everyday activities.

Creating the 21st Century Edition of Edison

What would imbibing a "touch of genius" in our everyday thinking mean for us ?

What impact could the skill of "receiving thoughts" have on our professional skills ?

Much of the struggle at our work arises not just because of the complexity of the problems we are dealing with. Much of the struggle is an indicator that we are over-relying on our conscious thinking skills. The result of a conscious thinking process is always a linear, incremental idea which might seem to be the solution to what we are seeking, since it seems to rationally deal with all the issues we want to deal with, the reality could be otherwise.

There is a very short limit to the depth of thinking that can be attained with conscious thinking. While the solution we so receive might seem to do the job, it might actually be addressing only the symptoms without getting anywhere close to the root of the problem.

When we master the art of "receiving" thoughts, we learn to trust and make use of the infinite computational power of our subconscious.

The subconscious mind can take into account thousands of parameters and connect millions of dots and provide us a solution instantly that genuinely addresses the root causes of our challenges.

Contrary to what has been instilled in us about the geniuses and their overworked lives - to feel the touch of a “genius” is to live an inspired, passionate life. Mankind has always known the distinction between ordinary thoughts and inspired thoughts.

We could either be completely reliant on the conscious, ordinary thinking and presume that this is all that our mind has to offer us. Or, we could learn to dive deep within ourselves and explore that what appears to be a shallow, limited lake is actually a profound, deep ocean with infinite treasures to offer to those who care to take the plunge.

What did Edison really say about his failed attempts ? Did he really conduct 10,000 experiments to create a light bulb ?

What did Edison really say about the genius-ratio ? Was 1%-99%?a fixed inspiration-perspiration ratio, or was Edison willing to negotiate about it ?

What skills and practices can we integrate in our lives to live an inspirational and innovative life as Edison ?

How can one create the right environment for being kissed by the Muse ?

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle” – Albert Einstein.

Next Article : Science vs Creativity.

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