Step 1: Accept that you need to become a genius. Look
at the graph below. Where on the graph would you mark yourself if the
far left represented the ignorance of a new born baby and the far right
represented the genius of Leonardo Da Vince?
(Ignorance) 1—2—3—4— (Normal) —6—7—8—9—10 (Genius)
Okay, that was a trick. Without changing
your position on the graph replace the word “Ignorance” with “Insanity,”
and replace the word “Genius” with “Sane.”
The definition of the world “sane” is: “having or showing reason, sound judgment, or good sense.”
Think about a baby. Does a baby think or
act with sound reason, judgment and sense? No. If an adult acted like a 1
year old he’d be locked away in a mental institute. We’re all born
insane, and, our progress towards sanity doesn’t happen on its own.
Sure, as we grow up our brains develop and automatically make us more capable of
sanity, but we have to use that capability. In order to become truly
sane you’re going to have to consciously put forth a significant amount
of effort to using reason, sound judgment and common sense.
The reason this matters is because what
you know and how you think define how you experience reality; your mind
is your life. If you don’t consciously take responsibility for improving
your ability to reason then everything about your entire life will be
duller, weaker and uglier. The clearer you understand that the more
motivation you’ll have for striving to fulfill your mental potential.
The less you understand that the more likely you are to spend your life
sitting on your couch watching mindless television to distract you from
the emptiness of your reality.
Step 2: Accept that you’re capable of becoming a genius. There’s
a popular misconception that you’re either born a genius or you’re not.
Nobody has any proof of this. We just believe it because we’ve heard it
so many times and assumed that if so many people believe it then it
must have some basis in reality. Plus, it excuses us from the burden of
self-improvement and lets us get back to watching television without
feeling guilty about how stupid we are.
If you’re smart enough to graduate high
school then you’re smart enough to become a genius. Think about this.
How many song lyrics, movie characters, book titles, sports statistics,
telephone numbers and street names will you memorize in your life? How
many books/magazines/news articles/websites/blogs have you/will you
read? When you add it all up the number is astronomical even if you
score low on a traditional I.Q. test.
You’ll never reach the limits of your
mind. Therefore, the limits of your mental potential are defined more by
what you believe they are than what they actually are. You have the
potential to become a genius if you would only allow yourself permission
to become what you’re capable of becoming and dedicate yourself to
pushing yourself as far as you can go.
Step 3: Accept that you’re ignorant. At
first glance it seems I’m contradicting myself by saying that you’re
capable of becoming a genius but you’re also ignorant. However, as
you’ll soon see, this paradox makes perfect sense.
Everyone is born insane, and in order to
become a genius you have to grow into it, and the more room you give
yourself to grow the more you can grow. In step 1 we talked about people
who give up on the game before they start, but there are many, many
people who get a tiny bit of knowledge and believe they’ve reached the
peak of human potential. Then they spend the rest of their lives patting
themselves on the back and sticking their noses up at everyone else.
Ironically, since these elitists don’t believe they need to push
themselves any further they don’t. So they spend the rest of their lives
stagnating on the pillar they’ve set themselves on.
Step 4: Accept that everyone else is ignorant. Humanity
doesn’t have life figured out. Our entire history has been a slow
process of clueless adults raising clueless children. The younger
generation always takes it for granted their parents’ generation has it
all figured out. So children devote their lives to mimicking their
elders only to waste their lives re-enacting primitive, obsolete customs
invented by pompous monkeys.
Each generation a few rebels break out of
the autopilot setting their culture tries to force on them, and as a
result they learn something new about the world. Then they’re likely
ridiculed and possibly killed for going against the status quo, but if
their new knowledge stands the test of time then in a few generations
everyone will take that new knowledge for granted and mock their own
ancestors for being so dim-witted while they themselves are still living
their own lives on autopilot and mocking and killing
the forward thinkers of their own generation.
This is the environment you were raised
in as well. You’ll meet people on every street corner who will tell you
they have life completely figured out. If they know anything that you
don’t then they have something worth learning, but the moment you fall
hook line and sinker for somebody else’s answers is the moment you stop
growing and start living a subpar life.
Take everything you learn with a grain of
salt. Even if someone teaches you something that’s true it’s probably
still incomplete. Questioning people and their belief systems can only
help you arrive at a clearer perception of the truth. Blind faith can
only result in blindness.
Step 5: Develop a systematic plan to understand life. Imagine
it’s Sunday afternoon, and you don’t have to go to work, but you’ve got
a ton of errands and chores you need to get done. If you just wander
around the house and do a chore here and there when you just happen to
find yourself in a room that needs something done it’s going to take
forever to get all your chores done. Imagine driving around town
aimlessly and hoping you run across the store or business you need to
get something done at. You’ll never accomplish all your goals.
Becoming a genius (aka growing up, aka
becoming sane) is the same way. You’re not going to be able to wander
through life aimlessly, casually doing the things you feel inspired or
hungry to do and hope to make the most out of your mind or subsequently
your life. You need a written, step by step plan (preferably framed and
hanging on your mantle). Chances are you don’t have one of these, and
chances are you’re not going to make the most out of your mind and
subsequently your life.
Creating a systematic plan to understand
life sounds like a monumental task that can only be accomplished by the
greatest philosopher or prophet, but that isn’t the case. All you have
to do is figure out what’s most important in life (in descending order).
You can make all the excuses you want for why you can’t do that, but at
the end of the day all those excuses are going to accomplish is to keep
you from making the most out of your mind and subsequently your life.
Who told you that you couldn’t or shouldn’t take control of your life?.
At any rate, what did you think life was all about? This is it. This is
what life is about. This is what you’re supposed to do. Figuring out and
learning what’s important is the biggest part of growing up.
Step 6: Learn as much as you can.
How are you going to understand life if you can’t take someone else’s word for it? By learning as much as you can and reading for truth.
Most people don’t give themselves enough credit for how smart they
already are. Consider how much you know about movies, music, and
possibly sports. You’re probably a movie trivia genius. And how did you
learn so much about movies? By watching a little bit every week
(probably every day) for most of your life.
Even if you’ve wasted half your life
watching mindless television you still know more about the world than
anyone who was born 1000 years before you. Relative to them you’re
already the world’s greatest genius. You can become even more genius by
consciously learning a little more about important topics every day.
Step 7: Ask the right questions.
You might be able to cram enough
knowledge into your brain to win every quiz game in the world, but that
doesn’t make you a genius. What separates the savants from the geniuses
is meaning. Is the knowledge you possess and are the questions you ask
meaningful? Do your intellectual pursuits make a difference in the
world? Do they help people? Do they advance humanity? If not, then it
doesn’t matter how many credentials you have or how many people pat you
on the back. Your efforts are meaningless.
You don’t have to be smart enough to
figure out why E=MC2 to be a genius. The world doesn’t need 7 billion
astrophysicists anyway. We need geniuses from every walk of life. We
need people who can solve meaningful problems in the fields that they’re
suited for. Solve a meaningful question and that will be an exercise in
genius, but that doesn’t mean you can rest on your laurels for the rest
of your life. Just because you did something genius yesterday doesn’t
mean you’re a genius today. And just because you performed one stroke of
genius doesn’t mean that you’re a genius in every other facet of your
life. In fact, nobody is a full spectrum genius. Every genius is a
complete idiot in other ways.
Step 8: Question your answers. Let’s
suppose you questioned your personal beliefs and the foundations of
your culture and found them lacking. So you went back and rewrote the
rules and applauded yourself for fixing them. Then you lived the rest of
your life by those new rules and taught them to other people. The only
problem is you’re Anton Lavey, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot,
Timothy Leary or Charles Manson
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