Practical Genius is a Choice

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses you.

—Buckminster Fuller

Gina Rudan’s Practical Genius is designed to re-genius you. Gina says we all have the capacity for what she terms, practical genius. It is the “kind of practical, street-level, everyday genius that can change the game for you, your business, and every aspect of your life.” Practical genius is a choice.

So many of us are unconsciously compromising some of our greatest natural assets because of external factors, past hurts, or current fears. Or, even worse, we have sacrificed our skills, strengths, and passion to the expectations and influence of others. Or we’re consciously hitting the snooze button, rolling over and going back to slept every time we’re reminded how far from feeling happy and fulfilled we are in our work and personal lives.

In order to identify and leverage both the hard and soft unique personal assets we all possess, Gina has created a 5-step plan:

Step 1: Identify Your Genius. Through a series of reflective exercises you identify your hard assets—skills, strengths and expertise—and your soft assets—passions, creative abilities and values. Where these strengths intersect is your own unique practical genius lies. “Reach to the farthest edges, the fringes of your curiosities, and spend some serious time there.”

Step 2: Express Your Genius. You must actively and purposefully tell your story. Without visibility, you’re compromising your impact. “A person without a story is invisible.”

Step 3: Surround Yourself with Genius. You are who you walk with. Relationships are choices not accidents. Identify others of your “tribe” that can help you amplify your genius. To build a tribe that feeds, supports, and roots for you, you have to feed, support, and root for them.

Step 4: Sustain Your Genius. Find what fuels you. Consider your routines and practice those that keep you healthy, productive, and prosperous. In addition to food, exercise and sleep, “do one thing every day that represents a conscious effort to expose yourself to the extraordinary instead of the ordinary, the profound instead of the pedestrian, the breathtaking instead of the mind-numbing.”

Step 5: Market Your Genius. Live and work at the intersection of all your assets. Project your paradox. “Market the scholar alongside the fool. The entrepreneur alongside the philosopher. The conservationist alongside the game designer.” Know your audience and build relationships with them.

Everyone has practical genius, but it’s up to you to find it, put it to work, and watch it change your life. So much of what we do in life numbs us. Rudan’s approach to life will help you turn that process around.

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Posted by Michael McKinney at 05:48 PM
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