High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 491: Connect with Your Uniqueness

Episode Date: May 6, 2022

Many of us have gifts that we are not expressing to their fullest. We may not have reflected about what is unique about us, or we might have taken our own unique gifts for granted. We may have even overlooked or downplayed them. But when you name your gifts and work to find your Zone of Genius, you gain more excitement and energy to live your life on purpose. Dr. Kamphoff asks us to consider “What is in your Zone of Genius? How can you spend more time in that zone?” When you make the choice to do just that, you thrive. You spend more time doing what you love and what you were uniquely designed to do.  This Week’s Power Phrase: “I own my unique skills and talents. I engage in what I love.”  Quote of the Week: “Hard work doesn’t feel like hard work when you are doing what you love.” —Unknown 

Hi friends, my name is Dr. Sindra Kampoff, a national leader in the field of sport and performance psychology. Every week I'm on the local radio sharing my top tips on exactly how to develop the mindset of the world's best, so you can accomplish all your dreams. Get ready for a jammed, packed episode focused on practical tips to help you get after your goals and step out of your comfort zone. Let's go. Time to check in with Cinder Campoff this morning. And today's topic is how to connect

with your uniqueness. Cinder, you usually start us with a quote. I love this anonymous quote. It says, hard work doesn't feel like hard work when you're doing what you love. I've said that before in many interviews, you know, like it never feels like I'm coming to work, which is wonderful. So what inspired the topic? Well, this weekend, I was reading a book called The Zone of Genius or The Genius Zone by Gay Hendricks. And it's about finding what you love and spending more time doing what you love. And I think this is so important because it's so important to our happiness and our fulfillment to really spend time doing what

we love in our zone of genius. So what are you meaning by zone of genius? So your zone of genius is activities that you're uniquely designed to do. They're things that you love and you do best. And I think throughout our life, we get glimpses of our zone of genius activities. Sometimes we don't always pay attention. I think there's real consequences if we don't pay attention. But the key is to really find what those activities are and spend more time doing them. So are there other zones besides the zone of genius? Yeah. So Gay Hendricks actually talks about there's three other zones. So like the first

zone is called your zone of incompetence. And these are activities that you're just not good at. Other people can do them much better than you. There's a zone of competence, which is activities that you do well, but others do just as well. They can be draining because other people can do them much better than you. There's a zone of competence, which is activities that you do well, but others do just as well. They can be draining because other people can do them equally as well as you, and we can just feel like we're just kind of surviving in this zone. And there's a third zone called your zone of excellence. These are activities that you do really well, and even though you do them really well, it can kind of trap us because we're not really flourishing and getting outside of our comfort zone to our zone of genius. So can you give us an example of how this applies to our lives?

Yeah, I've seen this play out in many ways in really powerful ways. For example, one of my clients is a high-level manager at a Fortune 500 company. And she was having difficulties throughout her day just kind of planning it and being disciplined with her time. And she felt just really overwhelmed by all the things that she had to do. So ultimately, she was burnt out and needed to really take control of her time. So we outlined these different zones. And we found her zone of genius was things like developing a long-term vision for her division and really implementing it, making connections with other divisions and strengthening connections with high-level clients. And so what we were able to

do is several of her tasks that she was doing were not in her zone of genius. So she could ask for help or maybe delegate to other people. And ultimately, she felt calmer and more motivated because she was spending more time doing the things that really she was uniquely gifted at doing. Cinder, how do we find our zone of genius then? Well, you could ask yourself a few questions, such as, like, what do you most love to do? You know, that you love so much that you could do it for long periods of time without getting bored or tired. You could ask yourself, you know, what activities do you do that don't even seem like work?

You could do them for, you know, really long stretches of time. And then what are your unique abilities? So, you know, I've been trying to spend more and more time in my zone of genius. And I think my zone of genius includes delivering messages like this, speaking, doing one-on-one coaching, like things within my area of expertise. What do you feel like your zone of genius is, Lisa? I guess I would probably have to say the art of conversation with people because that's what I do for a living or connecting people and ideas. I never feel like I'm coming to work when I work. And I love that. Like I said earlier, I've often said that during interviews. And that must mean that I'm operating somewhere in my zone of genius. Absolutely. I was thinking you were also going to say emceeing, because I think

you're so incredible at that. Oh, well, thank you. Yeah, I mean, and things like that would make some people possibly nervous. Really, I don't have nerves doing that. So maybe directing a crowd like that. Being in charge, right? You look so confident. Yes, absolutely. I don't know about that all the time. Cinder, how do you summarize for us today? Well, I would say, you know, many of us have gifts we're not fully expressing. And so you may want to take a step back and think about what are you uniquely gifted at doing. And I think sometimes we overlook this and downplay it. But when you really name your gifts, you can work more on your zone of genius.

And I think you gain more excitement and energy for really your life's purpose. So I'm just going to encourage everyone to think about, you know, what are some activities in your zone of genius? And maybe, you know, how can you spend just a little bit more time doing that? Even if, you know, right now you're spending 15% of your time, maybe it's 5% more like 20% of your time. It doesn't necessarily have to be 100% of your time. You can take baby steps towards it.

But I think ultimately when you spend more time in your zone of genius, you spend more time doing what you love and what you're uniquely designed to do. I love it. What is this week's power phrase? I own my unique skills and talents, and I do the things I love. And, Cinder, how do we get in touch with you and follow along with your work? Yeah, you can head over to DrCindra, so D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A.com. And some of this, what I talked about today is actually from a chapter in my book called Beyond Grit. So you can find out

more information about my book over there. Way to go for finishing another episode of the High Performance Mindset. I'm giving you a virtual fist pump. Holy cow, did that go by way too fast for anyone else? If you want more, remember to subscribe and you can head over to Dr. Sindra for show notes and to join my exclusive community for high performers where you get access to videos about mindset each week. So again, you can head over to Dr. Sindra. That's D-R-C-I-N-D-R-A dot com. See you next week.