Your World Within Podcast by Eddie Pinero - Where Is Your Genius?

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

"Everyone is genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its entire life believing it is stupid." - Mark Twain Everyone is a genius in something.  The question is, are you exerting your time and energy into the right things?  In today's episode we take a look at this question.  

Welcome to your world within daily. I'm Eddie Panero. In this episode, we're going to talk about Mark Twain's comment that everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid. So what does this mean? What is the essence of the statement? Well, I'll read it one more time. Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid. But basically the idea here and why it's funny, like there's confirmation bias in me looking at this quote because I'm like, ah, that was me, right? I can think of times in my life where I was a fish trying to climb a tree. And, you know, I have a hard time believing that there's a single person out there that didn't deal with it at some point. And the danger in not being aware of that is that you start to change or alter. the way you view yourself, right? You damage your sense of self-worth thinking that you're inadequate or you're not good enough. And it's like, yeah, have you asked the question whether you're exerting your energy the right way and the right place? It's such an amazing thing that

the, what should be the most obvious questions go unasked. You know, I talked about a little bit yesterday in a different realm. And it's the same thing here today. Like, are you asking? Are you asking the right questions. You know, it brings me back to, uh, to, to Daniel Pink's drive. You know, motivation 3.0. You know, if you incentivize the wrong way, you won't get the right result. It's, it's the intrinsic motivation that brings out the best in people, right? It's when the activity is the reward when you can get lost in something because two things happen. One, One, you're good at it. And two, you love it.

When you can find and marry those two things, that's when you get the best things for yourself, for the world. And we skip that. We skip that quite a bit. It's important at every level, obviously for self-esteem, but from a team management level. How often do you have people doing things that are not what they're best at? what their biggest bang for the buck is. It's an important question. So I wanted to, and actually I wanted to keep today's relatively short,

since I rambled on so long yesterday. But I thought that was important. Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. So number one, find out what you are. And if that's a fish, number two, find out where you need to be swimming.

But don't ever gauge your self-worth by, you know, your current situation and that feeling of inadequacy because you're not getting what you want. Tweek the circumstances. Change the game, right? Life, again, life is not this sort of strict, confined step by step, you know, instruction manual. It's meant for testing. It's a playground.

My most important year was trying things. That's why I allude do it so much. It was tough. It was stressful. There were times where I was insecure about the idea of not knowing what I was going to do or what I was going to be, but I learned so much.

I learned what I didn't like. I learned what I like, and I was able to double down on what I like. You know, that's a simplified story, simplified way of saying it, but I think everyone deserves that is entitled to that. I think everyone until they take the time, or let me rephrase that, no one until they take the time to ask themselves those questions can truly live because they

don't understand what they enjoy, what they're good at, where their passion lies. Like if you want to be the 5%, the 1%, if you want to be really good at something, you know, it has to be something that you're one, talented in, and two, you love it. Again, when you marry those two things, it's a powerful thing. So explore, check that out. And tweak the game, most importantly. I don't think we do that enough. I don't think that message gets out there enough. What is, does not have to be, right? What reality is reality because we've let it be reality. For better or worse. So move some pieces around. Change your environment, change your routine, change your habit, change something, small things. Because as our buddy Mark Twain says,

you are a genius. But that genius comes from a path and a process of self-discovery. All right. Have an amazing day, guys. I'll catch you tomorrow.