Accessing your inner genius 

When you embrace and live from your inner authority, you access your inner genius. And yet many of us suppress our inner authority and uniqueness through conformity – never unleashing the genius within.

Conformity (beyond respect for social kindness) subverts healthy evolution and ideas and locks up the genius in you.  Many people believe they are free thinkers, but they have simply absorbed the thinking of the masses and claimed those thoughts as their own.  Regardless of how true or not this is for you (it’s a spectrum) – the fact that your thinking is currently constrained is a fact.  And there is a positive in this – it means there are boundaries to cross over and new territories of consciousness and reality to explore.  What fun!

“Most people are not even aware of their need to conform. They live under the illusion that they follow their own ideas and inclinations, that they are individualists, that they have arrived at their opinions as the result of their own thinking—and that it just happens that their ideas are the same as those of the majority.” 

Erich Fromm

The opportunity is to explore your boundaries and break out of your current (because there will always be other, more expansive ones) self-imposed mental limits.  Life can be a great adventure of ongoing expansion and discovery – when we serve and follow our inner genius.

We all have genius.

The etymology of the word genius finds a relationship to our inner nature, innate ability or even a guiding spirit attending us from birth to death.  In Rome this guiding spirit was called a genius, in Greece, it was called one’s daemon.  To nourish, serve and respect one’s genius was essential to its life expression.

Our best life is lived in service to our genius, to that which has come to us to express in this life.

Don’t lock your genius in a bottle.

The magic inherent in expressing our genius or uniqueness can appear disruptive in a world that seeks to squash uniqueness in favour of the supposed stability of conformity.

You might even fear the unpredictable magical nature of your genius.  Much like the Jinn in Aladdin, we might try to keep our genius locked in a bottle out of fear of its power and potency to catalyse transformation.

And yet, there is no magic without your genius, only regret at lives not lived.

Generative Questions for Reflection and Conversation

• What is your relationship to your inner genius?
• How might you foster a closer relationship with your genius?
• How does conformity serve your true nature?  How does conformity restrict your true nature?
• What is the difference between ethics and morality?
• How do you discern between conformity that supports health and well-being in social relationships and conformity that subverts greater health?
• What rituals and practices could help you to listen more closely to your inner genius?
• What perspectives might help you open your thinking and release yourself from mental limits?

“What is called genius is the abundance of life and health”

Henry David Thoreau 

Recommendations for further reading

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert explores how to live a creative life and follow our inner muse.

1984 by George Orwell

If you read this book in earlier years perhaps it is time to read it again. 1984 deeply explores conformity and its impact on the inner genius of individuals and societies.

Have you read Leadership for the New Millennium yet?  It is all about living from your inner truth – the genius within.

The book is available in paperback, e-book, and audiobook (narrated by me).

Purchase here.

What are you going to do to serve your inner genius today? Join The New Millennium Leader Academy to unlock your inner genius and transform your inner experience of life.

It has been so much fun exploring Genius with you. Send your thoughts or reflections to alison@alisoncameron.com