It’s no secret that I’m a big fangirl of author, life coach and speaker, Martha Beck. I did my life coach training under Martha and her stuff is so good that I never read the sales page before buying it. Martha is an example of true genius, and these days she’s sharing her own secrets on how to unleash your inner genius. She’s put together this really great 9min video with a few practical tips on unleashing your genius. They’re not the usual stuff we were taught in school (and in true Martha style they’re not presented in the boring and serious way of most formal education), about how to learn and how to be intelligent and so on. I’ve made a few notes for you of some of the big take-aways I got.

Original video available from Gina Rudan on youtube.com

Relaxing into a problem is the beginning of genius

Genius is all about problem-solving, and so you have to actually have a problem if you want to tap into your genius. Most of us view having problems as a bad thing, and we use the presence of problems in our life as a stick with which to beat ourselves and tell ourselves that the fact that we have problems is evidence that we’re failures. Martha has a totally different take on problems – she sees problems as the only way to develop and demonstrate your genius. When you see it like that, problems become something to be thrilled about and grateful for!

This fascinates me, and while Martha doesn’t say so, I’m pretty sure that this subtle re-frame of the idea of problems is actually pretty key to her genius. When you think problems are a bad thing, it’s easy to get stress about it, and stress literally changes the way we think and makes us more narrow-minded, able to take in less information, more focused on threats and unaware of opportunities, and less able to think creatively. When you go into a problem-solving situation relaxed and happy, you’ll be more resourceful and have better quality thinking, so you’re much more likely to come up with an innovative solution.

Pin-pointing your problem will allow you to direct your genius

In school we were given a specified problem that someone else had already described for us, and asked to solve it. In the real world, it’s much messier and more complicated and we can feel like “things aren’t going well” and yet not be entirely sure what the specific problem is. And often we’re walking around with a vague sense of discontent, but because the problem makes us feel bad when we think about it, we try not to think about it and then it stays a vague “thing” that we can’t really tackle and transform because it’s so slippery and non-specific.

Articulating your problem specifically is half of the work done, when it comes to problem-solving, because then you’re able to ring-fence the issue and apply more focused thinking to solve the problem. So ask yourself what part of the situation is a problem for you. The ask yourself, “Why is this a problem for me?” and then ask yourself, “What results do I want to eliminate or change, and what is it I want instead?”

Struggle is an essential part of the problem-solving process of using your whole mind

Struggle is when you’re trying and trying and trying and it’s just not working. And you get to feeling stuck and frustrated and tired. I’m sure you know that feeling. Nobody likes the feeling of struggling, so we avoid it. And we often assume that if we’re struggling, we must be failing and failure is bad, so we beat ourselves up and feel bad about it all.

But Martha suggests you should delight in the struggle, because it’s an essential first step in the process of unleashing your genius. First you try and try and try to figure it out with your left-brain-directed, analytical and logical thinking that’s great for labeling and categorizing problems it’s familiar with, and analyzing the steps and procedures for situations that can be dealt with in a linear way. But if it’s a problem you’ve never encountered before – a problem that requires a leap of imagination or the dreaming up of new possibilities, then your left-brain-directed thinking won’t be able to solve the problem and that’s when your left-brain will be willing to kick the problem over to your right-brain-directed thinking.

Because your right-brain-directed thinking is non-verbal, you won’t be aware that you’re continuing to work on the problem, but at this stage, the best thing to do is to stop trying to solve the problem consciously and do something else entirely. This helps with giving your left-brain permission to back off and let your right-brain do it’s thing. Go for a bath or a walk, or whatever else pleases you. While you’re off doing something unrelated, that’s often when your right-brain will make a connection and pop the answer back over into your conscious awareness.

But the whole process of getting your left-brain to be willing to pass the problem over to your right-brain starts with the struggle, and is sealed when you take a break from the problem. So embrace the struggle and remember to also take breaks between the struggling!

Chaos and diversity are crucial to the process of unleashing your genius

This might seem totally counter-intuitive, because most of us were taught in school that we must keep our workspace neat and tidy, and that we must stop “day-dreaming” and work in a very focused way. And there is a stage where focus is useful – the part where you’ve found your solution and you need to focus on implementing the solution. But the process of generating an innovative solution is stimulated by exposure to diversity and disorder.

So think of an area of your life where you’re dissatisfied and specify the problem. Then go and do a bunch of totally unrelated stuff: surf unrelated websites, read unrelated books, watch unrelated TV shows, or go for a bath or walk. This jumble of diverse ideas stimulates right-brain-directed thinking and the right-brain will begin to work at making connections between the seemingly unrelated ideas, as it loves to do. And that’s when you’ll find surprising, interesting, innovative solutions.

Fail frequently

Some problems can be figured out on paper or in your head, but most problems need to be tested in reality because there are things we can learn by taking action that we could never learn by just thinking about the problem. People tend to highlight their accomplishments – nobody likes to share their failures, so it’s easy to believe the illusion that genius is a smooth-sailing, easy process, when actually most of the time, as Max also highlighted, it involves much more failure than success and lots of chaos and messiness. Martha suggests you get your idea out into the real world and test it, knowing it’ll probably fail, and then be willing to adjust and test again, over and over again, until you’ve failed your way to success.

So in summary…

Go out and be thrilled when you hit on a problem, look the situation in the eye and figure out exactly what part of it is a problem for you, then struggle, struggle, struggle, then take a break and do a bunch of totally unrelated stuff, get an innovative idea popping into your head when you least expect it, go and test the idea in the real world and fail, fail, fail… until you hit on the genius idea that works and totally shifts your life (and perhaps the whole world) to a whole new level.

Want to learn more about using your whole mind and unleashing your genius?

Check out the Bottom-line on Dan Pink’s “A Whole New Mind.”

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