Why Genius Alone Won’t Get You Ahead! | @jarediffrig

You don't have to be the brightest, like have the highest IQ or whatever. You have innate talents that with your right position, you're going to be performing at a more exceptional level than the average human being in that position. But you're going to have to test and try and experiment and fail, but also study yourself.

Who were your mentors and inspirations? Getting this field of entrepreneurship?

Yeah, I mean, I have many. For leadership side, John Maxwell would be one. Tony Robbins was a huge one, my top one. I spent 1,447 hours with Tony. I've been to 14 different events, invested hundreds of thousands of dollars to learn from him, but he's amazing. Then others like Peter Diamandis for exponential thinking type deal. A lot of different marketing mentors like Perry Marshall and Russell Brunson and others, but Yeah.

Wow, that's a lot of people. And you mentioned you wrote the book The Genius Within. What made you write this book in the first place?

Yeah, I had a lot of great leaders, young rising stars I would call them, like yourself, that were very talented individuals that I was mentoring. And I was like, I quickly realized I couldn't guide, and it just felt disingenuous to me to tell people what to do without knowing who they were and where they're gifted. Meaning you listen to a lot of gurus and they kind of lay out their formula and their What's the pathway? Well, I think the formula is really different for every single person. And it's based on 4 main areas because I looked at, I remember I was mentoring a young guy who was in his mid-20s, Mike Boehner, very talented individual. And he was asking me for advice on his next steps in his career. And I was like, well, I can't tell you to do exactly what I did or what exactly what this guy did. It's really like, what are your talents? Where do you shine? Where are you amazing? Innate potential? And also, where are your weaknesses? So like, first category is 4 main categories. First category is your unique abilities. So now I have clients, when I'm doing a Zone of Genius day or go through my book, I go through 4 different categories. The first one, unique abilities, and have 5 different personality tests: Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, Wealth Dynamics— Wealth Dynamics shows you your natural pathway to build wealth— then Enneagram if you want, Kolbe Index, and a few others. So then you gather all these clues about who on earth you are, what on earth you're meant to do in terms of your talents, and then you look at the second filter or the second criteria, which is your defining life experiences. Like, you've had a different journey. You just shared before we hopped on, hey, grew up in Belgium, now you're in London or in England or Lancaster, sorry. And, you know, I've had these other moments. Like, I have now a core piece of my life experiences is helping my wife. Get on the other side of a deep depression and complex PTSD from childhood abuse. So now I help leaders do that because I feel deeply connected to that purpose and fits my skill set and talent and passion. So you look at those defining life experiences. So I'll go through the whole life trajectory of someone from birth until now, and you can gather clues about those pivotal moments that made you who you are. So that's the first two, and then the third and fourth is, you know, key relationships, who brings you life versus death. Like there's people in your life that you're like, man, I love, I feel inspired, I feel like I'm becoming more of who I am when I'm around that person. Or I hang out with those guys and I'm like, dude, I feel like, I feel like I'm dying. But you also have a cluster of people you already have relationships with. So like I had a cluster of bestselling authors as friends. So that was kind of a clue. Maybe I'm supposed to be in this author space. And then the last one is your values and passions. Like, what are you innately curious about? What are you innately passionate about? What are you drawn to? And then your values are like, what do you stand for? What do you stand against? It's really important to know both. And if you gather clues from all four of those areas, guess what? You're going to have clarity on a lot of your next steps.

And how do you come around figuring out these four key areas? Through experience?

Yeah, I just started like putting the pieces together and I realized no one had put all all those pieces together. And so I, I can— yeah, I genuinely felt— feel like I've created the most complete process ever created for finding your deepest area of genius. And then if, if you look at life, you will never find someone who succeeds at the highest level that is playing in the wrong position for long. So in other words, extraordinary results are predicated by people being in extraordinarily right positions. And you can see it in sports all day. Did you ever play sports?

Yes. Yes.

Would you play—

but judo, Muay Thai, but it's mainly individual sports.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So less the team sports. Well, basketball is really popular in the US, and if you are really short and not very strong, you're not going to be down low guarding the biggest guy on the court. That's just the exact wrong position. Right. So it's It's fairly obvious or more obvious in sports, but even like really smart people fuck it up in the sports landscape too, where they put together a team that was poorly assembled, where they had too many people that were too alike instead of having people that are complementary puzzle pieces that fit together.

That's interesting. So does everyone have a hidden genius in them?

Yeah, I think so. And you don't have to be the brightest, like have the highest IQ or whatever. You can have innate talents that with your right position you're gonna be performing at a more exceptional level than the average human being in that position. But you're gonna have to test and try and experiment and fail, but also study yourself. Socrates said to know thyself is the beginning of all wisdom. So again, people who put them— like, I look at the greats, and over in England, you know, you got Richard Branson. He really knows his strengths and he puts himself in the right position position and manages those weaknesses. He knows he sucks at managing operations and details, so he won't start another business— which, he's a great visionary and he's great at starting things and great at seeing opportunity— he's not going to start a business without having a great operating partner for that venture. That's just one of his self-discipline elements for knowing who he is.

It's all about knowing your weaknesses and your strengths and playing on that. That's very interesting. And you also mentioned how to overcome common genius blockers and habits that sabotage your dreams. What are some of those limiting beliefs?

Would be one that I break down in the book of like, do I really have what it takes? I grew up poor, so I'm destined to be poor. I didn't have any education, etc. You hear stories like that versus finding evidence for why you can become who you think you can become or why you do have the talent. To do XYZ. So limiting beliefs is a big one. Trauma is actually a massive one. Trauma is probably the biggest blocker. I didn't even write about it in my book because I hadn't studied it much. Now I really, really understand it. And you know what happens with trauma? Trauma is when emotion gets frozen in your nervous system because it's too overwhelming. So you have this little— like, one of my clients, she's got the number one copywriting channel in the world on YouTube.

Wow.

And guess what? When I was working with— I'm still working with her, actually do another session with her and her husband in a couple weeks. And one of the traumas that came up that she had totally forgotten about was when she was 3 years old, her little pet bunny got outside of their— of its cage at night. And she lives in Canada, so it's really cold. And so that little bunny froze to death that morning. So little 3-year-old— yeah, little Thumper. Little Thumper was frozen, and when she woke up the next morning, she's like, "Why is Thumper stiff?" Because he was stiff as a brick, you know, frozen.

God, I can't imagine. Wow.

Yeah, yeah. And so that trauma was frozen in her nervous system. She totally had forgotten about it. And then we had two other traumas that came up during the session, and that was starting to shut down her nervous system. Like, she was literally starting to break down. She was going to bed at 7 o'clock. She was angry all the time. And she had PTSD from an accident where she saw her beloved dog jump off a cliff chasing a deer and it breaks its back. And she was there, right? And then she had a medevac fly in an airplane across, you know, this pond type thing and all this crazy stuff. So it was a very traumatic, overwhelming day. And we released a lot of the overwhelming emotion and the trauma of that day. And then now she's— she showed up the next week in her business and she's like full of energy and full of creativity and full of joy again versus just dragging and just gritting it out. So yeah.