Ozan Varol - Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

RUMI, THE WORMS WAKING

Dreams feel real when youre dreaming.

You find yourself in the middle of the action, unaware of how you got to where you are. You dont wonder how you regressed to your childhood or how you managed to grow wings and fly. Its only when you wake up that you realize you were dreaming.

Our lives work much the same way. Its hard to remember how we got to where we are, why we do what we do, and why we believe what we believe.

Think about it: How did you end up with the route you take to work every day? The way you brush your teeth? The side of the bed you sleep on? The way you take your coffee?

How did you adopt the beliefs you hold dear and the opinions that are so tightly woven into your identity? When was the precise moment in your life that you declared yourself to be a liberal, a conservative, or a fill-in-the-blank?

Which of these beliefs were truly your own choice? And which ones were implanted by your community, your schools, and your family?

Its hard to say.

We have little idea how we ended up here. We just know were here, so we keep going. We sleepwalk through life. We get stuck in our rehearsed way of operating in the world. We choose things out of habit, not desire. We reaffirm the same beliefs, think the same thoughts, and make the same choices that lead to the same outcomes.

In a very real sense, our past becomes our future. What we chose earlier dictates what we do today. We drag ourselves into the same predictable tomorrow by reliving yesterday.

We say that some people march to the beat of a different drummer. But implicit in this clich is that the rest of us march to the same beat . This is true to a disturbing extent. Were told from an early age not to cause a ruckus, to do what it takes to fit in without looking like were trying.

We become defined by beliefs that arent our own. We find ourselves on well-worn paths that were never ours to walk. We follow directions from other people who dont know us and who have no idea where we want to go. We color between the lines of sketches drawn by someone else.

As a result, we become a supporting actor in our own life.

Were conditioned to look for external patches to internal holesto trust strangers more than we trust ourselves. This conditioning works well for the self-help industry: The three principles of this or the five secrets to that are just a credit-card swipe away. Corporations and governments, empowered by increasingly sophisticated algorithms, know us better than we know ourselvesleaving us vulnerable to control and manipulation.

Deep down we know were destined for morethat we werent put on Earth to do what we often dobut we feel imprisoned by our unnatural indoctrination and programming. We become addicted to the reality we want to escape.

The price we pay for living in this world is betraying who we areand disconnecting from the genius within.

Inside you is a vast reservoir of untapped wisdom. You are made up of every experience youve had, every story youve heard, every person youve been, every book youve read, every mistake youve made, every piece of your beautifully messy human existence. Everything that makes you you a huge treasure waiting to be explored.

All that wisdom is concealed under the masks you wear, the roles you play, and the decades of social conditioning that have taught you to think like your teachers, to think like your parents, to think like your tribe, to think like influencers and thought leadersto think like anyone but yourself.

As a result, we become strangers to ourselves. Many of us go from birth to death without knowing what we really think and who we really are.

Heres the thing: No one can compete with you at being you. Youre the first and the last time that youll ever happen. If your thinking is an extension of youif what youre building is a product of your own geniusyoull be in a league of your own. But if you suppress yourself, if you dont claim the wisdom within, no one else can. That wisdom will be lost, both to you and to the world.

Think of humans as individual puzzle pieces that combine to build a beautiful collective. Each piece is important. Each piece is idiosyncratic. The puzzle cannot be completed with a billion corner pieces all of the same shape and color. What makes each piece different is also what makes it valuable to the collective. If you copy or conform to the other pieces, the world loses its full shape and color.