- You've probably heard the phrase,
"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life."
And you've probably questioned that statement quite a bit.
It's easy to say not as easy to follow through on.
One thing that I think gets us a lot closer
to that possibility is understanding our zone of genius.
Yes, even you have a zone of genius.
I know it can be hard to believe.
Sometimes we get so caught up in our heads like,
I don't feel like a genius.
So where exactly would that zone be located?
There's a combination of some things
that can help you understand
what the purpose of your life here might be.
And I think when we figure that out, we get a lot closer
to understanding what it means to never work
a day in your life.
Zone of genius is something that a lot of people
have talked about.
And actually you can read about it in a great book
called "The Big Leap" by Gay Hendricks.
And in that book, he talked about four zones
that we tend to play in.
Top would be your zone of genius.
Just under that is where a lot of people
spend most of their time.
And that is in the zone of excellence.
Now the zone of excellence might feel pretty comfortable.
You might even think you're in your zone of genius sometimes
when you're in your zone of excellence,
but there is a small difference.
When you're in your excellence, you have talent and skills
and you're pretty incredible.
But those things that you have talent and skills in
don't give you energy.
Where when you're in your zone of genius,
you look forward to the things
that you have the ability to do, the talents,
the skills, the passions.
So there's a big difference there, where you are good at,
where you get lots of compliments for being incredible.
Do you feel something inside of you
that's like, yeah, but I don't love it.
Well, that's in your zone of excellence.
And so we're getting closer, but we're not there.
The other two zones, obviously places
we don't wanna spend as much time but we do.
We sometimes have to be there.
Zone of competence and zone of incompetence.
Zone of competence is stuff you're good at
but lots of other people are better.
Incompetence is just stuff you suck at.
So knowing these zones, you can start to go, okay, well,
I wake up in the morning and I start with a job
that is absolutely only in my zone of competence.
And so maybe that's where we can start to deduce
what is missing from the fulfillment of your life.
And therefore, why you do feel like you work
every day of your life.
Let's go for the top.
Let's go for zone of genius.
Here are a couple of questions to ask yourself
when it comes to figuring out where this is.
First, what work do you so love doing
that it doesn't seem like work?
You love it so much you would do it for free.
Please just tell me everything will be taken care of
and I will spend all my time on this.
The second question to ask is,
what aspects of your work
generate the highest ratio of positive results
compared to time spent?
So what is it that is making the most happen
advantageously in your life
but you're probably only spending a small percentage
of your time on it, if you're lucky,
you're spending a large percentage of your time on it.
That's the goal.
Your zone of genius has a very specific purpose.
And that is to help you when you're lost.
You start to understand what you need to say no to.
You do not need to pay for other people to feel comfortable
with your own happiness.
We need to hang onto that happiness,
we need to use it for ourselves.
It is going in our tank for use.
So how do we figure out what that zone of genius is?
Well, at the end of the day,
what do you do better than anyone else?
What is so specific about you
that you do better than anyone else?
And that combination comes from a few things.
First, your passions.
What do you love?
What do you love so much
you would love to do it all the time?
We talked about that, but also what skills do you have?
Your skills are those tools that you pull out
whenever you need them.
Some skill of mine that is not in my zone of genius
but it is in my zone of excellence is video editing.
It was just sort of something that came with the territory
when I started making videos for the internet.
I needed to edit them myself.
I'm pretty darn good at it after 10 years.
I'm not great, I'm not a professional,
and it doesn't give me energy
but it is a skill.
We learn skills through practice and training
and something we do over and over and over and over again.
What skills do you have that contribute
to your zone of genius?
So while video editing is in my zone of excellence,
it's a skill that I can still leverage in my zone of genius
because I know how I want the final product to be done.
And I can speak a lot more intelligently to someone else
who is helping me to complete the final product,
a actual video editor.
Then there's your talents.
The things that you are good at,
the things that you stand out for.
People are very likely to compliment you on your talents.
Something that really shows how you're special,
something that you have over a lot of other people
one of mine happens to be communicating.
Sometimes I'm great at it, sometimes I'm terrible
but what I am very good at is public speaking.
And that's something that not a lot of people enjoy.
Actually some might choose death over public speaking,
but it's something that I have developed as a talent,
being able to communicate to an audience on stage.
What helps to elevate you to stand out in your talents?
The fourth category I wanna mention for your zone of genius
is one that was inspired by Elaine Welter Roth.
And she added this fourth category.
I'd never heard zone of genius talked about with this.
And I thought it was really brilliant
and something that matters a great deal.
And that is to add to your talent, your skills
and your passions, the intersection of your values.
What matters to you more than money,
what matters to you more than anything in the world.
And why is that?
That I think continues to differentiate you even more.
And that makes your zone of genius even more special.
When we can spend time really doing things
that reflect in our personal values,
that's just another level of fulfillment
that I think many of us are searching for.
If you're trying to figure out why maybe every day
is not something to look forward to,
if you're trying to figure out what it is
that makes you special, maybe these categories
can help you to wrap your head around that.
It's so important that you know what you love.
I actually really hate the phrase, "Find your passion now,"
because someone's telling you
that you don't know what you love.
And you actually probably really do
if you weren't so busy preemptively judging it.
Find out what you love,
ask people what you are talented at
and that you've lost sight of,
look at the skills that you've built out
over your career or your life,
things that you've learned from a lot of repetition
and doing the work.
And then think about what you believe
and think about what's important to you,
and look at all of those and develop an idea
of how you could best use your time
with each of those areas.
It's going to be a big challenge
to spend time in your zone of genius all the time,
but at least we know where it is,
when we have the opportunity to spend time there,
and fully realize how we can build out more ways
to spend time there.
If we just keep saying, I don't know what I love,
I don't know what to do,
I dunno what to do with my life,
we're just continuing to drill into our heads
what we don't know.
And that is not helpful.
That is not genius,
that is ordinary.
I am going to give you a challenge for this video.
It's the text message challenge.
I want you to reach out to people that you know.
It could be family, it could be friends,
it could be colleagues, it could be coworkers,
it could be mentors, it could be your coach.
And I want you to ask them this question,
if you had to pick one thing that I am better at
than anyone else you know personally, what would it be?
Sounds a little cheesy, right?
But we have a network for a reason
and it is to ask for their help.
And in the journey of finding out more about yourself,
I think the people that know you would love to know
that they can contribute to that.
That's all for today.
Thank you so much for tuning in. I appreciate it as always.
Remember, subscribe for good vibes,
kiss the ones you love,
and go after the life you want.
Cheers.
Okay, let's get through this one.
Don't mind my wrinkled shirt.
That was not in my zone of genius today.
See what I did there.
♪ Don't forget to go after the life that you want. ♪
♪ Yaaa eee eee ♪
Okay, I really wanna go home now and see my kid.
Let's do it.