I have always been smart. I haven’t been brilliant, I’ve gotten through life without major hardships and never considered anything overly demanding, but life, the way it was presented to me failed to give me any real satisfaction.

A few years ago I started feeling restless. Increasingly restless. I felt my life was lacking purpose, but none of the ordinary solutions (get a job, get married, have a child) seemed like the right thing to do – I did get married, which, to some extent, seemed only to amplify my dilemma. I love my ex-husband, don’t get me wrong, he’s a brilliant guy, but you know. The rightest wrong guy I could have married. Marriage, in general, didn’t seem like the right way for me to exist, and it eventually became clear to us both. So, what would be if none of those options were right for me?

As my restlessness demanded, I started reading about how to gain focus and clarity in life.

In many ways, the fact I was smart was also my undoing. I could UNDERSTAND my failures, my own lack of competence in certain areas of life, stuff that a dumber person would have gladly ignored. I KNEW I wasn’t cut out for many jobs that others would consider simple and easy to manage, but I beat myself up about it and thought I was just lazy and afraid of responsibility. I tried to talk myself into conforming, but I was never able to do it… And I beat myself up about it a bit more.

I knew I lacked the ability to focus on routine tasks; I can’t hold my attention on things that I should keep attention on – I am a bit ADHD, I think (and THAT turned out to be a strength, not a drawback) and I am sloppy in many ways.

What made it worse was that I thought EVERYONE felt the same way I did, but somehow, THEY managed to conform to society.

My mother’s voice in my head keeps insisting in an irritated voice: “So why can’t you just STOP being SLOPPY and START FOCUSSING for the love of God?!” That is like asking for a bird with a broken wing to stop wanting to fly and start walking because it’ll get you there eventually (never mind, you miss the breeding season every time…) That is to ask you to deny your own true self and just be someone else because that someone else to them feels like the simplest way of being.

If you cannot fly yourself if you have never flown, you won’t miss it, but if you know you’ve got that ability and that’s what you were meant to be doing, you don’t just decide to start walking and ignore the fact you’ve got wings. I knew I wasn’t stupid, yet, in my family, thinking too highly of yourself is met with a lot of disdain, and that is how my head was screwed on: You are not allowed to expect too much out of life, you keep your feet on the ground and focus on somehow making a living.

But the trouble is, if you are a bird, you can’t make a living with your feet on the ground. You have to learn to do what you were meant to do: hunt flying. You will never become brilliant at walking if you’re a bird, but if you heal that wing, gather up your courage, and train yourself to fly like Jonathan the Seagull, you can become brilliant at what you do. And that is how you train yourself to become a genius.

In all practicality, this means that you will have to find a way to release yourself from the expectations of others. Do this by your gut instinct. Whatever feels like the right way to do it, do that.

Release yourself, fuck discipline. Have you EVER EVEN ONCE seen a disciplined grand genius? (Yeah I don’t know what Elon Musk does but… I think Tony Robbins could do with a bit of chaos.) I may seem disciplined, sitting at my laptop nearly 24 hours a day, but that’s because I love it. I discipline myself to take a walk every once and again.

How to learn to think like a genius

At the same time as you do this, you will liberate your authentic self, and being a genius in an inauthentic expression is really not worth much so you might as well:

• Be aware that everything is related to everything. If you stop yourself thinking about A, you will find solving a problem at D will be difficult. There is no such thing as “irrelevant” or “unrelated”. If you’re ADHD, hooray.
• If you find a problem interesting, don’t talk yourself out of solving it by saying: “If it was possible to achieve, someone would have thought of it by now.” That is not even remotely true. Most problems are so fucking small it’s idiotic they still exist. Stop yourself from thinking that a problem cannot be solved.
• Stop respecting people who have an official title in front of their name automatically. Some of them only barely passed their degree, and some of them shouldn’t have been let to pass. Some study their area simply because they have no natural ability to it.
• Do not stop yourself from seeing incompetence and negative traits in others when you see it. By acknowledging the flaws and failures of others, you simultaneously discover your own strengths.
• Stop being polite in your thoughts. This goes along with both the above, but it is worth mentioning separately. Stop being polite in your mind. Politeness is poison to your freedom of thought, and this goes with even things you are indoctrinated to think have nothing to do with what you want to solve. EVERYTHING has SOMETHING to do with what you want to solve. EVERYTHING! That bitch at work being fat is one of those things!!! Open Your Eyes! (You still don’t have to SAY things out loud, but you Have Got To Think those thoughts freely.)
• ALWAYS dig up the origin of the uncomfortable thought/feeling. Whenever you think “oh I shouldn’t be thinking/feeling that” it means you SHOULD TOTALLY see what you were thinking and why.
• Stop giving yourself compliments you do not deserve. If you tell yourself that you’re amazing at something you’re only average at, the best thing you can achieve is making a fool out of yourself in front of people who know better. (Having said that, I give myself crazy amount of points for doing the dishes compared to say, writing an insightful blog post. The former goes against my grain, the latter is my nature.)
• Be pleased when you find a flaw in yourself, because every time you pin point a flaw in yourself, you HAVE THE POWER to change it into something you’d be proud for. Finding flaw in yourself is POWER, not a weakness because you can control your own flaws but not flaws of others. Often, when you find and correct a flaw in yourself, it gives you more of an opportunity to influence others positively too, but it always starts from yourself.
• If you have a problem with someone, KNOW IT IN YOURSELF that YOU are A HALF of that problem. Do you want to hold on to that problem or would you rather solve the problem? (Oddly enough, sometimes “a problem” is a joy, and certainly a problem for others can be a joy for you.)
• Be aware that there are people who KNOW they are talking bull all day long but do it because they think everyone does. These people are literally too dumb to know that not everyone talk for the sake of making a sound smart but to not actually convey a message. They also often enjoy talking “sophisticated” topics without the foggiest idea of what they are talking about – for image-building purposes. Consider the possibility that if someone doesn’t make any sense, it might not be you who is stupid.
• Be brutal toward yourself. As much as you should scrutinize others, you should quadruple that effort when it comes to yourself. You are the object of improvement, and therefore you have to go around every corner, every nook and cranny to see what you’ve got to fix. Be fearless. Be honest and love yourself through it.
• Do not, for a second, think that you are doomed to your own flaws. If you can see it, you can fix it. If you cannot see it, there’s nothing you can do about it.
• Don’t let others define who you should be. Don’t think dark is bad and light is good. You need a balance of both, a balance that YOU WILL CHOOSE. All qualities have a right application. There is nothing wrong in its right place. If you find “a negative” trait, figure out why you have it, because it always has a positive function. Always. If you can’t figure it out now, put that into the too hard basket and it’ll come clear to you later. Always ask yourself why you do things the way you do – you’ll be surprised to know that there’s usually a good reason or a very silly one that you can let go off once you become aware of it.
• Be honest, be honest, be honest, be honest. Eradicate shame. Eradicate guilt. Become You. Be free.

It will be tough but it will be worth every second you spend on it.

And tarot cards and this blog are freaking brilliant for this… Just saying. Just don’t memorize the meanings of them, use them as if they were ink blots – free association.

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