An Unexpected and Easy Way to Access Your Zone of Genius Today [739 Words]

Your Zone of Genius or what I call your Synergy Zone™ is a profoundly powerful state where brilliant decisions come easily, creative solutions abound and time seems to bend to your will.

It is unique to you and lets you do certain things better than almost anyone else. Leveraging this synergy is how you can cut the path to mastery in half and accelerate your professional performance.

The problem is that only 23% of the population considers that they experience this state often. And for the other 77% it is fleeting, if at all, says Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his seminal book Finding Flow.

I don’t know about you, but I want to experience this genius state a LOT!!!

Why don’t more of us experience and express this synergy frequently?

Partly it’s because we have been taught to rely too heavily on the brain that sits between our ears and give less credence to the other brains that make up our full neural network.

Neuroscience has discovered that the heart and gut contain brain type cells and are responsible for whole domains of thinking. The 3 brains working together create the alignment you need to experience the kind of smarts that lead to you being in the right place at the right time, saying the right things to the right people. The kind of smarts that stimulate creative solutions and inspired actions.

Learning how to get all 3 of your brains on board with what you know you want to achieve will give you access to an almost unstoppable processing mechanism that, by its very design, will generate outstanding results.

Incongruence or mismatch between these three brains will undermine your resolve, cause confusion, and ultimately lead to ineffective behaviors and outcomes. You literally sabotage your own success.

So how do you access these 3 sources of wisdom? First you need to get to know what they are and how they contribute to making smart decisions.

Here are the 3 brain competencies:

HEART BRAIN PRIME FUNCTIONS

• Emotional processing (e.g. anger, grief, hatred, joy, happiness etc.)
• What’s important to you and its relationship to the emotional strength of your goals, dreams, desires, etc.
• Your felt connection with others (e.g. feelings of love/hate/indifference, compassion/uncaring, like/dislike, etc.)

GUT BRAIN PRIME FUNCTIONS

• Core identity – a visceral sense of core self, and determining at the deepest levels what is true or not true for you
• Self-preservation – safety, boundaries, hungers and aversions
• Impulse for action, gutsy courage and the will to mobilize

HEAD BRAIN PRIME FUNCTIONS

• Cognitive perception – interpretation of input from the other brains, pattern recognition, etc.
• Thinking – reasoning, abstraction, analysis etc.
• Making meaning – semantic processing, languaging, narrative, metaphor, etc.

Truly adaptive leadership today requires whole new levels of self-awareness. Integrating head-based intellect with heart-based values and gut-based instincts.

Now that you’ve been introduced to your three brains let’s look at a way you can get them to work well together.

There is a neurologically friendly sequence we need to follow to align our 3 thinking centers which goes:

1. Heart

2. Head

3. Heart

4. Gut

5. Heart

There is logic to this sequence:

The heart is the home of our passions, values and positive emotions. It’s our compass and it generates a lot of energy. It can be influenced and connected to with a simple practice of quietly evening out your breath, counting 6 seconds in and 6 seconds out.

So when considering an important decision or when looking for inspiration:

1. Start the aligning process with the breath practice with your attention from the heart which links you to what is truly important.

2. Moving next to the head brings creativity and the ability to process complexity. In a compassionate and connected way place your attention on your head and continue the breathing.

3. Going back from the head through the heart reinforces the experience once again to heartfelt connection.

4. Now move your attention to the gut which brings motivation, movement and a will to action that is now creatively and com-passionately aligned.

5. Finishing at the heart completes the loop and layers onto it a final level of importance, purpose and positivity.

Voila! Now you have fired up all 3 thinking centers and can regularly access your personal Synergy Zone™. When you follow this process, you will be making smart decisions and enjoying greater ease and flow in next to no time.