Friday, June 10, 2011

DISCOVER YOUR INNER GENIUSES


Discover Your Inner Geniuses

We first need to reveal the mystery of being a ‘self’ before we begin to explain it.  Who are you really or what are you really? The important lesson we learn comes from ourselves or our inner voice. As we grow through our life, it is important that we know our inner geniuses, who we are and have the ability to grow from our strength and constantly working to improve our weaknesses. A clear picture of ourselves or knowing what we are is the ultimate way we can grow as an individual. This knowledge helps us to achieve the goals and objectives we have set for ourselves in our life. Through fascinating biographies of the most revolutionary minds I have been trying to develop a personal relationship with each genius and learn how to use his or her guiding principle to enrich the quality of your life. I have tried to analyze and discover my inner geniuses and strength based on the self-assessment, personal experience and understanding of myself so that I can come up with course of action to improve myself and expand to my potential greatness.
During this writing, different kind of thoughts arose inside my mind which was accompanied by the memories of the past. It made me think about what truly matters in my life, what aspects do I feel are more important than others, what do I value? It helped me discover that it is impossible to achieve a high level of excellence without discovering yourself as an individual and your inner geniuses which was supported by the real story of revolutionary minds. It is my first step in knowing who I am and exploring my potentialities and weaknesses such that I can work on those things to be what I want to be. I think this paper, on developing individual geniuses and self-assessment has helped me a lot to know what I really want out of my life, what is my real self and my ideal self.
About me, I am an adventurous and fun loving guy from Nepal, the country of highest peak and the birth place of Buddha. Music and sports has always fascinated me. My name is Abinash Rajbhandari. I was born and brought up in the family from banking background in Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Going through my childhood days, I really love remembering those days. I was very much active in sports. I was good at soccer and a player in the school team in my middle school. I bagged home a lot of awards for the games I played. However, I have to give up my interest for soccer due to my family pressure as there wasn’t any scope of soccer in my country. Then, slowly I was into music when I was in my high school. We had a band and were appreciated by lot of people. I couldn’t continue my interest in music as well. My aim to become a singer did not last for long as my parents wanted me to become a doctor. I was never serious into academics so, I couldn’t continue my studies to be become a doctor. However, my academics were good, I thought of continuing my studies in management stream, like my parents did. Due to the environment in my family, I was quite aware of the managerial practices and intensive needs of management professional across the globe. So, I started competing with myself to become updated with the merging global management requirement. I made a strong determination to become a true management professional and completed my undergraduate in business administration in the best university in Nepal.
Living just for existence has been never been the objective of my life. I have always looked forward to achieve best out of my life. I am really concerned about being successful in my life. I want to have a successful career and satisfied life with my happy family. I want to be someone who has good moral character, who is respected and can influence people for achieving desired goals and objectives. Truly, I want to be an effective leader of a successful organization. In present, I am a MBA student who is striving to learn the best and achieve the best. Right now, I am a person who is walking on his path, working hard and fighting against the difficulties on the way to be what I want to be in the future. I enjoy doing everything that helps me to be perfect for my ideal self. I enjoy the freedom these days, for doing things, work pressure and all daily activities I think I have to be involved in when I’ll start working for some company after my graduation. I really enjoy learning different skills that are essential to be a true management professional. Moreover, I enjoy learning from mistakes which we won’t get in our work life. I enjoy being a student who has much more opportunity of learning many things and sharpening skills that are effective in landing on the real world picture. I find challenging in learning various skills that are required to be the leader of an organization that is to be what I want to be. I really find like overcoming those weaknesses and working on the development of strengths. But other, find me as a person who can adapt to such changes and work on such challenges. They see me as a one, with positive outlook and a good team player. As a management student I have had always emphasized on interpersonal and negotiation skills. Taking into consideration the global dynamics of managerial trends, understanding cultures and technologically updated knowledge has gained my attention in recent years. I believe, my good communication skills, highly adjusting nature, open to learning instincts will be compatible with the emerging needs in management practices today.
The paper on discovering our inner geniuses was very helpful in finding out my capabilities and my strengths, actually knowing myself. Recalling several incidents, I realized my strengths like, I have very positive outlook of life that is seeing good in others and in the current situation. I can see opportunities in problem. I can adapt in different environment and work effectively with variety within a variety of changing situations and with different individual and groups. I can adapt with changes on the basis of new information or evidence. I have the ability to keep my impulsive feelings and emotions under control. Moreover, I can understand the power relations in the organization and understand the decision makers and who can influence them. I have the competency in finding the understanding of other people and can persuade others to get them to support my ideas and suggestion. Simply, I can influence other people. These were some of the strengths I discovered from analyzing and exploring myself. One’s strength is something one needs to be proud of and so do I. I am proud of my significant strength of positive outlook and adapting to the changing environment that is my flexibility to adjust with the varying environment and changing my view with the new information and evidence. I am proud of my competency as an effective team player. I can work in team and work co-operatively with others being a part of a team.
Understanding why historical figures acted in difficult times, how they adapted, and what aspects of their upbringing formed their thinking and how they influenced others to accept their thinking has always intrigued my mind. The real scenario presented in the story tells us how each principle is working in our own life. In How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci, Gelb taught us how to explore genius inside us with the several steps he provided in the book. Moreover the book also provides personal and professional development by encouraging us to apply the wisdom of ten of history's greatest minds. Engaging and practical, Discover your Genius gives us the tools to improve our own mental abilities by making "genius thinking" accessible and fun. What I realized after going through these books is genius thinking involves activating the senses and breaking out of habitual perceptions. Leonardo guides us to generate first, and then organize. These are the steps mentioned in the book to becoming a "genius" every day.
1.      Curiosity. Let yourself be curious about life. This means ask questions about things you don't know about or want to know more about. Research them until you find the answer you're looking for. As Leo said “Great Minds ask Great Questions."
2.      Realize your ideal hobby and do it! "Geniuses don't make excuses" List what you like and choose from there.
3.      Learn a new Language. Helps for travel and for broader job opportunities and makes you smarter.
4.      Build Your Vocabulary. Learn new words every day and use them.
5.      Dimostrazione: Commitment to test knowledge through experience, Persistence and a willingness to learn from mistakes.
6.      Check your belief sources and change the ones you don't like (People hurt you, trace where it came from and if there is no evidence change it)
7.       Affirmations repeated thoughts ex. I am beautiful, new opportunities of abundance are available to me etc.
8.      Learn from role models. He's so talented and smart. (Get knowledge by going to school or read).
9.      Sensazione: The continual refinement of the senses, sight, taste, smell, touch, sounds by experience. Ex. Smell the flowers, listen to the birds, look at art work, eat ripe fruit etc. another way to improve is improve your weaknesses like learn geography, basic math etc. improve your strengths.
Just as Leonardo helped to invent the art of creative thinking he also points us toward a compelling reason to create: to know ourselves and the world around us – to appreciate truth and beauty- through mirroring the creative source. While preparing this paper I had one question in my mind, what do I want to accomplish with my life? After that I felt that one of the best decisions I have made in my life is choosing to continue my studies in management. Even though I couldn’t meet my parent’s expectation, many things have changed in my life. I am no longer the traditional because now I am a professional management student who is currently pursuing his masters in business administration. I would say my most positive qualities, my great determination and strength have driven me here today. If I did not possess these qualities I would not be where I am today. I couldn’t accomplish some of the area that I was interested in but still I feel like I have lot more to do and achieve the best where I am today.
Shakespeare once said, "Life is but a stage and men merely players on it." In order for us to become main characters on this stage, instead of mere extras, we must be able to truly identify who we are as individuals first. After this has been accomplished we can find out how we can benefit our society. When complete self-awareness, self-knowledge, self-confidence, and self-respect are reached, than you can truly "know thyself.” Without personal goals life can be an aimless journey lacking positive direction and achievement. If your life is to follow a Positive path you need a plan, and to establish a plan personal goals are necessary. Before you start setting your personal goals you need to consider what you want to achieve with your life and discover your geniuses such that you can be best at what you do at. What is your chosen vocation? What level do you want to reach in your career, and what geniuses you have to be on the best side of the chosen vocation, that is discovering what you are good at or competitively best.
Defining, the discovering your geniuses in relation with the economics, it is like discovering what you are best at and gain competitive advantage over the others. This is the world of competition and to be the best among all you need to have some distinct features to gain competitive advantage over others and be the best in the competition. Moreover, in management and leadership perspectives discovering geniuses such as new realities in leadership and living, and manifest those realities into social and economic systems to make our world a better place to live can be a living example. I believe that there is an untapped abundance of energy, insight and know-how that can transform our world once discovered and manifested by enlightened leaders.  Discovering your geniuses can help us become young, high potential leaders using the wisdom of our discoveries to unleash their genius and teach world how to unleash the genius of leaders, teams, companies and countries. 
It makes one think about what truly matters in your life, what aspects do you feel are more important than others, what do you value? Is band more important than M.B.A? You only have room for a couple of activities, some may have to be dropped, which will they be? On the other hand you'll also have to find something that you do just for fun. It is impossible to achieve a high level of excellence without discovering your geniuses and yourself as an individual. I am who I am today because of the failures and accomplishments of my past. I neither regret nor take pride in my past; it is simply a part of my past. I am, however, more confident of my future because of my past. I am focused on the success I expect of myself and my abilities and strengths to be successful.
          I really got to learn a lot from this paper about discovering one’s geniuses to get closer to my ideal self, the various aspects of me which I got to understand and work out to achieve my goals. It helped me to be closer to my ideal self by working and overcoming my learning gaps or weakness and developing my strengths so that I can continuously work on that to be more like my ideal self. In the same time, I can discover my learning gaps and try to overcome these gaps by constant practice and hard work. I am the one who believes on getting things done differently. I want to think differently and do things differently. Even in working out my weaknesses I want to do it differently on my own way. My goal is to become a successful and effective CEO and lead the organization. So, I value all the competencies that help in being what I desire. I want to focus on my weaknesses that are very important to be a true leader (CEO). I want to focus on my inspirational leadership competencies, cognitive competencies and self awareness competencies to achieve desired goals.
To conclude, this final paper on “discovering your geniuses” provided the in-depth understanding of my strengths and weaknesses, what is my ideal self and real self and the ways to work so that I can grow to become what I want and aspire to become. The book “How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci” by Michael J. Gelb,  was really interesting because I helped me show the ways to explore my geniuses following the inspirational personality in the globe, to explore myself, my competencies and my goals. This paper provides the overview of my development of my values, what my strengths and weaknesses are and the sources of development of my values. On the overall, it helped me to find who I am and what I want to become? On some part, I felt like it’s just not enough to discover your geniuses, know you completely, your real self and ideal self unless you have sound idea of how other perceive you or how other assess you. But, as a whole the case study was really interesting, useful and helpful for me because it helped me to understand me and my competencies to achieve the goals that I have set forth, so I will be successful in future.






References:
Gelb Michael J, How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci
Gelb Michael J, Discover your Genius- How to Think like History’s Ten Most Revolutionary Minds.