The Genius and the Soldier

I was reading in Seth Godin's book Linchpin (an excellent read) about our brain, and I learned something fascinating. Our brain is made up of two parts: The Daemon and the Resistance. In an nutshell, the daemon where all our great ideas come from. It's what make us unique and special. It the source of love, kindness, and generosity. It's what makes each of us a genius. The resistance is the other part; the part that does everything it can to keep the daemon quiet. The resistance is afraid. It's the soldier that keeps us safe. And it invents issues, problems, and illnesses to keep us from tapping into our daemon. That's interesting.

The deal is, if we're going to do anything out of the ordinary, challenge the status quo, or put great plans into action, we need to get past the resistance. The minute we have an idea, the resistance will spout out a thousand reasons why it's not a good idea. (You may have experienced this phenomenon this morning while you were snuggled under your warm comforter, totally not wanting to get up.) However, unless you're still in bed, you got past the resistance. It's possible to get past it; it just takes training.

We need to recognize the resistance when we see it. There are tell-tale signs of it's presence when we have thoughts of fear, anger, pain, or failure. When these things come around, we need to douse the resistance and move on. Notice that I've been saying "get past the resistance." It is something we have to get past. We can't eliminate it (unless we hack off half of our brain), but we can overcome it.

I'll talk a little more about the resistance later on this week. Until then, get over failure. Get over the comfort of fitting in. Get over the status quo. Then, let your brain work.

You're a genius.