We live in the kind of world where the members of their society are labelled as if they were merely products that will end up on a store shelf to be selected or discarded according to someone’s needs. The society in where we live condemns you or glorifies you according to the label you possess. Since school, we are categorized with a grade, and that symbol becomes our burden. We believe that our intelligence depends on the amount of excellent grades we get, and that belief tends to create our reality, but the truth is everybody is a genius, with our own personal characteristics and skills, and that is what it makes us unique.
We are all the same, we are all one, we are all humans, we are all mortals, however, we are also different as we all have different personalities, characteristics, skills, qualities, beliefs and opinions, and that creates unique beings, as human’s fingers, where they might all look the same, but in the end they all have their own distinctive and unique pattern what creates different fingerprints. For that reason, we all possess a particular talent and skills that create a different kind of geniuses. Therefore, a genius cannot be described in one way, but in several ways.
All my life I struggled to find my own talent; at school I wasn’t the student with the best grades, I didn’t even know who I wanted to be or what I wanted to do when I grow up, usually I tended to lose faith in myself and let my future be at mercy of my luck. The problem is that this society has made us believe that if you are not the best, the first one, the most intelligent and get all the best grades you will fail miserably, and that belief has put a high level of pressure in our daily lives, because in order to avoid failure, we push ourselves in a very dangerous way, most of the time refusing to be what we were meant to be and becoming the type of person imposed by society in order to be successful.
“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.” – Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
The truth is that saying that a genius is that one who has only certain specific characteristics and abilities, only limits the true greatness in every human being, because by saying that, we limit the person who has not those characteristics and abilities, giving them the idea that they are simply mediocre beings, and they live their lives limiting their true potential. For example, I always believed that because I was not good at school, especially in mathematics, I was good for nothing. I always wished to be like the “genius” ones. I lost faith in myself and I settle for a life that was far less the one I deserved.
One day I started to believe in myself, and I discovered all those talents and skills that were hidden overshadowed by my fears, beliefs, and limiting thoughts about myself. When I ceased to let the opinions and belief of others to define me, I began to discover my true potential, and when you are no longer limited by the established standards by this society , you begin to redefine yourself, and you create a new version of yourself. In my case, I discovered those things that made me a genius. Now I do not let my lack of knowledge in something, or my poor mathematics or history skills or whatever it is to define me, I do not let a grade or a person qualify me or categorize me according to my capabilities.
“As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
When you cease to seek the approval of others, when you release yourself from the stressful act of fitting in, when you cease to be the person you are supposed to become, and you stop worrying about being “perfect” or letting the opinions and beliefs of others to define you, you will have the opportunity to discover your true talents, abilities and skills. Therefore, do not aim to become the standard of human perfection, but aim for what you are good at, if you don’t know what that is, go find it, work hard, improve, evolve and become the best version of yourself!
Do not beat yourself up if you can’t do everything perfectly, remember that every human has its own talents and skills, and in the end, everyone is a genius. Fish maybe cannot climb a tree but they have the ability to live underwater. Therefore, do not compare yourself with other people “genius” but rather follow your own heart, be whoever you want to be, discover your greatness and be the genius that you truly are!