Zone Of Genius Quotes

You are enjoying the gift of genius. When ordinary people are confronted with multiple tragedies, the pain scarcely increases. They simple can't feel the extra burdens. But you have a greater capacity for suffering.

it. I think of the Zone of Genius as a continuous spiral. You go higher and higher every day as you expand your capacity for more love, abundance, and success. It’s an upward journey with no upper limit.

Most of Arbus's work lies within the Warhol aesthetic, that is, defines itself in relation to the twin poles of boringness and freakishness; but it doesn't have the Warhol style. Arbus had neither Warhol's narcissism and genius for publicity nor the self-protective blandness with which he insulates himself from the freaky nor his sentimentality. It is unlikey that Warhol, who comes from a working-class family, ever felt any ambivalence toward success which afflicted the children of the Jewish upper middle classes in the 1960s. To someone raised as a Catholic, like Warhol (and virtually everyone in his gang), a fascination with evil comes much more genuinely than it does to someone from a Jewish background. Compared with Warhol, Arbus seems strikingly vulnerable, innocent--and certainly more pessimistic. Her Dantesque vision of the city (and the suburbs) has no reserves of irony. Although much of Arbus's material is the same as that depicted in, say, Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966)...For Arbus, both freaks and Middle America were equally exotic: a boy marching in a pro-war parade and a Levittown housewife were as alien as a dwarf or a transvestite; lower-middle-class suburbia was as remote as Times Square, lunatic asylums, and gay bars. Arbus's work expressed her turn against what was public (as she experienced it), conventional, safe, reassuring--and boring--in favor of what was private, hidden, ugly, dangerous, and fascinating. These contrasts, now, seem almost quaint. What is safe no long monopolizes public imagery. The freakish is no longer a private zone, difficult of access. People who are bizarre, in sexual disgrace, emotionally vacant are seen daily on the newsstands, on TV, in the subways. Hobbesian man roams the streets, quite visible, with glitter in his hair.

Genius is only gifted to the few who are ready to go beyond their comfort-zones. Those who are not satisfied only with the theoretical ideologies.

Liberating and expressing your natural genius is your ultimate path to success and life satisfaction. Your Zone of Genius is the set of activities you are uniquely suited to do.

Mount Everest has a “death zone”. When a climber is in that zone, at very high altitude, he’s living on borrowed time. He will almost certainly need a good oxygen supply. All living tissue is starting to die (necrosis) thanks to the cold and the altitude. Unlike climbers, the higher that geniuses ascend, the more invigorated they become, the stronger their flesh and minds become. They experience the opposite of necrosis. They have entered the Life Zone.

The Idea of Order at Key West She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, However clear, it would have been deep air, The heaving speech of air, a summer sound Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that, More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As the night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker's rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds

No one—not rock stars, not professional athletes, not software billionaires, and not even geniuses—ever makes it alone.

my zone of genius. This is also a place of great peace, and it is where my best work comes from. This zone of genius is where your no-bullshit self lives: ·         The one that is not afraid to take risks ·         The one that is not afraid to tell the truth ·         The one that is not concerned with validation ·         The one that creates for the simple, satisfying joy of creating

The fear of being fundamentally flawed brings with it a related fear. It’s the fear that if you did make a full commitment to living in your Zone of Genius, you might fail. It’s the belief that even your genius is flawed, and that if you expressed it in a big way, it wouldn’t be good enough. This belief tells you to play it safe and stay small. That way, if you fail, at least you fail small.

Many of our fears are based on the workings of the ego, the part of us that’s focused on getting recognition and protecting us from social ostracism. In the Zone of Genius, your ego is unnecessary; living there is its own reward. In the Zone of Genius, you cease to care about recognition or ostracism. Once you make a commitment to inhabiting your full potential, your ego is suddenly faced with extinction.

Unfortunately, our thermostat setting usually gets programmed in early childhood, before we can think for ourselves. Once programmed, our Upper Limit thermostat setting holds us back from enjoying all the love, financial abundance, and creativity that’s rightfully ours. It keeps us in our Zone of Competence or at best our Zone of Excellence. It prevents us from living in the ultimate destination of the journey—our Zone of Genius.

If we stop trying to be present and instead tap into our breath, align our eyes and mind congruently, and respond to life’s invitations, presence finds us. Presence is what arises when we embrace all that life (and light) has to offer. When we stop searching, we start finding. By looking less, we see more. When we allow the light within us to merge with the light that guides us, we experience oneness. Without any effort, we relax into a state where we have no decisions to make. There is no confusion, second-guessing, thinking, or searching for answers. There is just beingness — an acceptance of life as it is. With presence, life becomes magical. We not only feel better, but our stress dissipates and our bodies heal. We respond to life more fluidly, developing an ability to be with whatever arises, flowing in response to life in the same way that children do. Infants and children do not look for anything; they simply respond to whatever calls their attention. When we reawaken this innate ability in ourselves, our lives transform radically. We enter a state that some call “the zone,” “the flow,” or even “genius consciousness,” in which “we” disappear and our knowledge is no longer limited to information received from the five senses. We become more empathetic toward ourselves and others, and more intuitive. Rather than reacting to one situation after another, we start flowing with life and, over time, we become increasingly aware of experiences just before they occur and can now “welcome” them. It is a miraculous state of being. What you might call the “divine inspiration” encoded in light moves us in a direction that is expansive, infusing us with a deep desire — beyond the wish for anything personal or material — to embrace our most potent longing for oneness with the vision we have been given. There remains only a witness who is present, spacious, and imperturbable. Everything appears clear and seems to scintillate. The resulting sense of peace is so blissful that it may bring tears to our eyes. No matter how many miracles we experience, each new wonder is always astounding, inviting in more such experiences and reminding us that all of life is literally beyond belief.

Significance of madness in the history of morality. — When in spite of that fearful pressure of ‘morality of custom’ under which all the communities of mankind have lived, many millennia before the beginnings of our calendar and also on the whole during the course of it up to the present day (we ourselves dwell in the little world of the exceptions and, so to speak, in the evil zone): — when, I say, in spite of this, new and deviate ideas, evaluations, drives again and again broke out, they did so accompanied by a dreadful attendant: almost everywhere it was madness which prepared the way for the new idea, which broke the spell of a venerated usage and superstition. Do you understand why it had to be madness which did this? Something in voice and bearing as uncanny and incalculable as the demonic moods of the weather and the sea and therefore worthy of a similar awe and observation? something that bore so visibly the sign of total unfreedom as the convulsions and froth of the epileptic, that seemed to mark the madman as the mask and speaking-trumpet of a divinity? Something that awoke in the bearer of a new idea himself reverence for and dread of himself and no longer pangs of conscience and drove him to become the prophet and martyr of his idea? — while it is constantly suggested to us today that, instead of his grain of salt, a grain of spice of madness is joined to genius, all earlier people found it much more likely that wherever there is madness there is also a grain of genius and wisdom — something ‘divine’, as one whispered to oneself. Or rather: as one said aloud forcefully enough. ‘It is through madness that the greatest good things have come to Greece’, Plato said, in concert with all ancient mankind.

Eastern Standard Time Poetry speaks to all people, it is said, but here I would like to address only those in my own time zone, this proper slice of longitude that runs from pole to snowy pole down the globe through Montreal to Bogota. Oh, fellow inhabitants of this singular band, sitting up in your many beds this morning— the sun falling through the windows and casting a shadow on the sundial— consider those in other zones who cannot hear these words. They are not slipping into a bathrobe as we are, or following the smell of coffee in a timely fashion. Rather, they are at work already, leaning on copy machines, hammering nails into a house-frame. They are not swallowing a vitamin like us; rather they are smoking a cigarette under a half moon, even jumping around on a dance floor, or just now sliding under the covers, pulling down the little chains on their bed lamps. But we are not like these others, for at this very moment on the face of the earth, we are standing under a hot shower, or we are eating our breakfast, considered by people of all zones to be the most important meal of the day. Later, when the time is right, we might sit down with the boss, wash the car, or linger at a candle-lit table, but now is the hour for pouring the juice and flipping the eggs with one eye on the toaster. So let us slice a banana and uncap the jam, lift our brimming spoons of milk, and leave it to the others to lower a flag or spin absurdly in a barber's chair— those antipodal oddballs, always early or late. Let us praise Sir Stanford Fleming the Canadian genius who first scored with these lines the length of the spinning earth. Let us move together through the rest of this day passing in unison from light to shadow, coasting over the crest of noon into the valley of the evening and then, holding hands, slip into the deeper valley of night.

All this shows a very mediocre idea of oneself - always imputing misfortune to some objective cause. Once it has been exorcized by causes, misfortune is no longer a problem: it becomes susceptible of a causal solution and, above all, it originates elsewhere - in original sin, in history, in the social order, or in natural perversion. In short, it originates in an objectivity into which we exile it the better to be rid of it. Once again, this bespeaks very little pride and self-respect. In the past, what struck you down was your destiny, your personal fatum. You didn't look for some 'objective' cause of this or some attenuating circumstance, which would amount to saying we have no part in what happens to us. There is something humiliating in that. The intelligence of evil begins with the hypothesis that our ills come to us from an evil genius that is our own. Let us be worthy of our 'perversity' of our evil genius, let us measure up to our tragic involvement in what happens to us (including good fortune). In a word, let us not be imbeciles, for imbecility in the literal sense lies in the superficial reference to misfortune and exemption from evil. This is how we make imbeciles of the victims themselves, by confining them to their condition of victim. And by the compassion we show them we engage in a kind of false advertising for them. We take no account of what degree of choice and defiance, of connivence with oneself, of - unconscious or quasi-deliberate - provocative relation to evil there may be in AIDS, in drug-taking, in suffering and alienation, in voluntary servitude - in this acting-out in the fatal zone. It is the same with suicide, which is always ascribed to depressive motivations with no account taken of an originality of, an original will to commit, the act itself (Canetti speaks in the same way of the interpretation of dreams as a violence done to dreams that takes no account of their literalness). So, the understanding of misfortune is everywhere substituted for the intelligence of evil. Now, unlike the former, this latter rests on the rejection of the presumption of innocence. By contrast with that understanding, we are all presumptive wrongdoers - but not responsible ones, for, in the last instance, we do not have to answer for ourselves - that is the business of destiny or of the divinity. For the act we commit, it is right we should be dealt with - and indeed punished - accordingly. We are never innocent of that act in the sense of having nothing to do with it or being victims of it. But this does not mean we are answerable for it either, as that would suppose we were answerable for ourselves, that we were invested with total power over ourselves, which is a subjective illusion. It's a good thing we don't possess that power or that responsibility. A good thing we are not the causes of ourselves - that at least confers some degree of innocence on us. For the rest, we are forever complicit in what we do, even if we are not answerable to anyone. So we are both irresponsible and without excuses. Never explain, never complain.

So Japan is allied with Germany and they’re like “Sweet the rest of the world already hates us let’s take their land!” So they start invading China and Malaysia and the Philippines and just whatever else but then they’re like “Hmm what if America tries to stop us? Ooh! Let’s surprise attack Hawaii!” So that’s exactly what they do. The attack is very successful but only in a strictly technical sense. To put it in perspective, let’s try a metaphor. Let’s say you’re having a barbecue but you don’t want to get stung by any bees so you find your local beehive and just go crazy on it with a baseball bat. Make sense? THEN YOU MUST BE JAPAN IN THE ’40s. WHO ELSE WOULD EVER DO THIS? So the U.S. swarms on Japan, obviously but that’s where our bee metaphor breaks down because while bees can sting you they cannot put you in concentration camps (or at least, I haven’t met any bees that can do that). Yeah, after that surprise attack on Pearl Harbor everybody on the West Coast is like “OMG WE’RE AT WAR WITH JAPAN AND THERE ARE JAPANESE DUDES LIVING ALLLL AROUND US.” I mean, they already banned Japanese immigration like a decade before but there are still Japanese dudes all over the coast and what’s more those Japanese dudes are living right next door to all the important aircraft factories and landing strips and shipyards and farmland and forests and bridges almost as if those types of things are EVERYWHERE and thus impossible not to live next door to. Whatever, it’s pretty suspicious. Now, at this point, nothing has been sabotaged and some people think that means they’re safe. But not military geniuses like Earl Warren who points out that the only reason there’s been no sabotage is that the Japanese are waiting for their moment and the fact that there has been no sabotage yet is ALL THE PROOF WE NEED to determine that sabotage is being planned. Frank Roosevelt hears this and he’s like “That’s some pretty shaky logic but I really don’t like Japanese people. Okay, go ahead.” So he passes an executive order that just says “Any enemy ex-patriots can be kicked out of any war zone I designate. P.S.: California, Oregon, and Washington are war zones have fun with that.” So they kick all the Japanese off the coast forcing them to sell everything they own but people are still not satisfied. They’re like “Those guys look funny! We can’t have funny-looking dudes roaming around this is wartime! We gotta lock ’em up.” And FDR is like “Okay, sure.” So they herd all the Japanese into big camps where they are concentrated in large numbers like a hundred and ten thousand people total and then the military is like “Okay, guys we will let you go if you fill out this loyalty questionnaire that says you love the United States and are totally down to be in our army” and some dudes are like “Sweet, free release!” but some dudes are like “Seriously? You just put me in jail for being Asian. This country is just one giant asshole and it’s squatting directly over my head.” And the military is like “Ooh, sorry to hear that buddy looks like you’re gonna stay here for the whole war. Meanwhile your friends get to go fight and die FOR FREEDOM.

Agatha blinked and then reexamined the stick. “That’s true. All right then, I’ll improve it. I’ll bet there are all kinds of things I can do to make it stronger.” Dimo raised an eyebrow. “As ve iz fightink our vay through a var zone?” “It will be an excellent way to get parts.” Dimo grinned. “Vhen hyu poots it dot vay, hit almost makes sense!

People who judge you by what you wear or how good you look aren’t worth knowing anyway.

Forbidden zones were familiar to the point of institutionalisation in the Soviet System, but more than forty 'sensitive' cities remain shut off.

I took the Big Leap into my Zone of Genius, I might fail. What if I really opened up to my true genius and found that my genius wasn’t good enough?

They now endure incessant cultural appropriation by a majority society in the United States that celebrates an idealized American Indian but ignores reservation life—the economic blight and marginalization of what are, in effect, national internment zones, exacerbated by federal inattention and mismanagement. In Indian country there are also thriving cultural traditions and creative genius, but these often receive little more recognition than the problems. —

When I’m operating in my Zone of Genius, I am doing what I love to do and I’m enjoying what I have.

Then there are those regions (and we’re getting into deeper gray now) where what matters is not a person’s relationship with some external thing, such as food or clothes or music, but rather some intrinsic quality of his or her own: beauty or physical fitness. Or intelligence. Since we can discard these attributes even less easily than our clothes, we can always be strictly categorized according to the perceptions emanating from these areas: of who matters (the beautiful, the athletic, and the intelligent, respectively) and who doesn’t (the ugly, the flabby and the dumb). Contempt for the unfit is stronger, I think, than disdain for the plain. Perhaps because of the passivity of beauty? But no, intelligence is every bit as passive, a gift either granted or denied. And yet the scorn felt for the unintelligent is an almost moral outrage. Never mind that the dull can’t help themselves, that they would, granted the sense to do so, have chosen to be otherwise. Their very existence is felt as a moral affront by those of us who dwell where the genius is hero. The color of our zone is only just discernably lighter than the true black of those who perceive people according to their acceptance of some moral or religious or political code.

Liberating and expressing your natural genius is your ultimate path to success and life satisfaction. Your Zone of Genius is the set of activities you are uniquely suited to do. They draw upon your special gifts and strengths. Your Zone of Genius beckons you with increasingly strong calls as you go through your life. (The Call to Genius is the name I’ve given to these inner promptings.) By age forty, many of us have tuned out the Call to Genius and are getting loud, repeated alarms hidden in the form of depression, illness, injuries, and relationship conflict.

The forest at night is an experience in sensory deprivation most of the time, black and silent as the midnight zone of a cave. Life is out there in expected abundance. The jungle teems, but in a manner mostly beyond the reach of the human senses. Ninety-nine percent of the animals find their way by chemical trails laid over the surface, puffs of odor released into the air or water, and scents diffused out of little hidden glands and into the air downwind. Animals are masters of this chemical channel, where we are idiots. But we are geniuses of the audiovisual channel, equaled in this modality only by a few odd groups (whales, monkeys, birds). So we wait for the dawn, while they wait for the fall of darkness; and because sight and sound are the evolutionary prerequisites of intelligence, we alone have come to reflect on such matters as Amazon nights and sensory modalities.

The comfort zone is no place for a person like Maynard Webb, and I hope not for you, either. Your true home, and Maynard’s, is in the Zone of Genius. It’s the only place where we can fully celebrate and express the gifts we’ve been given.

Step #5 to being your Future Self is automating and systemizing your Future Self. How can you better systemize your desired Future Self? What could you simplify and eliminate from your life, to free yourself from decision fatigue and lesser goals? What barriers and filters could you create to protect your time and attention? What could you automate, such as a weekly investing strategy? Where could you find a who to handle some of the hows that are outside your zone of genius?22

We are in need of a service that could track down the fertile zone in which the needs of the world and our aptitudes connect, a service to highlight the spark of genius inside every one of us — so that we might one day contribute to a tool that counts and die without so much regret.

Automobiles were initially thought to be noxious, noisy, and so slow that onlookers were prompted to yell, "Get a horse!" In May 1899, Jacob German, a New York City taxi driver received the first ever speeding violation in America for traveling twelve miles per hour in a eight mile per hour zone. He was pulled over by a police man on a bicycle.

Those who have the courage to discover and bring forth their genius break through to unparalleled heights of productivity and life satisfaction. Discovering your Zone of Genius is your life’s Big Leap.

Your worry-thoughts, particularly if you find yourself recycling the same ones over and over, are a flag waving at you from your Zone of Genius. Something is trying to get your attention.

Nennius tells us, what Gildas omits, the name of the British soldier who won the crowning mercy of Mount Badon, and that name takes us out of the mist of dimly remembered history into the daylight of romance. There looms, large, uncertain, dim but glittering, the legend of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. Somewhere in the Island a great captain gathered the forces of Roman Britain and fought the barbarian invaders to the death. Around him, around his name and his deeds, shine all that romance and poetry can bestow. Twelve battles, all located in scenes untraceable, with foes unknown, except that they were heathen, are punctiliously set forth in the Latin of Nennius. Other authorities say, “No Arthur; at least, no proof of any Arthur.” It was only when Geoffrey of Monmouth six hundred years later was praising the splendours of feudalism and martial aristocracy that chivalry, honour, the Christian faith, knights in steel and ladies bewitching, are enshrined in a glorious circle lit by victory. Later these tales would be retold and embellished by the genius of Mallory, Spenser, and Tennyson. True or false, they have gained an immortal hold upon the thoughts of men. It is difficult to believe it was all an invention of a Welsh writer. If it was he must have been a marvellous inventor. Modern research has not accepted the annihilation of Arthur. Timidly but resolutely the latest and best-informed writers unite to proclaim his reality. They cannot tell when in this dark period he lived, or where he held sway and fought his battles. They are ready to believe however that there was a great British warrior, who kept the light of civilisation burning against all the storms that beat, and that behind his sword there sheltered a faithful following of which the memory did not fail. All four groups of the Celtic tribes which dwelt in the tilted uplands of Britain cheered themselves with the Arthurian legend, and each claimed their own region as the scene of his exploits. From Cornwall to Cumberland a search for Arthur’s realm or sphere has been pursued.The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. One specimen of this method will suffice: "It is reasonably certain that a petty chieftain named Arthur did exist, probably in South Wales. It is possible that he may have held some military command uniting the tribal forces of the Celtic or highland zone or part of it against raiders and invaders (not all of them necessarily Teutonic). It is also possible that he may have engaged in all or some of the battles attributed to him; on the other hand, this attribution may belong to a later date." This is not much to show after so much toil and learning. Nonetheless, to have established a basis of fact for the story of Arthur is a service which should be respected. In this account we prefer to believe that the story with which Geoffrey delighted the fiction-loving Europe of the twelfth century is not all fancy. If we could see exactly what happened we should find ourselves in the presence of a theme as well founded, as inspired, and as inalienable from the inheritance of mankind as the Odyssey or the Old Testament. It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides. And wherever men are fighting against barbarism, tyranny, and massacre, for freedom, law, and honour, let them remember that the fame of their deeds, even though they themselves be exterminated, may perhaps be celebrated as long as the world rolls round. Let us then declare that King Arthur and his noble knights, guarding the Sacred Flame of Christianity and the theme of a world order, sustained by valour, physical strength, and good horses and armour, slaughtered innumerable hosts of foul barbarians and set decent folk an example for all time.

The power of your commitment brings forth the means necessary for you to live in your Zone of Genius. If

TROY