The Stuff That Really Matters Most: Knowledge

Have you ever met a genius? 

You know, that girl who assigned herself homework over the summer break; the kid in high school who read the encyclopedia for fun; that nerd in college who read physics textbooks like they were novels; that business owner who always came up with cool new innovative products.

Let me tell you about a genius. She’s a world-class gymnast. She learned a new language and speaks the local dialect with a perfect accent. She’s an accomplished experimental scientist in both physics and chemistry. She’s a skilled mathematician with great skills in logic. She’s a powerful, influential negotiator, psychologist, and strategist.

Does this sound familiar? That describes each of you. Think about all of the things that you learned as a small child. Did you know who had the biggest bowl of ice cream or the most cookies? Did you experiment with gravity and the chemistry of food from your high chair, much to your parent’s chagrin? Did you know how to influence people to get what you wanted? Did you successfully learn to play games with complex strategies? If you think learning how to walk is easy, just talk with someone who lost that ability and is working on relearning it.

Psychologists tell us that you learned 90% of what you know before the age of six. And then we sent you to school to make sure it never happened again. And most of us never recover from this school induced coma.

We are all born geniuses, we've been de-genius-ized by school and by life. So go out and rediscover your genius today!

The Stuff That Really Matters Most: Relationships

We can all quote the proverb, "It’s not what you know, it’s who you know and who knows you."

Stephen R Covey in his Seven Habits book teaches how to develop these relationships with Habit 5, "Seek to understand, then to be understood.

In To Kill a Mockingbird Harper Lee uses the character Atticus Finch to share a great truth about relationships, "You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view ... until you climb inside his skin and walk around in it."

Dale Carnegie in How to Win Friends and Influence People describes some simple yet tools to help build relationships. Give honest and sincere appreciation. Become genuinely interested in other people. Be a good listener. Remember and use their name.

These simple ideas produce powerful results. Its all about personal relationships, at home, at work and in your community.

The Stuff That Really Matters Most: Time

"Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you." - Carl Sandburg

We all have the same 525,600 minutes each year. But you choose what you do with those minutes. Do you chose to spend them staring at a screen while someone else decides what you see and can easily dish you up a plate full of garbage? Or do you choose to use your time profitably? For something awesome? Making a change in the world?

Simply ask yourself, "What is the best use of my time, right now?" Then act accordingly.

As Gandolf said in Lord of the Rings, "What you have to do is decide what you are going to do with the time you have been given."

The Stuff That Really Matters Most

Too soon old, too late smart. I'm writing here today to share an atom of wisdom, gleaned from nearly three score years of living. Someone told me that we learn the most from our mistakes.

A foolish man never learns from his mistakes.
A smart man learns from his mistakes.
A wise man learns from others mistakes.

Henry Ford explains that "Those who never make mistakes work for those of us who do."

We learn best from our mistakes. But we don't have time to make every mistake, so please learn from mine and from those people much wiser than I.

Success leaves clues, according to Tony Robbins. Have you ever noticed that many counterfeits of success litter our way? I found a fabulous tool to help me. Take the counterfeit and find the real gem it seeks to imitate.

The world today will tell you that its all about money. "Show me the money."
"You can buy anything with money." That is the counterfeit.

The truth is that money can't buy ... . You fill in the blank. This became a shining clue to me. The things that really matter most are things that money cannot buy.

So, I ask you this question, "What do you want in life? What do you really want?" A very wise man said, "Man is that he might have joy."

So, how do we get joy? Using the clue "money can't buy ..." I identified seven things that you will find bring the greatest joy.

Here they are:

• Time
• Relationships
• Knowledge & Wisdom
• Talents, Skills & Gifts
• Attitude
• Character
• Unalienable Rights

In the blogs to follow I will write more about each one of these most important things, the stuff that really matters most.

Knowledge is the Door to Freedom

Mike Feinham, co-founder of KIPP Schools tells us that Knowledge is the door to Power. I would add to that that knowledge is the door to Freedom. By having more knowledge we have more choices and thus, more freedom.

The New Testament tells us "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free." (John 8:32). This is not a new concept.

So, read more, learn more, get more knowledge and gain greater freedom.

Insatiable Learner, How Much Can You Learn?

That's really a good question. If you are a creative genius, as I assert, then how much can you really learn? I've never seen anyone run to the hospital emergency room and ask the doctor, "I've got a class tonight and my brain is full. Can you drain out about 10% so I can learn something new?" You can continue to learn during your whole life and never fill your brain. So just how much can your brain hold?

Your brain capacity is infinite. Research up to 1974 indicated that your genius brain contains 10^12 (that's a 1 followed by 12 zeros) brain cells, each of those cells interacts with 100,000 other cells.  That makes 10^800 possible combinations. Compare that to 10^108 atoms in the known universe. (Who was the person with the tweezers that counted all the atoms? :-)

By 1989, additional research showed that each of those interactions can be one of 100,000 chemical reactions. I've actually done this calculation. I set up a computer workstation to do the calculation and let it run overnight. I figured it would be done the next morning. It wasn’t. I checked how far it had gotten and calculated it would take another 10,000 years to complete the calculation. So I used logarithms. Remember those? That way you can do the calculation on a pocket calculator. Now, if you wrote this number out by hand on paper it would take about one trillion pages. Have you seen that picture that represents a trillion dollars? 

It looks like an acre of pallets of money stacked on each other. This number would take that stack of money and pile another 10 trillion stacks on top of it. In other words, you have almost infinite capacity to learn!

If I have so much brain capacity, why can't I remember names? That's a subject for another blog.

Ordinary Children, Extraordinary Creative Genius Results, Insatiable Learners

In an ordinary classroom, children once considered poor students now eagerly tackle the most difficult math problems first. Another school receives criticism for being "elitist" because all of its students are gifted. But most of these students produced only average results and some were poor students before entering the "gifted school." These schools and their teachers, along with many psychologists re-discovered the fact that we can all learn well, when given the proper support and opportunities. 

Examine the qualities of one of these gifted learners. She speaks a foreign language, in a local dialect, with perfect accent. She is a world class gymnast, an accomplished experimental scientist in chemistry and physics, a skilled mathematician, a powerful and influential negotiator, and a talented psychologist. Marvelous, genius qualities, wouldn't you agree? In fact, this description fits most people. Think about all of the things that you learned as a child before you ever went to school. You learned to speak, crawl, walk and run. (If you think learning to walk is easy, ask some one who lost this ability and is re-learning it how easy it is.) You could tell who got he most cookies or the biggest bowl of ice cream. You experimented with the chemistry of foods and the physics of gravity from your high chair during your meals, much to your parents dismay. You learned to influence others and negotiate with them to get what you wanted. You learned to play games with complex rules and strategies. Some psychologists now believe that we learn up to 90% of what we know before the age of six. Then we sent you to school to make sure you never did it again.


As a child, you were extremely creative, using string, sticks, paper, glue and crayons to create anything you could imagine.


You were born a creative genius and an insatiable learner. What happened? Can you regain those capabilities? Good questions that I'll examine in future blog posts.