Are you the primary beneficiary of your genius?
From Now On, I Want to Be the Primary Beneficiary of My Genius
I said this statement aloud to someone I'd been talking with someone about what it feels like to finally come out the other side of a season where you gave your best — your best energy, your best ideas, your best hours, your most alive moments — to something that was never really yours. A job. A company. Someone else's vision. Maybe even someone else's chaos.
You Were Trained to Give Yourself Away
And I think so many of us have been there. Not because we were naive or weak, but because we were trained this way. The whole arc of a "good life," as society tells it, is essentially one long exercise in giving your best to external milestones. Get the grades. Choose the degree. Land the job. Be a good employee. Be useful. Be needed. Pour yourself into the machine and feel grateful that the machine accepted you.
What nobody tells you is that when you live that way long enough, you end up running on leftovers. You give the feast to everyone else and you get whatever's left at the end of the day — if anything.
Here's What I Believe About You
Here's what I've come to believe: you are a genius. Not in some abstract, feel-good way. I mean it practically. When you let yourself do what you love, when you stop contorting yourself to fit into spaces that were never built for you, something effortless and extraordinary comes through. That is your genius. And it belongs to you first.
That doesn't mean hoarding it or becoming selfish. It means something bigger — recognizing that you are not in service of the paradigm. The paradigm is not bigger than you. The system, the company, the rules, the expectations — none of them are above you. You are a billion times more interesting and alive than any milestone society laid out on your behalf.
There's a quote I saw on Pinterest once: I woke up when I realized I was playing the supporting character in someone else's tragedy instead of the hero in my own life. That one hits because it's so easy to do. Taking on too much responsibility for things that were never on your side of the street, giving your best to situations that weren't yours to carry — it's exhausting, and it keeps you small.
What Freddie Mercury Knew
There’s a Freddie Mercury story I keep coming back to. When radio stations told him Bohemian Rhapsody was too long — seven minutes was simply too much, nobody would listen, it needed to be cut down to fit the format — he didn't negotiate. He didn't tell himself, well, if I want to reach people, I have to play by the rules. He basically said: if it's too long for you, go listen to something else. He stayed in his genius. He refused to compromise the thing his soul had made in order to be in service of someone else's expectations. And that song became one of the most beloved pieces of music ever created.
Where Does Your Best Energy Actually Go?
That's what happens when you stop shrinking yourself to fit. When you feel the most alive — the most awake, the most lit up, the most creative — where does that energy go? Do you pour it back into yourself and what you're building? Or do you immediately think of who else needs it, who else you should be giving it to, what task you should be tackling for someone else? You're allowed to claim that energy. It's yours. It always was. Giving yourself your best isn't selfish. It's actually what helps people. Real help, real contribution, real service to the world — it comes from fullness, not from self-abandonment.
When you honor your genius, you become someone who creates things that actually matter. That actually move people. That actually change things. Your only real job is to be the truest, most whole version of yourself. Everything good flows from there.
Want more?
If this resonates and you're ready to start saying yes to what you actually want — not what you think you're supposed to want — I'd love to invite you into Say Yes to Desire, a group coaching experience designed for exactly this kind of becoming. It's a space to reconnect with your desires (how your genius speaks to you) and let them take the lead.
