I remember watching a documentary when I was a kid about fire fighters. I can’t recall all of the details, but the bit that sticks out to me was this story of a fireman that predicted the future.
He was in the street and began frantically telling people to clear away from a building. Nothing seemed wrong; it was an ordinary building on an ordinary street on an ordinary day. But something told the fireman to get these people as far away as possible.
A split second later, the building exploded into flames.
How did he know? That’s the question. In an interview later, he said that he didn’t know why, but his intuition told him he needed to move these people. The documentary suggested that it was his years and years of experience that helped him to intuit that moment.
That he didn’t consciously put two and tow together, but his subconscious mind, with the thousands of hours in and around similar explosions, was working away behind the scenes. It was gathering data, noticing tiny details perhaps imperceptible to the naked senses.
The smell right before an explosion. The density of the air. The change in temperature to his skin.
None of these things were being consciously processed and calculated by the fireman.
His experience was working on him. Moving him to action. Moving through him.
That’s where genius comes from. The thousands of hours, millions of distinctions and billions of grey matter connections. Learning when we don’t even know.
There is an unstoppable magic that arrives at our work when we allow this genius to move through us.
You are infinitely intelligent. Infinitely skilled. You are a genius.
