Genius is knowing when to stop !

Dr Sumedha Kushwaha *

Like most people new to their professions, I heard people saying, “You should always know your exit strategy”. Everyone knows the start line, no one knows what the finish line looks like. And, I would be clueless about what this means!

I got guidance that the next 5-year plan of your life should be on paper and there should be a master plan in place on where you want to get in life personally and professionally both. Is this even possible? I don’t know when people ask me where do see yourself in the next five years. God damn it, I don’t know whether I would survive this weekend or not!

But having said that,I also observe people doing the same things over and over again without even realizing that they aren’t even using 1% of their brains.

If you have been in the same job for the past five years and you have been doing similar kinds of projects, you aren’t using your mind to create, you are using your mind to procreate a set of habits. Without you even knowing, you are on auto-pilot mode. The program is running, not your mind or imagination.

The rut is that most people encounter problems either personally or professionally; and they cannot find an answer. What’s the best way to deal with the problem in that case- start trying to escape that feeling.

This behavior keeps repeating every single day of their life. Rather, for geniuses, when they encounter a problem and they cannot solve it. They put themselves into a discomfort zone. They find better ways of imagining, creating, replicating, transmuting, and whatever it takes to find a solution to the problem.

What’s the problem with most of mankind- We conform! We think of all the negative consequences that a decision would bring, and thus not gather courage to take that decision. Most of our demons are imaginary, not even real.

Thus, we do use our imaginative powers, but to bring us closer to our own doom. Thus, the sentence - the genius knows when to stop. Whenever your brain is in a negative loop, do you have the capacity or capability to order it that IT is not in command, YOU are!

And if you are the commander. Then who is this you? For most of us, we aren’t self-aware about what we are even thinking? Is it not who we want to be, we become what our mind is training us to be. Breaking that loop every time to form a new cycle or thought pattern is an early way to start forming an exit or stop strategy.

Is exit strategy a betrayal of some form? Of course not. It’s a part of the evolutionary process that we as individuals have in place. God stopped manufacturing some bones in your body when you evolved from apes to humans- if you don’t believe me, read about vestigial organs.

When we have organizations, or we work- there is only a certain lifecycle of the process that we have to make, once things are self-sustainable, it’s time to move on to do bigger things. The mind space we get when we accomplish a target and then go on to the next- is the most important part of the journey.

But, that takes risk, it takes courage to start something again from scratch. To build again, to fall again, to be bruised, brush off your wounds, and run even faster. Ponder on whether it is good to stay where you are, dodge life but not leave your comfort zone.

I mean, thinking it from a sane man’s perspective- everyone has the right to enjoy the fruits of their hard work. Or whether, it is saner to accomplish something, let go of it fully and start afresh and keep doing this every time? The rush of creating bigger things should be more than the fear of failing in this case for sure.

There are probably no right or wrong answers. But if you are in an office where you do not feel motivated, or you are in a relationship where your house feels like a cage, or you are studying a course, where you do not find pleasure, or whatever it may be in life, where you are doing something and not happy- it’s only the genius who knows, when to stop! In my opinion, you are one too!