Release Your Brilliance...It's Now or Never!

Allow me to tell you about my friend Stewart. (Yes, his name has been changed, and he's graciously agreed to let me share his story with you.) A few years ago, Stewart left a Fortune 100 company to go with a start-up technology company. The perks and the benefits package the company offered him were unbelievable. In fact, if the company had gone public, he could have exercised his lucrative stock options and made enough money to feed a small nation.

But after just a few months at this new job, Stewart was driving to work one day when he had a melt down. Now mind you, my friend is 50 years old, a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy, a man's man, and he later told me that he was crying like a newborn baby on his way to this crème de la crème job. When I asked him why, he said, "It was that moment when I realized I was only going through the motions at work. I was just doing a job. I'd lost my passion."

There he was, enjoying a healthy marriage and brilliant children, living in a beautiful house with a second home to escape to on the weekends, and keeping plenty of money in the bank. You know, the ultimate dream. But yet, there was a hole in his soul. He'd gained weight, lost what little hair he had and was quite stressed out. Work had become nothing more than a place to show up and collect a check.

He had success but no significance.
       He had money but no meaning.
              He had power but no purpose.
                     He had status but no satisfaction.
                            He was alive in body but dead in spirit.

Stewart paused as if he was reliving the moment when he decided to release his brilliance, and then he became very animated and said, "That's when I decided to find my passionate spark."

What is Brilliance?
Simply put, releasing your brilliance means releasing the genius within you. It's living from the inside out ? finding your inner light and letting it shine for the whole world to see. It's discovering and leveraging your unique talents and your pure, intuitive intelligence.

Of the many characteristics that contribute to a diamond's beauty, brilliance is the most important, bar none. Brilliance is the life of the diamond. It is the burst of white light, the flash and the sparkle, that captures our attention. Everyone notices a brilliant diamond ? it seems to explode with light, eliciting "oohs" and "aahs" from those nearby.

And so it is when you release your brilliance. You have a certain vibrant energy that attracts the attention of those around you. You have "it" ? a special, distinctive quality that's difficult to describe. It's more than presence or charisma or enthusiasm. It's something much bigger and deeper. Brilliance has nothing to do with impressing people, and everything to do with allowing your light to shine to illuminate someone else's darkness.

Why is Brilliance Important?
When you operate outside of your brilliance, you tend to be disengaged from life. You work and live to meet your needs rather than to maximize your potential. You go from day to day, just existing, without much passion or enthusiasm for life. Meanwhile, your talents remain untapped, buried somewhere deep inside. It's an awful way to live.

Life shouldn't be that way?and it doesn't have to be.

When you release your brilliance, you feel alive, connected, and uplifted. You use your talents and gifts to breathe life into everything and everyone around you. Your family, friends, co-workers, even your organization ? they all benefit from your brilliance. Imagine what would happen if each person on Earth simply focused on releasing his or her brilliance. Truly, the planet would experience an Evolutionary Transformation unlike anything mankind has ever seen.

Through my work, I've met literally thousands of people ? some in person, some through email and many through phone calls. It saddens me how often I hear from people who feel trapped. I've lost track of the hours I've spent listening to bright men and women share how frustrated they are with their lives. Many of them were vibrant and brilliant at one time, but somewhere along the way they lost their energy and luster.

These experiences got me thinking ? if all of us have the potential to release our diamond brilliance, why don't more of us do it? Why do some people shine while others don't? These questions led to more research and more introspection and dissection of my own life. Eventually, I found what I believe to be the answer: Because we've forgotten how to shine. We've forgotten that we are, in fact, priceless diamonds with a brilliance all our own.

Every child is born with brilliance. No one is overlooked. No one is untouched. The essence of brilliance is in all of us?including you! When we are young, the world cherishes and celebrates our genius, our special gifts and talents. But as we grow older, our brilliance loses its luster.

Howard Gardner, Professor of Education at Harvard, has studied intelligence for more than 20 years and has developed methods to test the multiple intelligences of humans from birth to adulthood. (For more on this research and the concept of multiple intelligences, read Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner.) Through research, Gardner and his colleagues found that virtually all of the children they tested were at the genius level through the age of four. However, by age 20, only 10 percent of those same children were at the genius level, and over age 20, the number dropped to a mere two percent!

It makes you wonder: what happened to the children's genius? Where did it go?

Actually, it didn't go anywhere. It is still there, but it's hidden deep within them. People are born brilliant and then spend the rest of their lives having their brilliance buried by virtually everyone around them.

What Happens When Brilliance is Released?
Today, Stewart is having a ball. He quit the technology company, launched a new company with a group of partners and has absolutely found his spark. He's passionate about what he does and feels alive again. In fact, he's like a kid in a candy store. In addition, he's lost weight, grown back his hair and, according to his doctor, has the heart of a 35 year old. He's in the best shape of his life and happier than he's ever been.

As I reflected on Stewart's story, I thought about you. That's right, you! I wondered, are you releasing your brilliance or working just hard enough to keep your job? Are you working to make a difference or just biding your time? Is work a place of joy or a convenient distraction from life?

I'm inviting you at this time to look yourself in the mirror and rededicate your mind, soul, body and spirit to releasing the brilliance that lies within you. Why? Because if you don't, you're only robbing yourself of the opportunity to experience all that life has to offer.

Simon Believes?Release Your Brilliance! It's now or never!

Simon T. Bailey,author of Release Your Brilliance, can be reached at 972-899-3411, by e-mailat simon@simontbailey.com or byvisiting his website at www.simontbailey.com.

 

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