23/09/2025
Does the way we live dull our genius over time?
What do you think?
I've long argued as a football fan and now as a performance coach/consultant working with professional footballers, that many players (though not all) become less intuitive over time and are unable to do many of the things at 26 in a game that they could do at 18.
Football is only one example of this. The late education expert Sir Ken Robinson argued (and provided evidence through studies) that schools train the natural creative genius out of children- which becomes more apparent the further they progress through the school system.
My view on all this is that the need for control, standardisation and testing for data purposes makes people less intuitive. It makes them overthink more, and the logical mind is nowhere near as powerful as the subconscious in terms of the level of information it can process in a split second.
I've always believed that we're all innately set up to be brilliant in our unique ways. In his 1960 book Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz discussed what he dubbed the "Success Mechanism" or "Creative Mechanism". This is essentially an inbuilt natural mechanism for reaching goals or targets, that works through intention, visualisation (along with desire) and trusting that your powerful subconscious will lead you to the desired outcome- without needing to control exactly how that will happen.
And this brings me to the key point about trust. More analysis, more data, more control and micromanagement doesn't necessarily lead to the desired outcomes. People don't become more brilliant (at whatever it is) by prioritising analysis and control over their own internal guidance systems.
Work with my clients is all about creating a deep sense of self-trust. To reach an understanding that although the path may not always be clear logically, they can trust themselves to find a way- and that as long as they remain authentic and connected to that self-trust, their creative mechanism will navigate the path for them.
