6 Soul-Searching Questions to Discover Your Brilliance

The secret to discovering who you really are begins with understanding your DNA—the first step of what I call The Big 3.

I’m not talking about eye color, or whether or not you can curl your tongue.

This DNA hardwiring is where your weirdness is born, it’s your nature. It includes what some would call personality, but it’s more precise than that.

It covers strengths and weaknesses, but it goes deeper still. Think of it as the stuff you couldn’t change about yourself no matter how hard you tried.

Like your biological DNA, you didn’t ask for it, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can fight it, hide it, and pretend it’s not there, but it won’t change anything.

And you shouldn’t want to.

Your DNA is at the core of your brilliance. It’s why you do the things you do.

 There is a great line from the main character in the movie Chariots of Fire: “I believe God made me for a purpose, but he also made me fast. And when I run I feel His pleasure.”

What an amazing way to describe your purpose! What if you followed your true self to greatness? What would the outcome be?

Finding the core of your DNA often involves asking deep soul-searching questions:

Your DNA Is Your Key to Greatness

Unfortunately, a lot of people do try to conceal or reshape their DNA to fit within someone else’s success box, because they don’t understand their own value.

They see an extroverted, charismatic person succeed and think they have to act the same way to make a significant contribution—even though they’re wired to be introverts and go deep in relationships.

They watch as confrontational people are promoted at their company and think they have to be more confrontational—even though they are wired to be phenomenal at resolving conflicts.  

You do some things so well, so naturally, that it would be easy for you to undervalue your DNA hardwiring and presume everyone can do what you do.

You may even do what a lot of people do and treat what makes you unique like a commodity.

But it is not.

The same things that energize you also deplete others. In fact, they would happily pay you to do those things for them—if only they knew you had the gift of brilliance in that area. 

By understanding your DNA hardwiring, you position yourself to add the most value to others and to live your life doing what you were made to do.

If you fail to realize your unique hardwiring, you may think that when people discover how easy it is for you to do what you do, you’ll be exposed as a fraud.

But the reality is that you are wired to do some things so incredibly well that others can’t even fathom how you do it.

Your Go-To Moves

Most importantly, your DNA determines your go-to moves when you’re under stress.

When the pressure is on, each of us tends to revert to our natural hardwiring.

Over time, we may learn behaviors to help us apply or contain our natural tendencies, but under stress, those learned behaviors slip away as we lean in to what comes naturally to us.

That’s when we get to experience the unfiltered you—for better or worse[Tweet “You are an intensely invaluable and brilliant individual, NOT an eminently expendable commodity.”]

Your go-to impulse can be a good thing when the situation calls for your unique mix of strengths or a bad thing when you fail to realize you’re vulnerable because of the way you’re wired.

If the scorpion had been self-aware, he may not have drowned on the back of the frog.

One thing is sure: if you fail to discover your DNA and how to manage it well, you’ll be tempted to try to be everything to everyone in every situation—and make yourself eminently expendable instead of intensely invaluable.

I’d love to hear more about YOU! What excites and energizes you? What depresses and drains you? What have you always known to be true about yourself, even as a child? Share in a comment below.