Awaken Your Genius

From the acclaimed author of Think Like a Rocket Scientist comes a simple guide to unlock your originality and unleash your unique talents. We say that some people march to the beat of a different drummer. But implicit in this cliché is that the rest of us march to the same beat. We find ourselves on well-worn paths that were never ours to walk. An extraordinary group of people pave their own path. They think and act with genuine independence. They stand out from the crowd because they embody their own shape and color. We call these people geniuses-as if they're another breed. But genius isn't for a special few. It can be awakened in anyone. This book will show you how. You'll learn how to discard what no longer serves you and discover your first principles-the qualities that make up your genius. You'll be equipped to escape your intellectual prisons and generate original insights from your own depths. You'll discover how to look where others don't look and see what others don't see. You'll give birth to your genius-the universe-denter you were meant to be.

Ozan Varol is from Istanbul, Turkey. He grew up in a family of no English speakers yet moved to the United States by himself at 17 to study Astrophysics at Cornell University, where he served on the operations team for the 2003 Mars Exploration Rovers project, building stuff that went to the red planet and writing code to photograph the Martian surface. Subsequently Ozan pivoted to law and he is currently the youngest tenured professor at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon. A "true original" in the words of Adam Grant, his work has been described as "must-read" by Susan Cain and featured by the Wall Street Journal, Time, BBC, CNN, Washington Post, Newsweek, Slate, and many other outlets. His newsletter, The Weekly Contrarian, has over 31,000 dedicated subscribers. A sought-after speaker, Ozan has delivered keynotes at conferences, major companies like Microsoft, Intel, General Electric, Lloyds Bank, Google X, and Adidas, and government agencies including the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Navy.