Awaken Your Genius Quotes

“Every time you spot a new perspective, you change how you see the world. The world itself hasn’t changed. But your perception of it has. If I’m stuck over here only able to touch the elephant’s ear, the only way for me to understand the tusk is through another human being.
This doesn’t require you to change your own mind. It simply requires you to see someone else’s point of view. “It is the mark of an educated mind,” Aristotle once said, “to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary

“...our ideas and opinions—just like ourselves—are works in progress, continually changing and improving.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary

“...tell your ego it wasn’t wrong. ...tell yourself that you were right given what you knew—given your partial view of the elephant. But now that new information has come to light about other parts of the elephant you couldn’t see before, your beliefs should change. This way, you’re not canceling your past self. You’re simply updating it.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Take one of your firmly held beliefs. Ask yourself, What fact would change my opinion on this subject?
If the answer is, No fact would change my opinion, you don’t have an opinion.
You are the opinion.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Certitudes then replace all thinking. They become a substitute for understanding. They bend reality to match the narrative. They create stark divisions that alienate people with a different perspective.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary

“Reality begins to emerge only when we set aside our tendency to think in clean categories and realize that almost all things exist on a continuum. Along that continuum, answers change depending on time and context. An answer that’s closer to right today could be closer to wrong tomorrow.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity and Become Extraordinary

“If you can let contradictory thoughts dance with each other without your head exploding, they’ll produce a symphony brimming with additional music—in the form of new ideas—far superior to the original.
When you adopt this mindset, you gain the magic of perspective and see through the smoke and mirrors created by one-dimensional stories.
In the end, there’s so much beauty in complexity. A world of multitudes is far more interesting—and accurate—than a world of certitudes.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“It took the most trivial of distinctions for the participants to divide themselves into “us” and “them.” Simply telling people that they belonged to one group and not the other was sufficient to trigger loyalty toward their own group and bias against the other.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Tribalism becomes dangerous when it turns rivals into enemies, when it suppresses diverse thinking, and when it pushes individuals to do things they wouldn’t do on their own.

This type of dangerous tribalism thrives in a sea of disconnected people looking for belonging. And who doesn’t crave belonging these days? We are disconnected from our neighbors, disconnected from nature, disconnected from animals, disconnected from the universe, and disconnected from most things that make us human.

Tribes are the magnet that attracts the metal of our craving to belong. They assure us that we’re right and morally superior. They force us into a different reality where it becomes impossible to see—let alone comprehend—another worldview. We become “the Few, the Proud, the More or Less Constantly Appalled at Everyone Else,” as David Foster Wallace put it.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Over time, the tribal identity becomes our identity. Once identity and tribe fuse, we let our tribe determine what’s appropriate for us to read, watch, say, and think. We pick up social-media cues about what our tribe is thinking, and we toe the line. If our tribe hates Joe Rogan, we hate him too. If our tribe believes that immigrants are destroying our country, we believe it too. We forfeit our voice. We forfeit our choice. That warm, fuzzy, satisfying feeling of belonging trumps everything else—including thinking for ourselves.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Research shows that people are biased in their expression of empathy. The members of our own tribes get empathy. Others get a punch to the gut. We belittle them (I told you so). We ostracize them (If you’re not with us, you’re against us). We ridicule them (What an idiot). We see others, not as people trying to make sense of the same elephant from different angles, but as morally corrupt or unintelligent.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary

“Be careful if you find yourself in a place where only acceptable truths are allowed. Taboos are a sign of insecurity. Only fragile castles need to be protected by the highest of walls. The best answers are discovered not by eliminating competing answers, but by engaging with them. And engagement happens in groups built, not on taboos and dogma, but on a foundation that celebrates diverse thinking.”
― Ozan Varol, Awaken Your Genius: Escape Conformity, Ignite Creativity, and Become Extraordinary