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Blog / Intelligence , Neuroscience

Genius is Just a Mindset

Genius is a mindset

Your intelligence is a moving target.

Imagine if you could boost your IQ up to genius levels next time you faced a challenge at work?

Well, research from various neuroscientists and psychologists have shown that your intelligence or IQ may swing up to 23.5 points based upon your state of mind (1). This means a person with an above average baseline IQ of 137 could temporarily achieve a genius level IQ of over 160.

On the other hand, there are fear-based states of mind that can reduce one's IQ by 10 to 15 points. Add in a few hours of missed sleep and you can knock a couple more points off the old IQ.

I experienced this IQ suppression first hand in 2012.

Back then I was CEO of the 58th fastest growing startup in the country. And when I needed all of the mental faculty I could muster, my body was primarily in a stressed state called flight or freeze. 

In flight or freeze, a little unruly part of the brain called the amygdala, starts shutting down parts of the logical mind. Flight or freeze is a stress response that prepares the body to evade an attacking animal.

In my case though, there was no tiger chasing me. But my imagination was just as scary.

Unfortunately, the unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived one. So as I was imagining unlikely worst case scenarios for my business, I was being fed heaping doses of stress hormones, like my life depended on it.

And my intelligence was being accordingly suppressed, right when I needed it most.

 

If flight or freeze lowers IQ, how can I increase it?

If flight or freeze can make us the equivalent of a dummy, are there other states of mind that may increase our IQ? Perhaps, to genius levels?

The Ancient Greeks believed that you couldn’t be a genius. Rather, they believed that genius was a state of mind that came and visited you … sometimes, if you were lucky.

They may have been onto something.

There are many different general states of mind — aka mindsets or states of consciousness — that may be associated with different levels of IQ. Sir David R. Hawkins, M.D., Ph.D, spent his career studying states of mind and created this ascending logarithmic scale of mindsets shown below.

David Hawkins, Weak vs Strong Mindsets

 

Using Applied Kinesiology (AK), Hawkins measured what state of mind people were in, then classified them from weak to strong.

In his book, Power vs. Force, Hawkins estimates that currently, approximately 78% of the world’s population operates below the state of Courage. In these weak mindsets that are dominated by fearful thinking, people are physically weaker, less creative, and less intelligent.

So where do geniuses fall on this scale? Hawkins claims that most modern day geniuses, such as Albert Einstein and Marie Curie, typically operate around the level of Reason. In the state of Reason or above, the mind is fully focused, present, and free from the mental distractions and stress associated with weaker mindsets.

 

Genius Flows From States of Mind That You Can Access

So if you want to be in your most genius state of mind to tackle a big problem, you have to boost your mindset up to the level of Reason. And there are many different mindset techniques and strategies for doing this that I’ll discuss in later posts and videos.

For example, meditation and different breathing techniques can significantly boost IQ and temporarily raise people up into higher states, like Reason and Peace (1).

Try it for yourself! Wim Hof’s signature breathing pattern will only take a little more than a minute, and it’ll materially increase your mindset for about an hour. It has even replaced my need for a coffee break.

  • Take 30 of the deepest breaths you can muster (fill your belly and your chest full of air completely). Each breath should take about two seconds a piece.
  • On the 30th breath, exhale completely and hold your breath with no air (try relaxing and closing your eyes during this breath hold with no air).
  • Continue holding your breath with no air until you feel a strong reflex to breathe in, then inhale fully and hold your breath with air for 15 seconds.

That’s it!

If that worked and you’d like to try other breathing techniques and meditations that boost your state of mind, request a consultation to learn more about Dreamfuel's unique techniques can help you boost your performance.

 

(1) Several scientific studies have cited improvements in IQ scores as evidence that states of mind derived through different forms of meditation, neurofeedback, and other mindset techniques can improve cognitive performance. Naik and Patel (2016) recruited 42 students to participate in meditation for 3 months and saw a statistically significant increase in IQ of 11 points. Tansey (1991) reported average improvements of 19.75 points on the WISC-R Full Scale IQ score for 24 children with “neurological or perceptual impairments or attention deficit disorder.” Using a random assignment wait list control design, Linden, Habib and Radojevic (1996) reported that 18 participants who received EEG biofeedback showed a statistically significant gain of 9 points on the K-Bit IQ Composite. Lubar, Swartwood Swartwood and O’Donnell (1995) reported gains averaging 9.7 points for 23 children. Othmer et al. (1999) reported an average gain of 23.5 points with a sample of 15 children. Thompson and Thompson (1998) reported 98 children gaining an average of 12 IQ points. Othmer and Fleischman (2005) reported 22 and 23 point improvements in IQ scores for identical twin girls following neurofeedback.