Among the many de­f­i­n­i­tions that can be found in var­i­ous dic­tio­nar­ies, some do re­fer to a ge­nius as "A per­son who has an ex­cep­tion­al­ly high in­tel­li­gence quo­tient, typ­i­cal­ly above 140." But many oth­er de­f­i­n­i­tions do not re­fer to IQ score. For ex­am­ple - and ig­nor­ing the non-rel­e­vant and more ob­scure de­f­i­n­i­tions such as "A jin­ni in Mus­lim mythol­o­gy," and "A tute­lary de­ity or guardian spir­it of a per­son or place in Ro­man mythol­o­gy," - there are the fol­low­ing de­f­i­n­i­tions of "ge­nius":

• Ex­tra­or­di­nary in­tel­lec­tu­al and cre­ative pow­er.

• A per­son of ex­tra­or­di­nary in­tel­lect and tal­ent.

• A strong nat­ur­al tal­ent, ap­ti­tude, or in­cli­na­tion.

It is gen­er­al­ly agreed that ge­nius is not in­tel­lect alone. A smart man or woman can choose to do noth­ing with his or her brain­pow­er af­ter all. To be­come a ge­nius, a per­son must man­i­fest that in­tel­lect in the form of some tal­ents and/or cre­ative ap­pli­ca­tions. In fact, the qual­i­ty of ge­nius is gen­er­al­ly as­so­ci­at­ed with the achieve­ment of new and prefer­ably pro­found in­sight. What are the things you can do to de­vel­op what­ev­er po­ten­tial ge­nius is with­in you? Here are four ba­sic prac­tices that will help:

1. En­cour­age an in­sa­tiable cu­rios­i­ty.

Whether we look at the life Al­bert Ein­stein, Leonar­do da Vin­ci, Stephen Hawk­ing, one thing is clear: They all had or have an un­end­ing cu­rios­i­ty. You do not stum­ble up­on many un­prece­dent­ed in­sights if you get bored af­ter a few min­utes of in­ves­ti­gat­ing some­thing. Cu­rios­i­ty dri­ves us to ex­plore deeply the world around us. Al­low your­self to won­der about things. Make ques­tion­ing of every­thing a habit, by con­scious­ly do­ing it un­til it is au­to­mat­ic.

2. Open your mind to changes.

It may be con­ve­nient to la­bel and cat­e­gorise every­thing, and it is com­fort­ing to some to have an­swers and be­liefs that go un­chal­lenged, but this is not the path of ge­nius. Open your mind and em­brace the un­cer­tain­ty and am­bi­gu­i­ty of life and of the world. Yes, we must as­sume cer­tain truths, but we can be ready to drop them as bet­ter ones come along - and then per­haps drop those in time. Chal­lenge your own think­ing.

3. Play

In part, play­ing is a way to en­cour­age your cu­rios­i­ty. But it has oth­er ben­e­fits as well. When you play around with ideas or even play around with mod­els or in­ven­tions, you test your think­ing against re­al­i­ty. And just as a kit­ten learns hunt­ing skills by play­ing, you de­vel­op and ex­er­cise your think­ing skills by ex­pos­ing them to re­al-life tests and sit­u­a­tions. Play­ful­ness al­so en­cour­ages the com­bin­ing of var­i­ous men­tal abil­i­ties and skills and ideas.

4. Learn spe­cif­ic tech­niques for cre­ative think­ing.

Just as some peo­ple are born with more in­tel­lec­tu­al abil­i­ty, some are prob­a­bly born with a brain that has more cre­ative ten­den­cies. To be­come a ge­nius, or at least to be­come more cre­ative­ly and in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly pow­er­ful than you al­ready are, you have to make the sug­ges­tions above in­to habits. Let your cu­rios­i­ty be an every­day thing, open your mind to new ideas con­tin­u­al­ly, play dai­ly (both men­tal­ly and phys­i­cal­ly), and prac­tice spe­cial think­ing tech­niques un­til they are an un­con­scious part of your men­tal rou­tine.

http://www.in­crease­brain­pow­er.com/be­come-a-ge­nius.html