Superstars stay in their genius lane
Excerpt from Savanting: Outperforming your Potential, Chapter 4 (2019) by Lauren Holmes
SAVANT DOMAINS FROM CHILDHOOD
The six superachievers I have selected to demonstrate savanting have pursued what I consider biologically maximized careers – ones which honor their biological predispositions in compliance with the bioflow.
One’s biological wiring, one’s strongest most rewarding talents, and one’s savant domain are more obvious during the simplicity of childhood. Therefore, it would be enlightening to examine what preceded their illustrious careers.
In my view, these six successful models never left the internal-external maximizing machinery into which we are all born. They remained integrated into the bioflow for most of their careers. Accordingly, their capabilities were always extended by the external bio-infrastructure and informational databases.
They live(d) maximized lives of continuous savantflows within their savant domain. Not only were they operating from peak performance, but they were in a high-growth state which continually pushed the envelope on their baseline functionality and the advance of their savant domain. As a result of being guided by the bioflow – the evolutionary flow of all living systems – they each pioneered new frontiers for humanity.
The new savant-inspired mode of operation will be examined in the lives of the four iconic founders of Amazon, Microsoft, Apple, and Facebook – Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg, respectively. Excerpts from the lives of these and other superachievers will model how the internal-external partnership may be exploited to generate the worldchanging achievements they each attained.
“Control” of nature versus “compliance”
I have also selected the lives of two additional icons from very different savant domains as models. I specifically chose Oprah and Jim Carrey because they have self-identified as celebrity proponents of the law-of-attraction movement. I think you’ll find that explaining their success is much easier through savanting than the law of attraction (LOA). Their success will certainly be more replicable with savanting.
I also chose Oprah and Carrey because there are publicized events in their lives which are instructional with respect to pursuing the savanting way of life. This is my purpose for having six models. In addition, I think you’ll come to see that all their favorite success stories used to promote LOA result from honoring their biological wiring as savanting promotes.
In one critical way, the law of attraction is the exact opposite of savanting which is itself instructional. Savanting outlines a means to comply with internal and external biological processes in order to achieve goals associated with self-actualization and biology-driven purpose.
The law of attraction has the expectation of controlling natural forces. It is about redirecting natural forces to materialize what one wants through “like” attracting “like.” I assume this means that theoretically everyone in the world can simultaneously change the direction of powerful integrated and co-dependent universal forces to attract money. A bit of a challenge to reasoned thinking.
Savanting is about biological maximization. Both Carrey and Oprah were true to their biological predisposition in advancing their savant domains. Their success was achieved through sustained self-actualization. Have a look at their lives in the coming chapters and decide for yourself whether they controlled or complied with natural forces.
For now, let’s examine snapshots of the childhoods of all six superachievers for the beginnings of the savant domains in which they achieved such sensational success. I think the parallels of their biologically maximized careers will inspire your career.
THE CHILDHOODS OF OUR SUPERACHIEVERS
JIM CARREY – comedian, entertainer, actor, impressionist, screenwriter, film producer, uplifter
Jim Carrey was an entertainer from birth. He was addicted to uplifting people’s spirits. As a young boy, Jim slept with his tap shoes on in case his parents needed cheering up during the night. Unfortunately, his father had become unemployed and their financial situation had become dire. Carrey applied to be on the Carol Burnett Show at age ten and gave his first standup comedy performance at a comedy club at age sixteen. The savant domain in which he ultimately became successful began in his childhood.
OPRAH – media mogul, talk show host, actress, producer, philanthropist, uplifter
When Oprah was just three and a half, she was passionate about preaching to help people. She loved to recite the uplifting sermons of renowned preachers in the churches around her home. She knew even then that she aspired to inspire, encourage, and uplift.
Her talent as an orator and storyteller and her gift for drawing out people’s stories to benefit others were all in evidence by the age of five. She took drama in high school. During her senior year, WVOL, an African-American radio station in Nashville, Tennessee hired Oprah to read the news. Her broadcasting career was launched.
She then won a public speaking contest which gave her a scholarship to Tennessee State University. She majored in speech communications and performing arts. As with our other four founders, Oprah too left university in her teens to do the work she was passionate about. She accepted a job as a co-anchor at a CBS television station.
In 1978, while she was in her early twenties, Oprah was offered her first talk show to co-host, a morning show called “People are Talking.” After her first show, Oprah knew that this is what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. The savant domain of her ultimate success began in her childhood.
STEVE JOBS – co-founder of Apple, information technology entrepreneur, consumer engineer and artist, inventor, microcomputer industry pioneer, Pixar computer-animation pioneer
Steve Jobs was committed to consumer engineering for electronics from his early teens. That is the only audience that has ever connected to his heart. Jobs’ mechanical prowess and passion began at an early age. By age ten, Steve’s attraction to electronics had become obvious to his parents. As a result, he spent long hours with his father dismantling and rebuilding electronic devices in the family garage.
When he was twelve years old, he called William Hewlett, co-founder of Hewlett-Packard, to ask him for some parts to complete a school project. Impressed, Hewlett offered Jobs an internship at his company. Jobs thus launched into his savant domain before he was even a teenager.
Hewlett-Packard became a model for how he would run Apple at such a young age. Jobs and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak met in high school when Jobs was just thirteen. Woz was the first person Jobs had met who knew more about electronics than he did. Their days quickly became about the type of work that eventually created Apple and made Jobs a leader in his savant domain.
Steve’s entrepreneurial skills showed up early in his life with several commercializations with Woz while a teenager. His love for minimalist design used for all Apple products also started in his teens and is rooted in the modernist architecture of his childhood home and his study of the principles of simplicity in Japanese Zen Buddhism. He took art classes in his teens to develop his interest.
BILL GATES – co-founder of Microsoft, information technology entrepreneur, mega-philanthropy pioneer, software pioneer, microcomputer industry pioneer, worldbuilder
By the time Bill Gates was thirteen, his key talents had intersected into a savant domain focused on improving the quality of life of individuals en masse. Bill’s brilliance in the tools of his mission – programming and business – were winning him acclaim and money throughout his teens.
In fact, he knew as a pre-teen that he would be an entrepreneur running his own company. However, his entrepreneurialism embraced the true meaning of the word with respect to pioneering new frontiers not simply business ownership.
Gates had a passion and aptitude for penetrating the unknown and building the structure to underpin it. The words of Ralph Waldo Emerson come to mind. “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
These three talents – business, programming and entrepreneurialism – were only tools of Bill’s worldbuilding domain. So many have missed the essence of the man and what drives him because they assumed (a) that the accouterments of success he accumulated from his achievements were his goal or (b) that the fields or industries in which he played identified his savant domain. Had Microsoft never existed, Bill Gates’ career would have looked exactly the same in some other frontier.
He was ready to launch his first company by age fifteen but was overruled by his parents wanting him to attend university. By the time he was twenty his passions had found vent in Microsoft which launched two new fields – microcomputers and software – in the service of personal computing.
Microsoft let him begin his widespread service to enhancing the lives of consumers en masse until it was easier to do this more directly through philanthropy, or more precisely, mega-philanthropy. This had been a key focus of his family from his birth.
JEFF BEZOS – founder of Amazon.com, business leader, entrepreneur, e-commerce pioneer, aerospace pioneer, worldbuilder
Jeff Bezos is considered to be the inventor and developer of e-commerce through Amazon.com. Amazon has transformed the way we read, shop and watch TV, and through its cloud services division runs an astonishingly large portion of the internet.
Bezos is a self-proclaimed “change junkie” continuously scaling new frontiers of learning, experimentation, and creation. At age eighteen, Jeff’s valedictorian speech at his high school revealed his vision of the retail and residential expansion of humanity into space. This colonization vision undoubtedly drove the planetary expansion of Amazon.
In addition, Jeff has now founded a consumer spaceflight company, Blue Origin, to develop the necessary technology for establishing an enduring human presence in space. Commercial suborbital human spaceflight experimentation began in 2018. The planet-wide expansion of Amazon into new unknown territories was preparation for the new frontiers he hopes to scale for the colonization of space.
The savant domain that spawned both Amazon and Blue Origin first appeared as Jeff’s obsession with science fiction books emphasizing worldbuilding. Even as a child his mind was captivated by their ambitious, mogul-driven projects with a self-contained set of planets, space colonies, and social relations (human, post-human, or other-than-human) run by radically different principles from the ones we know.
Following an announcement ceremony for Blue Origin at Cape Canaveral, Bezos talked with the media about his childhood obsession with the space program and science fiction books, and how that passion has motivated his business pursuits and shaped his ultimate goal to eventually put “millions of people” into space.
While an undergraduate at Princeton, Bezos served as the President of Princeton’s Students for the Exploration and Development of Space. His goal has always been to continuously make history. One can trace Bezos’ savant domain from childhood to the present and even project it into the future. Even if Amazon disappeared from the world tomorrow, we can know where his life will go. He will be true to his biological wiring.
MARK ZUCKERBERG – co-founder of Facebook, internet entrepreneur, social networking pioneer, philanthropist, worldbonder
According to his tutor in grade school, Mark Zuckerberg was a programming prodigy. Many assume this is his savant domain. However, Mark was smart at everything and programming was just one more field. Would it surprise you to learn that at age twelve, Zuckerberg began connecting his own family – his first social grouping?
“Zucknet” interconnected the computers of his family and their businesses so they could more easily communicate, support, and bond with each other. His passion for relationship-building began in his childhood and has never stopped.
Should Facebook disappear tomorrow, Mark would continue to promote the quality of life and success of individuals en masse through bonding people. Technology was only a convenient tool of his savant domain but not that domain.
It is his passion for relationship-building that prompted a computer science geek at Harvard to also take psychology. Mark’s raison d’être is to elevate the quality of life of people around the world by improving their connections and relationships. He is driven to unify, better, and bond humanity.
Shaping evolution
Each of these six superachievers had a biological predisposition to the personal savant domain for which they later became celebrated. That field of genius was often evident before they were five years old but certainly by the time they entered their teens.
Imagine decades of peak-performance and peak-growth savantflows within their savant domains starting this young. Imagine the success of your career if you never left your savant domain from birth to death. It is easy to see why competitors could never keep pace with these icons.
Notice that, for the four technology founders, the fields in which they became renowned really didn’t exist to any extent until they created or developed them. Notice as well that each of their savant domains was beneficial to humanity. This is what you would expect if people are partnered with the evolutionary forces of the bioflow continuously mutating, adapting and advancing the human species for survival.
Nature will provide support based not only on the maximizing of your system but also the maximizing of humanity’s system. The bioflow will guide you to maximizing both simultaneously – to the perfect intersection of two hierarchical systems maximizing. This is the formula for your greatest support from the bioflow to achieve your goals.
This is what you will learn from the six iconic savant-domain career models examined in this book. They each excelled in a savant domain that was facilitating the ideal direction of human evolution. This is the ideal strategy for yourself or any company you might run.