Reflections on Genius

By George A. Boyd © 2005

Genius, in academic testing protocols, is defined as scoring on an intelligence test greater than two standard deviations from the norm. Whether the correct responses are learned during elementary, secondary, and post-secondary education, or whether some superior innate faculty of discernment or judgment allows these individuals to score significantly above the norm, is putative.

We may speculate that if education is geared directly to improve test performance on standardized testing—learning the intellectual skills necessary to pass tests such as the state high school exit exams, Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), or Graduate Record Exam (GRE) may also increase the scores on intelligence testing.

Aside from this consensual empirical measure, genius may have other definitions that we will discuss briefly here.

  1. Expanded ability to use the faculties of the intellect – The faculties of the intellect (see our article, “The Seven Chords of Jnana Yoga” available in our online Library) may be opened to a greater extent in some individuals than in others. This allows them enhanced access to problem solving strategies of greater complexity. This may be the result of spiritual evolution that concomitantly awakens the vehicles of the personality.
  2. The result of prior learning or experience in other lives – The phenomena of the gifted musical prodigy, for example, is used as a [rationale] for this theory. To develop the nearly instant facility for music and accelerated acquisition of mastery of the most complex musical repertoire, it is argued, points to lifetimes of prior practice and progressive mastery of the rudiments of this art.
  3. The result of powers gained by spiritual practices in present or past lives – By certain types of meditation practices, including Jnana
    Yoga, Raja Yoga, Kundalini Yoga, and Agni Yoga—We could add, by the use of selected bija mantras invoking the goddess of learning, Saraswati—the individual may purportedly refine certain talents on this substrate in the Superconscious mind. This gift is, in turn, anchored in the personality. The individual then asks for the gift to operate, and poetry, music, or whatever gift the Soul bestows flows into the mind to be recorded and expressed. Through study and reflection (Jnana Yoga), contemplation (Raja Yoga), energization and activation of specific vehicles of consciousness (Kundalini Yoga), and anchoring these abilities through attunement (Agni Yoga),these powers are progressively awakened, mastered, and expressed in the personality. [We teach each of these types of meditation in our intermediate classes, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and online Accelerated Meditation Program.]
  4. The result of the bestowal of a gift by a supernatural agency – As a result of prayer, penance, great charity and good deeds, intense worship, and other means of pleasing the Higher Power, angels, gods, goddesses, or the Divine are held in this view to anchor a gift in the individual during the current life.
  5. Merit based bestowal – In this scenario, the gift is anchored by supernatural agencies prenatally or at birth as a reward for good deeds in past lives. Unlike (4), the individual does nothing to invoke them by prayer, worship, or meritorious deeds in the current life. Also unlike (3), the individual does not perform specialized meditation practices to develop them, either in this or in previous lives.
  6. The result of vehicular awakening – In this model, gifts or powers are automatically bestowed as the Kundalini Shakti opens and awakens higher chakras. Unlike (3) where the powers are progressively refined by meditation practice, then anchored—in this model, the native intelligence of the Kundalini is sufficient to awaken the powers, and they burst forth, fully active, as the progressive rising of the Kundalini force opens the chakra or higher vehicle of consciousness.
  7. The result of spiritual evolution – In this viewpoint, the evolution of the ensouling entity and its vehicles concurrently tunes up the vehicles of the personality, opening the faculties of each vehicle. In this schema, only transformational methods that unfold the spiritual evolutionary potentials of the Soul produce these effects. Meditation practices described in (3) access and awaken faculties that exist in the Superconscious mind, but do not concomitantly unfold the spiritual evolutionary potentials.

In the Mudrashram® System of Integral Meditation, we underscore that genius can be developed as a synergy of methods (3) and (7), and use specific attunement practices to unfold the faculties of the vehicles of the personality (1). We see that genius is the dynamic expression of the Soul’s innate abilities of love, wisdom, and power that are present in the Superconscious mind, and are actively and purposely anchored in the personality.

Bestowal of good fortune from good deeds, spiritual practices, or the beneficence of your Higher Power may underlie your current high intelligence or giftedness in certain areas of human endeavor. We point out, however, that it is possible to develop these capacities further as the consequences of activating your spiritual evolutionary potentials and moving forward the process of refining these abilities by learning selected meditation practices.

The Kundalini will rise and activate powers and abilities naturally as a part of spiritual evolution, as in (6), but we do not advocate heroic measures to attempt to force open these higher centers or chakras. We do advocate the use of the Kundalini to awaken, activate, purify, and ready the higher vehicles for the Soul’s expression—but not as an agency of transformation, which for many individuals, produces imbalances of vehicles and may actively interfere with personality functioning.

Genius and Talent

Talent is a different order of mastery of a skill. Talent may be understood as a step on the path to mastery of the skill, where it becomes fully incorporated into the Soul’s repertoire of abilities.

These stages in the acquisition of talent, genius, and mastery are shown below.

Level of Mind

Content

Stage

Conscious

Initial practice of the skill

Stage of learning

Subconscious

Automatization of parts of the skill

Stage of habit

Metaconscious

Easy practice of the skill with creative innovation and style

Stage of talent

Understanding the skill and its acquisition so that you may guide another in gaining talent

Stage of teaching

Superconscious

Gaining unique insights or revelations about the skill so that you are able to advance the skill in new directions, e.g. to invent new derivations or application of the skill

Stage of intuitive revelation

Developing the skill to the point where the Soul can fully express the skill seamlessly, utilizing the faculties of the Superconscious, Metaconscious, Subconscious, and Conscious minds

Stage of genius

Developing the skill to the point where it can be anchored in others as a gift

Stage of Mastery

Gaining access to the Superconscious mind is requisite to develop the three highest aspects of a skill, for which meditation
plays a key role. This aspect of skill mastery transcends the personality by creating a tunnel of ability into the Superconscious mind.

  • When this tunnel is opened all the way to the presence of the Soul, true genius is born.
  • When this tunnel is opened to the presence of the Divine Spirit, which dwells universally in all lives, it bestows the ability to minister the skill as a Grace, a gift, or an empowerment—and it imbues another Soul with ready understanding and insight into the skill. When the skill is developed to this level, this is a sign of Mastery.

Whereas one with talent can train another to express talent, one with Mastery can activate the octaves of the Superconscious and can draw out inspiration and genius in another.

We encourage the reader to reflect upon the possibility of genius and what may bring it to fruition, and the stages of development of a skill.

We propose to you that genius may not be a rare genetic gift bestowed on the few by some special twist of fate, but rather the potential for any of your skills should you devote the time, energy, dedication, discipline, and perseverance to develop it fully—so it may allow your Soul to express through this ability in your human life.

The Two Orders of Validation

By George A. Boyd © 2020

Q: It seems both reason and intuition have the capacity to generate error. Can you shed some light on this?

A: Let us tease apart the verification processes of reason and intuition:

Reason arrives at tentative, consensual truth through a process of analysis and critique, and testing.

  • It starts with facts, data, or evidence.
  • It generates a hypothesis to explain the fact.
  • It tests the hypothesis to determine whether it is true or not.

It observes, measures, weighs, detects, tests, and sets criteria for the statistical probability that the hypothesis is likely true.

  • This estimate of the likelihood that something is true can range from five out of 100 in social science to one in 100 billion in physics.

Empirical verification is a step-by-step algorithmic process, which is subject to peer review, analysis, and critique.

Intuition reveals truths that dwell in the sphere of the Soul’s consciousness.

  • It uses the faculty of discernment (Vijnana) to locate the object in the inner mandala of the Soul’s consciousness and recognizes it and labels it.
  • It employs the faculty of contemplation (Dhyana) to gather information about the object of meditation through observation, reflection, comparison, and identifying analogies or correspondences.
  • It is founded upon the Soul’s consciousness, which is the anchor of spiritual law and the foundation of inner Truth (Dharma).

Finding the ground of intuitive truth enables you to identify the stable markers of Subplanes, Planes, and Divisions of the Continuum, and to locate your spiritual essence in inner space.

Intuitive discovery or revelation is a heuristic process, which explores meaning, realizes possibilities, makes associations with other ideas, finds correspondences, and examines the changes that transformation produces.

When this rational and intuitive process goes awry, it gives rise to two forms of distortion:

Conspiracy theories – In this distortion of your rational process, you make assertions without validated facts, you create a hypothesis to explain your assertion, and you believe this hypothesis is the truth without subjecting it to tests. This arises from a failure to conduct empirical verification.

Delusion – In this distortion of intuitive discovery, you assume something is true in error. You use discernment to incorrectly confirm your erroneous belief. You only admit information that supports your belief, and you deny, ignore, or attack information that is contrary to your belief.

Disciples need to correct both types of distortion, and identify what is true behind conspiracy theory and delusion.

You can ask questions like these to examine these patterns:

Is this an intuitive or empirical truth?

How do I know this is true? How can I verify this?

What are the consequences of holding this belief?

  • How does it affect my behavior?
  • How does it shape my emotional reactions and attitudes?
  • How does it color my perception and worldview?
  • How does it alter my beliefs?
  • How does it influence my values?
  • How does it sway my choices?

When I make these choices, how does it impact my life, my relationships, and my career?

The Gentle Art of Spin

Q: What is the process through which truth is perverted so it gives rise to conspiracy theories and delusion?

A: This is both an active process and a passive process:

In the active process, you choose to lie and deceive others. Criminals, con-men, and dictators utilize the active process to control others and make them do what they want.

In the passive process, you start with a logical error and then you begin to justify and defend it. The passive process is generated when you receive incorrect information and you believe it is true. This can result from exposure to those who are telling you lies and you believe them; it can also stem from having incomplete information and making faulty conclusions based on this limited data.

These active and passive “truth cycles” are described below:

The Active Process

In the active process, truth is progressively eclipsed. The dichotomy is between choosing to tell the whole truth as opposed to the choice to lie.

  • The downward cycle for the active process moves from omission to misstating the facts to active distortion to feeling initial anxiety and guilt to rationalization to outright denial.
  • The upward cycle for the active process moves from breaking denial, stopping rationalization, to finding the source of anxiety and guilt to correcting distortion to stating the correct facts to revealing what was omitted.

The Passive Process

In the passive process, rationality is perverted into delusion through warping of information.

  • The downward cycle for the passive process moves from making a logical error to covering up this error to accepting false information to making judgments based on this false information to precipitating a change in mindset to a descent into paranoid thinking.
  • The upward “recovery” cycle for the passive process includes taking responsibility for what you can control to examining your mindsets and rejecting erroneous beliefs and perceptions to rejecting incorrect judgments and founding subsequent judgments on correct information to identifying and rejecting false information and finding correct information to admitting your errors to identifying the source of logical error and correcting it.

To deconstruct a rational or empirical belief, reflect upon:

  • What is the evidence for this contention?
  • What is your belief about the evidence (hypothesis)?
  • How do you prove this is true?

If there is no evidence, it does not exist in the physical universe.

To deconstruct an intuitive belief, reflect on:

  • In what nodal point is this truth anchored?
  • What is your criterion for assuming this is true? [Is this a mathematical proof? Is this a sensory proof? Is this an emotional or experiential proof based on faith or conviction? Is this a proof based on authority or scripture? Is this a revealed (revelatory) truth? Is this a proof based on analogy or correspondence like Gematria, numerology, astrology, or tarot? Is this a proof based on symbolic or linguistic analysis?]
  • How can you verify that truth is reliable?

Truth has many facets. What is true depends upon the means through which you derive it or arrive at it.

Notice how this process of spin can move both ways: you can descend into error; you can correct yourself. You may wish to apply this process of truth recovery to deconstruct your false beliefs.

Ways of Collecting Attention at the Waking State of Awareness

By George A. Boyd © 2018

To begin the process of meditation, you need to collect your attention at the waking state of awareness. This initial state of collection of your mind-stuff into a sphere, coupled with the sense that you are conscious and present, has been called mindfulness.

This state of mindfulness is the precursor to monitoring your present time experience (Vipassana); absorption of your attention in the currents of breath, inner sight, and inner sound (Laya); and moving your attention along the thread of consciousness and contemplating the content at each focal point (Dhyana). So learning to collect your attention is the first step in meditation.

There are a variety of methods to collect your attention. Some of the methods that people use to become established in that state include:

  1. Take a series of deep, slow breaths
  2. Use the sniff breath, or Hansa breath [we teach this method]
  3. Concentration, simply collect your attention at a single point
  4. Mentally (with your attention) repeat a mantra like OM
  5. Note the changes that occur in your awareness as you just sit—this is Vipassana performed at the waking state of awareness
  6. Practice sense withdrawal methods such as absorbing attention in the breath, or the visual or auditory channels
  7. Visualize the globe of mind-stuff is seated in an eight petalled lotus at the medulla center

There is no best way to collect your attention. You simply need to find a method that works for you. Then you can progress to the deeper stages of meditation.

While focusing your attention and entering the state of conscious presence and inner alertness (mindfulness) is the first step in meditation, the next step is interiorization—moving your attention to deeper levels of the mind.If you have not meditated before, you may have not experienced interiorization, and your attention has remained at the waking state of consciousness.

When you contemplate a focal point along the thread of consciousness, you witness the content of that level originating and arising at that level of the mind. For example, in the waking state of consciousness, you may become aware that something you watch on You Tube or Facebook makes you angry—these feelings come into your waking awareness like waves wash up onto a beach.

When you contemplate the feeling center of the Conscious mind, however, you notice the feeling originate in this center, and then pass away. This is like you were on a surf board far enough out from the beach that you could observe the wave arising, breaking, and flowing onto the shore.

There is a structured contemplation exercise on our Open Stacks page called “How to Open Your Own Third Eye.” This lists many of the common focal points of the Conscious and the lower and middle bands of the Subconscious mind.To gain context on where these focal points are on the thread of consciousness, you may wish to read our article in Open Stacks, “The Great Continuum of Consciousness.”

If you have never meditated before or you have attempted to meditate and have been unsuccessful, you may wish to consider taking the Introduction to Meditation Program, which trains you to contemplate and explore key focal points in your Conscious, Subconscious, and Metaconscious mind, and trains you to recognize your Soul in the Superconscious mind.This is a good place to start in your progressive mastery of meditation.

Mindfulness is the first step on the ladder of meditation. The other steps include:

  1. Interiorization – You reach this level when you can move your attention along the thread of consciousness to contemplate and observe the functioning of the mind at different focal points.
  2. Hypnotic inner work – When you reach this level of ability, you can consciously move your attention to a selected level of the mind and give suggestions. At this level, you can guide and direct your astral body to access different bands of the mind.
  3. Conscious awakening – At this level you awaken as the three immortal principles, the attentional principle, the spirit, and the Soul.This confers rebirth and activates these essences. This readies you to perform inner work.
  4. Activation and transformation – You become capable of doing this when your attentional principle and your spirit can learn the methods to unfold the Soul, travel in full consciousness through the higher Planes, to open the channels of the Nada, to activate you Soul’s intuition, and awaken the energy of awareness (Kundalini), and to direct the Light Fire within the Soul to make attunements.

  5. Higher octave development – Through transformation, you awaken your spiritual potentials at progressively higher octaves of being— Subtle, Planetary, Transplanetary, Cosmic, Supracosmic, and Transcendental bands of the Continuum of Consciousness [These levels of the Continuum are described in “The Great Continuum of Consciousness” article cited above.]
  6. Empowerment and ministry – At the highest levels of development, you are trained and empowered to teach, guide, and initiate others and/or perform spiritual ministry.

You learn about the (1) process of interiorization in the Introduction to Meditation Program. We train you in steps (2) to (4) in our intermediate meditation programs, the in-person Mudrashram® Master Course in Meditation and the by-mail and the online Accelerated Meditation Program. You learn about step (5) in the Mudrashram® Advanced Course in Meditation. You access step (6) in our teacher training programs when you reach the seventh stage of spirituality, and begin your ascension on the Bridge Path.

If you seek our support to learn meditation and move through each of these steps, we encourage you to sign up for a free consultation and discover if we can help you reach your spiritual and personal objectives.

Setting Up the Conditions for Success

The Interplay of Ability and Control: Setting Up the Conditions for Success

By George A. Boyd © 2020

Q: In our highly competitive and complex world, how do you achieve success? While I find I am quite effective in the areas I can control, there’s a lot that is out of my hands—so even if I am doing all the right things, success seems to evade me. Other people don’t seem to cooperate with my dreams of success!

A: Let’s break this down and examine the strategies through which you can create success, using internal and eternal efforts. First, we need to look at the interplay between ability and control.

The Four Scenarios of Human Functioning

Success is based on the interplay between your ability and control.

Ability is a measure of whether or not you have the knowledge and skills to perform the tasks required to reach your objective.

Control determines whether this is something you can do for yourself without involving other people, and your relative freedom of action in this interpersonal dynamic between you and the other actors.

We can visualize four scenarios for the interplay of ability and control:

Scenario

Ability

Control

Description

Example(s)

A

Yes

Yes

Something you can do without a problem. You get expected and predictable results.

You pick up the newspaper on the lawn each morning.

B

Yes

No

You can set up the conditions for a successful outcome, but the outcome is based on the decisions of other people.

You have a sales conversation with a prospect, but they make the decision as to whether to buy your product or service.

C

No

Yes

You have the accountability and responsibility to do a task, but you lack the knowledge or skills to do the task.

You are asked to do an assignment at school to learn a skill you have never practiced, and you must study the lesson, and then take a test on your proficiency with the new skill. Alternately, you have been given an assignment from management in your company to meet an objective, and you don’t have the ability or knowledge—in this scenario, you might delegate the task to someone who has greater expertise than you to complete it.

D

No

No

You lack the ability to solve your problem or change your situation. You may feel your life is not under your control.

You are imprisoned in a jail. Alternately, you are a member of a totalistic group‐a gang, a cult, or a terrorist cell—and they control all aspects of your life, and there are dangerous consequences for trying to leave. Another example is you are seriously ill in a hospital, and you are too sick to leave—you are completely under the care of your attending medical staff.

So let’s tease out these four scenarios:

In scenario A, you can simply do what you want to do. So, when you want to go out to exercise—you just do it.

In scenario B, you have to change the dynamics of the situation, so others will consent to allow you to reach your objective. You commonly encounter this in a situation where you are trying to make a sale or you are negotiating with someone to obtain what you want.

In scenario C, you have to learn how to do the task or you need to delegate it. You run into these situations in school and at work.

In scenario D, you aren’t able to take action and you don’t control of the situation. If you’re in jail or a totalistic environment, you may look for a way to escape. If you’re sick in a hospital, you have to recover from your illness before the hospital will release you.

It is often in scenario B that you must struggle for success—as you must deal with other people’s desires and decisions. This is the scenario we are going to examine in greater depth in this article.

There are two approaches to dealing with scenario B situations:

  1. You change the situation internally through shifting your perspective how you view the situation, you ask for help, or your work on your internal issues that might be sabotaging your success.
  2. You find ways to work with the elements that aren’t in your control, and modify them, so you change the calculus of your success

Let’s look at these one at a time.

Internal Strategies

We can characterize seven major strategies for working on things you don’t control from the inside.

  1. Blame and shame – For many people, when they are in a situation of interpersonal challenge, they fall back upon blaming others, which leads to anger; or blaming themselves, which leads to shame and depression. When other people have controlled you in the past—e.g., parents, employers, teachers, police, or military officers—they may have blamed you or shamed you. You internalized this and it has become part of your own internal dialog. Other than evoking emotions in you, this strategy does not produce any forward progress towards resolving your problem.
  2. Constructive action – Here you use your intelligence to solve the issue and move ahead. You might do something else that you haven’t tried. Alternately, you might find a mentor, coach, or consultant, who has successfully dealt with this problem—and you can learn from them how to succeed in this situation. In this strategy, you believe your own efforts can produce change, and yield the results you want.
  3. Law of Attraction – In this strategy, you believe that the Law of Attraction is waiting to shower you with abundance and success. You only have to change you thinking and beliefs through visualization and affirmation, and you will succeed.
  4. Providence – When you work at this level, you pray to God, whom you believe is All-Powerful and able to intervene in your situation. You believe in faith that the Divine cares for you and wants you to overcome your challenge, and to be prosperous and successful. Those who follow the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—adopt this approach.
  5. Invocation – In this approach, you pray to a specific god or goddess that specializes in the issue with which you are struggling. If you have money problems, you would invoke the goddess Lakshmi.If you were trying to do well in school, you would call upon the goddess Saraswati. There are mantras and special worship ceremonies (pujas) that you can do, sometimes requiring the assistance of a priest, to persuade the god or goddess to apply his or her miraculous power on your behalf. This is a strategy that Hindus adopt.
  6. Earning merit – In this perspective, good outcomes are synonymous with reaping good karma. To earn merit and produce good karma, you would do good deeds and charity. For example, the Christian prosperity gospel believes, if you tithe one tenth of your income to the Church, God will reward you with financial blessings, wealth, and prosperity. Buddhists also use this strategy to do good deeds, and hope that the Law of Karma will reward them for their actions.
  7. Removing karma from the unconscious mind – In this method, you uproot the issues in your unconscious mind that sabotage your success and might be blocking your path to prosperity.

In scenario (2), you believe your own intelligent activity can create change. In scenarios (3) to (5), you believe an external Power can manifest what you desire. In scenarios (6) and (7), you believe your influence on the deepest levels of your mind can produce the results your want.

In scenario (2), you act within the social world around you to change the outcomes you are experiencing. In scenarios (3) though (7), you are dipping into your subjective world: you attempt to change the results you experience though evoking the powers of the Subconscious and Superconscious mind, or removing the factors in your unconscious mind that limit your success.

External strategies

Internal scenario (2) invites you to segue into external strategies, in which you attempt to solve the problem that is blocking your success through changing you interaction with others. Here are some of the external strategies that sales people and negotiators employ:

  1. The no-brainer deal – You make your offer so compelling that you customer cannot refuse what you are selling. You might have a remarkable low price compared to a customer’s perception of the true value of your product or service. You might add several bonuses to sweeten the deal.
  2. Win through intimidation – Here, you coerce, threaten lawsuits, or intimidate the individuals or companies that block your success to accede to your demands. In criminal enterprises, they may use extortion, threats of violence, or demand bribes to get what they want, or compel you to act in accordance with their wishes. In this external scenario, you attempt to force your competitor or adversary to back down.
  3. Run the script – Those who begin their career in sales are often presented with a script of what to say on their sales calls. This approach tries to identify and skillfully overcome your customer’s objections, so they will buy your product or service.
  4. Become a monopoly – If you are selling within an environment where there are many moving parts—marketers,lawyers, financial brokers, insurance agents, manufacturers, wholesalers, quality assurance inspectors, and shipping providers—to avoid having one of the players in the matrix ruin the deal, you might acquire as many of the aspects of the transaction as you can, so your customers will only have to deal with you. You control the elements of the matrix, so nobody external to your company has any role with your customer.
  5. Make skillful chess moves – In this approach, you analyze the dynamics impacting your situation, and you perturb the system, so it shifts the advantage to you. You might do something unexpected or counter-intuitive that will make the other players in the situation have to react in new ways.
  6. Be the best – You provide such a markedly superior product or service that your customer has no other reasonable choice than to buy your product or service.
  7. Come in the back door – When you utilize this method, you work with your customer’s deepest desires, and you promise to fulfill them through your product or service. This acts like a hypnotic suggestion to directly influence your customers’ subconscious or unconscious mind, so they feel driven to work with you. This approach presumes that people don’t really make rational decisions; they make emotional decisions, and then rationalize them.

Applying Systemic Ju Jitsu

You would utilize external scenario (5), perturbing the system, when:

  • You can’t control all of the parts of the matrix, as in external scenario (4)
  • You have applied whatever sales strategies that you utilize in your company, external strategies (1), (3), (6), or (7) to get your customer interested
  • You have no reason to attempt to force your competitor to back down or there has  been legal malfeasance, as in external scenario (2)

Those who have made major changes in their industry have utilized perturbing the system. We see examples of this in our modern world:

  • Amazon has significantly impacted the sales of brick and mortar stores.
  • Google has eclipsed libraries, when it comes to searching for information.
  • Uber, Lyft, and other ride sharing companies have cut into the business of taxis and shuttles.
  • Wikipedia has replaced the need for buying collections of encyclopedia books.

If you have done your sales and marketing and gotten your customer interested, but you have to deal with players who aren’t in your control—and who can ruin the deal—you may wish to consider how you might perturb the system. To tap this dimension, you could ask:

  • What is the choke point in this system? What can be done to release it?
  • How can you perturb this system, so you will shift the advantage to your team?
  • Who do you need to influence, so the system flows freely?
  • Who has influence over the other players in the system that could get them to fix what they are contributing to the stasis of the system?
  • What incremental changes in your approach might move the other players to come closer to your position?

Through applying the right combination of internal and external strategies, you can up your odds of creating successful outcomes. Reflect on these strategies, and consider what you could tweak to improve your results.