Moshe Feldenkrais was a groundbreaking teacher of human potential and  mind-body development.

Moshe Feldenkrais – Credit: H. Czelczok

His revolutionary system of mind and body “re-education” for stressed and dysfunctional brains and bodies has achieved miraculous results for thousands around the world.

He has some fascinating insights for anyone interested in achieving all they’re capable of.

He says that there is no difference between “geniuses”—those who seem to have an exceptional ability in a given field—and the rest of us.

They are neither smarter nor or more “gifted.”

They have simply searched for and found (or stumbled upon) a way of doing something that works incredibly well for them.

For example, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the famous philosopher, claims he was a quite ordinary thinker until he came up with this methodology: Whatever he read, he would attempt to present it himself as clearly as possible—as well as the author himself would have liked.

It was only then that he became the great thinker and philosopher whose fame has lived on for centuries.

If you read the biographies of great musicians, painters, writers and even business people, you will often see that they have found and employ very specific ways of working and specific systems that work extremely well for them—allowing them to tap into their unlimited potential to access their subconscious, to remove resistance, and to be far more productive than average.

For example, Mozart wrote music while watching billiard balls bounce around the billiards table to distract his conscious mind. Many writers have rituals around how, when, and where they write, how to get in touch with the reader, and so on.

Feldenkrais says that what keeps most people from fulfilling their potential is simply their own resistance—contradictory motivation that is so habitual as to be no longer even felt.

Once that is cast aside, once we become better managers of our own motivation, action is unhesitating and the impossible becomes possible.

He gives the example of Voltaire, who wrote the classic novel Candide in 11 days—around the time it would take to write out the novel non-stop in longhand.

Dan Kennedy, is extraordinarily respected, successful and productive in many fields:  copywriting, marketing consulting, information publishing, and authoring over a dozen bestselling books.

Yet he’d be the first to tell you that he’s basically lazy and would much rather be in the backyard lying on the hammock.

He’s been able to become one of the most productive and successful marketers on the planet by scheduling ALL his time—from writing for projects to phone calls—and ruthlessly sticking to it.  (Scheduling a call with Dan takes weeks. And if it’s scheduled for Monday between 10:00 and 10:12 am, you can rest assured that you will BE on the phone with Dan at 10:00 and NOT on the phone with Dan when the clock strikes 10:13.)

A few more examples…

Leonardo DaVinci’s voluminous notebooks weren’t just for recording ideas. They were an important part of how he came up and worked his ideas and inventions, and figured out so much about how the world worked.

Jackson Pollock didn’t invent flinging paint on a canvas.  But it was a method that worked for him—for his unique emotional makeup and talents—and it therefore catapulted him to artistic superstardom.

Albert Einstein wasn’t a particularly impressive student and lacked abilities in areas such as mathematics. But what worked for him was cultivating his imagination  and envisioning. So, for example, he developed his theory of relativity by picturing himself riding on a beam of light and watching what happened to time and space.

Marketing genius Jay Abraham uses a well-honed and systematic method of asking very specific questions of himself and others (Socratic questioning) to come up with his brilliant marketing strategies.

And Thomas Edison had a unique and practical method to literally “dream up” his inventions:  He would sit in a chair holding a ball in each hand and allow himself to daydream. Just when he would start to fall asleep, the ball would hit the floor would he would wake him up and he would jot down his ideas.

All these people might well have been quite ordinary in their fields had they not uncovered their unique ways of working. And yet others in those same fields could try the same way of working to no benefit whatsoever.

The key is to find they way that works for you!

What ways have you found to tap your unlimited potential?