The 6 Personalities Of Geniuses

Have you ever wondered what are the characteristics of the mind of a genius?

The great personalities who stand out for their creative potential and the impressiveness of their works are not only capable of making unique contributions to society, but they themselves also show a series of characteristics that make them unrepeatable in their discipline.

The personality that distinguishes geniuses

Below you can see the main personality traits that make geniuses geniuses. Some of them can cause admiration, but not all facets are advantageous.

1. They are very perfectionists

According to psychologist Howard Gardner, geniuses spend a lot of time and effort perfecting what they put all their passion into. They do not limit themselves to materialize what they have created in their mind, but they look for possible failures, they invent solutions, they apply them on their creation and they check if the situation has been solved.

This has to do with self-discipline and self-criticism, of course, but it is not a level of demand imposed from outside, but it is born from a desire to improve that springs from oneself and that is very advantageous. After all, no one knows a work and its possible imperfections better than the person who created it.

2. They show insatiable curiosity.

According to Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, one of the great references of Positive Psychology, something that distinguishes geniuses from other people is their extreme curiosity to develop original or attractive ideas. This means that they are not content simply with imagining what it would be like to paint a certain painting, create a certain machine, or write a certain novel, but are driven towards the actual creation of those works. They connect their fantasies with reality because they are so fascinated by what they imagine they want to feel what it would be like to put them into practice.

This is good and bad at the same time, because it involves moments of deep frustration when problems appear in the practical application of the idea, while the rest of the people feel satisfied from the security of fantasizing about things that will not happen.

3. They are driven by intrinsic motivation

This characteristic is derived from the previous two. When it is said that a genius lives for his passion, that does not mean that he invests a lot of time and effort in his work to obtain benefits at the end of the creation process.

As Dan Pink explains in his book The Amazing Truth About What Motivates Us, geniuses embrace the idea that they are the first to be interested in their works being perfect, but they do not do so for social recognition or financial rewards, but because they enjoy the path that leads to the goal. That is to say, their motivation is intrinsic, and not extrinsic, because it cannot be separated from the creation process and neither does it arise from a reward that is not organically integrated into it. The work that characterizes a genius is not a tool, but the goal itself.

4. His life is his handiwork

Since the curiosity and passion that leads them to strive in their work comes from the depths of their being, geniuses do not usually establish a border between their personal and work life. This is good in a sense, because it means that by spending a lot of time thinking about their creative work (even in the strangest situations), they are better able to establish ingenious relationships between ideas that no one has ever thought of comparing before. In other words, geniuses benefit from many more sources of inspiration.

However, this can be bad for your social life, as friends and relationships sometimes take a backseat when a disruptive idea arises that requires interrupting a conversation to scribble on a notebook or rushing back to the workplace.

5. They are self-taught

When it comes to developing exceptional skills and unique creative potential, the amount of formal education received in high schools or universities does not correspond to the potential that is reached. Researcher Dean Simonton studied a series of 350 geniuses such as Beethoven or Galileo Galilei and found that the vast majority of them had an average educational level.

Both people with a very complete and specialized level of training and those who had barely been educated in schools were less likely to be among this group of historical figures who have made important contributions to humanity. That means that a good part of the ingredients that serve to create geniuses come through self-taught education outside the classroom.

6. They are lonely

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi points out that, beyond the exceptional cases of geniuses who are born into well-situated and related families, most of these people tend to be loners and to experience problems establishing stable relationships. Their work is usually so intense and demanding that the emotional life suffers a certain wear and tear, especially during the younger years.

While the vast majority of people do not care to hone their skills or specialize much in a field of science or art, geniuses are not only willing to make this sacrifice, they feel the need to make it. That is why a gap is opened between them and the rest of society, which on many occasions looks at them strangely and only looks at the final results of their work.

In conclusion…

George de Savile said centuries ago that a man who is a master of patience is a master of everything else, and this is especially true if we stop to think about the characteristics of geniuses.

All the personal traits of the geniuses that we have seen share something in common: they are born from the need to experiment with techniques and ideas, a desire that displaces almost everyone else.

This fact in itself allows them to dedicate a lot of time and effort to polishing their skills, and from that personal development engine are born all these characteristics that make geniuses admire. It is not so much the talent as the time and enthusiasm that is dedicated to improving oneself that is decisive when it comes to offering something unique and almost perfect.