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Do you know what your zone of genius is? This week’s guest is here to help! After a successful career as a venture capitalist investing in tech startups, Victoria Song transitioned into coaching, becoming a Leadership Advisor for CEOs, celebrities, and entrepreneurs.
Song helps her clients find what lights them up, moving them from the zone of excellence into the zone of genius. If you’re interested in leveling up your career and creating not just a successful career but a life that you love, then you don’t want to miss this episode!
Song found inspiration for her transition into coaching by observing the attitudes of the successful people around her. A theme she noticed among many of those she met, whether ambitious, driven students at an Ivy League college or successful, wealthy entrepreneurs, was that there was often a void that they couldn't seem to fill.
As she watched smart people search for answers in all the wrong places, she felt a rising passion for figuring out why we’re all in this rat race. She moved into leadership coaching, helping clients build businesses that are sustainable and create a life that they’re excited to wake up to. “I became a coach so that I can support people [in] creating [not only] the success and impact they want, but also the joy and fulfillment” that so many of us hope will come from success.
Song helps her clients explore the lens through which they view the world. Many of us, she says, live life through a contractive, fear-based lens. Whatever we focus on expands, and that lens “distorts our reality out of our favor.”
On the other hand, Song teaches her clients that we can learn to live through an expansive lens. An expansive lens “is when you're operating [in] the state of being where you feel open and grateful and receptive to life [...] You start to have this lens where you're really open to all the possibilities that exist and you start to, I believe, be able to bend reality in your favor.”
Living life through an expansive lens lays a necessary foundation for moving into the zone of genius. Song works with the “four zones” concept, any one of which people may find themselves operating in: the zone of incompetence, the zone of competence, the zone of excellence, and the zone of genius.
High achievers, she says, often get caught in the zone of excellence. They’re good at what they do, and they get paid well, but it still feels like work. In the zone of genius, what we do doesn’t feel like work. It feels like play.
Unfortunately, “we tend to overlook what comes naturally to us because we're taught again that you need to work hard, struggle, and sacrifice to be successful. So we're looking around for ‘the thing that I know I would really have to work so hard pushing a rock up the hill to succeed at? And then that's the thing I should go do — I should go push the rock up the hill.’”
Instead, Song pushes her clients to consider, “[W]ill you give yourself permission to let yourself follow what lights you up?”
Check out the full episode to learn more about reaching the zone of genius and combating the limiting thoughts that hold us back, and take a look at Song’s book, “Bending Reality: How to Make the Impossible Probable,” for a helpful guide on addressing your own limiting beliefs and leaning into an expansive worldview. You can also learn more about designing your dream life from Amy Porterfield.
[1:10] The inspiration behind Victoria’s book “Bending Reality”
[5:19] Learning to lean to what we’re naturally good at
[7:50] Never allow others to project their fears onto you
[11:22] Understanding contraction and expansion
[15:56] Victoria’s approach to coaching businesses and individuals, with the same goals.
[18:31] The role of diversity in Victoria’s work
[26:07] Why doing what you love doesn’t feel like work
Check out the Members Only episode to find out Song’s advice for those seeking the path that’s right for them!
Resources:
Check out Song’s courses and coaching resources!
Find your path to success with Song’s book, “Bending Reality: How to Make the Impossible Probable.”
Listen to other Motivational Mondays episodes.