Albert Einstein created this famous quote: "There is a true genius in everyone." Really everyone? Why is genius so rare among humanity? Why is it so hard to identify it and t? After pondering these questions for a few decades, I tried a more personal approach: How is that innate desire for unique excellence in me? How does this unfolding process start?

After 15 years of reading genius biographies, studying Positive Psychology and doing a lot of soul-searching, I found the humble beginnings for most geniuses: The Brilliant Misfit - unique, rebellious, radically different from everyone in the family - smart and disengaged, bored - mislabeled with ADHD or OCD - anxious - sensitive - funny - and countless other attributes.

Here is the truth: I have been a brilliant misfit all my life.

Always was. Always will be.

And in the meantime, I love it.

First, I hated it.

Being a misfit was uncomfortable. Awkward. Lonely. I never had many friends. I often felt like an outlier, an outcast, somehow alienated from the people around me.

I didn't have those words as a child, of course.

I just knew that somehow, I didn't quite fit.

Maybe it began when I was five.

I was born and raised in Missen, a tiny village in the Bavarian Alps with about 1,200 people. This was postwar Germany, only about ten years after World War II ended.

My father had barely survived being a Russian prisoner of war.

Then he came home and started over.

He built a new existence. He created a business as a house painter. Eventually, he built our house. He literally carried rocks from the river for the foundation.

Think about that.

Rocks from the river.

That was the world I was born into. Nothing was taken for granted. Everything had to be built.

And somehow, I became the sunshine of my father's life.

Looking back, I think that was one of my first jobs: bring some joy into this family. Bring some light after so much darkness. Keep everybody going.

My father went through unbelievable hardships. His determination and passion still amaze me.

I only wish I had thanked him much, much, much more.

The Haircut

At age five, I was getting ready to enter elementary school.

There was a ritual I knew nothing about.

I had beautiful curly locks as a little boy. You wouldn't believe it. I have the pictures to prove it.

But apparently, when serious school life began, the curls had to go.

A boy needed a proper short haircut.

Most children were probably proud of this moment. It meant they were growing up.

Not me.

I threw a fit like nobody's business.

I screamed in the barbershop. I shouted. I cried. I protested with every fiber of my five-year-old body.

Nobody had explained to me why becoming a schoolboy required me to stop looking like myself.

Afterward, they took a picture.

I was supposed to stand proudly on a chair with my brand-new haircut.

Instead, I was pouting.

I looked furious.

Today, I love that picture.

Because when I look at that little boy, I see something I couldn't possibly understand at the time.

There he was.

The misfit.

Everybody else seemed to understand the ritual.

I didn't.

Everybody else seemed willing to go along with it.

I wasn't.

Something inside me was already saying:

Why?

Why do I have to do this just because everybody else does it?

That question would follow me for the rest of my life.



The Boy Who Knew the Answers

Our elementary school was tiny. Four grades shared one classroom.

Imagine that.

Our teacher had to somehow teach first graders, second graders, third graders, and fourth graders in the same room.

She was a refugee from Poland, a passionate teacher with a big heart and soul.

And I loved learning.

Maybe a little too much.

By the end of first grade, something strange had happened.

Because I had been sitting in that classroom listening to her teach the older children every day, I had memorized many of their questions and answers.

So when she asked the third or fourth graders a question, I knew the answer.

And of course, I blurted it out.

I couldn't help myself.

I was so excited.

I knew it!

At first, my teacher loved me.

Then I think I started driving her crazy.

I was spoiling her teaching.

She would ask the older students a question, and this little first grader would shout out the answer.

Again.

And again.

And again.

I wasn't trying to show off.

I wasn't trying to prove I was smarter than anybody else.

I was simply hungry.

Hungry to learn.

Hungry to know.

Hungry to understand.

But that isn't necessarily how the other children experienced me.

I can understand that now.

Who are you?

Do you think you're special?

Why do you always have to know everything?

As a child, I couldn't analyze any of this.

I just felt the coldness.

Misfit. Misfit. Misfit.