Barbara McClintock discovered a set of natural encodings that she trusted and followed, even without knowing exactly where they would lead. She didn’t learn how to lose herself in thought; she was encoded to lose herself in thought. She didn’t learn how to make her brain into an organic decryption machine; she discovered that she came pre-packaged with that encoding and then used it. No one taught her to mentally transport herself into a cell and walk around inside that cell making friends with the chromosomes; that was just an idiosyncratic encoding specific to Barbara McClintock.

This very same sentiment could apply just as well to every single person in our study, not because of their “genius,” but because of how they played exquisitely to their unique constellation of encodings.

Each constellation of encodings is its own category-of-one distinctive blend. There was just one Barbara McClintock, one John Glenn, one Alice Paul, one Toni Morrison, one Benjamin Franklin. Just as there is only one of you, and only one of me. The thing that set them apart is their ability to play so consistently to their own individual (and sometimes quite peculiar) package of encodings.

Discovering what you are not encoded for can be just as important as discovering what you are encoded for.

I find it comforting that even the people in this study, with all of their accomplishments, had episodes when they made missteps that temporarily knocked them out of frame. I came to see that errant turns can be helpful for getting into frame. The process of discovery does not allow for a perfect record. You cannot plan or think your way into a life lived perfectly in line with your encodings.

Multiple people in this study struggled, at least for a period of time, when their environment didn’t align well with their encodings. Barbara McClintock’s encodings for solving genetics puzzles remained in frame once she discovered them, but her time at the University of Missouri proved to be a terrible home for her. She simply did not fit with the culture of traditional academia, nor what that culture expected of her as a woman faculty member in her era. When she landed her spot at Cold Spring Harbor research institute, she found a much better home, and she stayed there for the rest of her life. Alan Page didn’t have the encodings for the client development and sales process of drawing in big lucrative clients. So, when he went to work at a traditional law firm that relied on its partners to excel at client development, he found himself partly out of frame. Then, when Page joined the Minnesota Supreme Court, he found a perfect home; his encodings came fully in frame with both the activity of legal thinking and the environment of the Supreme Court. Some people in our study, whom you will meet in future chapters, took a more entrepreneurial or loner approach, creating and/or shaping their own environment to fit with their encodings. Whatever the path, the people in this study flourished when both their activities and their environment fit with their encodings. A happy hedgehog needs a happy hedgehog home.

Just because you’ve achieved success doesn’t mean your encodings have expired. If part of the answer to the question of what to make of a life is to continually discover and deploy encodings in a direction that feeds the inner fire, then success (in whatever form and level) is simply more of a by-product that happens along the way. When we forget that, success itself can be a catalyst for fog.