The Four Primal Powers

The creative spark of Vincent van Gogh. The business acumen of Steve Jobs. The mental resilience of Maya Angelou. The transformative leadership of Abraham Lincoln. The communication knack of William Shakespeare.

All evolved from Primal powers that are alive in your own brain. . . just waiting to be developed.

Here’s an overview of the powers and the blueprints for targeting specific Primal abilities, like communication and leadership.

The Four Primal Powers

Imagination

Im

Power to invent new plans.

Improvises effectively and creates strategy.

Logic misunderstands as ideation— or as magic.

Commonsense

Cs

Power of analyzing the situation.

Matches your action to the nature of the times, maximizing your effectiveness.

Logic misunderstands as statistical.

Intuition

In

Power to spot exceptions to rules.

Drives opportunity-discovery and “empathy” (really, curiosity).

Logic misunderstands as pattern recognition

Emotion

Em

Power of personal direction.

Grow from good experiences and bad.

Logic misunderstands as a tool for knowing others when it is really for knowing yourself.

Target Specific Primal Abilities

You can target specific primal abilities by understanding what combination of powers makes them possible.

You can grow in all the areas below.

You’ll grow fastest if you target your limiting power, so look first for combinations that include your leading and limiting power. For example, if your leading power is intuition and your limiting power is imagination, you can develop imagination to grow your ability to innovate.

  • Intuition + Imagination.

    Create the future, faster.

    See Ch. 5 of Primal.

  • Emotion + Imagination.

    Grow stronger from pain and smarter from failure.

    See Ch. 6 of Primal.

  • Imagination + Commonsense.

    Make the right call, even with limited information.

    See Ch. 7 of Primal.

  • Commonsense + Emotion.

    Meet your audience where they are— and connect them to where you are.

    See Ch. 8 of Primal.

  • Emotion + Intuition.

    Find the ultimate reason for your existence.

    See Ch. 9 of Primal.

  • Intuition + Commonsense.

    Help others maximize their potential.

    See Ch. 9 of Primal.

  • Imagination + Intuition + Emotion + Commonsense.

    Change the world for the better.

    See Ch. 10 of Primal.

Primal Intelligence:

You Are Smarter Than You Know