The EDG Butterfly Map
The EDG Butterfly Map (©2026) is the underlying blueprint for my work at Every Day Genius. I created it in an attempt to understand much of what I had struggled with my entire life, and what I saw as patterns beyond myself — patterns present in all of us.
Its direct inspiration is a four-quadrant polarity map presented and popularized by Barry Johnson, whose work is largely focused on organizational polarities. The EDG Butterfly Map differs from Johnson's Polarity Map® in vocabulary, visual form, unit of analysis, and philosophical framing. Where Johnson works at the organizational level, the EDG Butterfly Map works with the paradox of being human — across every domain of life. It does not manage tension. It makes it navigable.
The core of the Butterfly Map is the assumption of our inherent Genius.
The parts of the butterfly represent a holistic blueprint of an active, living circuit — what I call the Genius in Full Flight, the optimal expression of who we are.
The map works with eight genius tensions, listed below. Each tension is a paradox we navigate — not a problem to solve, but a polarity to move through.
Certainty↔Wonder,
Giving↔Receiving,
Visibility↔Solitude,
Structure↔Flow,
Gratitude↔Vision,
Doubt↔Confidence,
Resistance↔Momentum, and
Inner Fire↔Outer Reward.
These tensions also map naturally to the VIA Character Strengths, offering a bridge between who you are and how you move.
While the EDG Butterfly Map begins with the individual, it doesn't stop there. Organizations are full of individuals — and when the people inside a system understand their own genius, the entire system moves differently. This work finds its home in college and university settings, businesses, associations, and nonprofits, wherever leaders are willing to ask what becomes possible when every person in the room knows how to fly.
The map allows us to see the ways we tend to compartmentalize one side of a paradox and set it against the other. Both sides are assumed to be positive — but the map also represents their potential downsides. Instead of either/or, we adopt a both/and, with signs and signals indicating when we need to move rather than dig in.
This paradox is mapped on two wings — upper sections in teal representing the two sides meant to work together like yin and yang, and lower sections in amber representing the effects of compulsive focus on one side at the expense of the other.
The butterfly's body is its fulcrum — the source of power activated when Genius learns to loop through each wing, residing mostly in the upper wings while recognizing the pull of overdependence in the lower. At the center of the body is the EDG Point — meant to be a throughway, but often where we make hard right-angle turns that lead to stagnation or burnout. When we learn to move through it naturally, that's when full flight becomes possible.
Genius is idiosyncratic. Personal. In a world that has conditioned us to forget ourselves in favor of a consensus self — where everyone begins to look the same while naturally fighting against it — the EDG Butterfly Map becomes the visual reference where we can learn to see ourselves again, as the whole Genius we have always been.
Ready to see your map? Take the Genius Tension Assessment.