From school, we remember that grief comes from the mind, and we still sometimes think about how can you get smarter. As Bertrand Russell once said, "The trouble with this world is that fools and fanatics are too sure of themselves, and intelligent people are full of doubts."
Who can be considered smart?
But what kind of person can be considered intelligent: educated, rich, successful in understanding the majority? Or are you a high IQ person? Let us remember the excellent students at school: most understood many things, but few were successful in life. So education and intelligence are completely different categories.
It is not knowledge of biology, physics and technical analysis that is responsible for success, but more flexible skills. Emotional intelligence it is a person's ability to understand the emotions and desires of himself and other people, to manage them to solve problems.
The main difference between an intelligent person and others is that he not only has knowledge, he knows how to apply it: he analyzes events, draws the right conclusions and adjusts plans based on them.
Intelligence can be developed: the main thing is to develop the habit of constantly working with different information.
Ways to get smarter
1. Read difficult books
The harder the material, the harder the brain has to work, the better. It is important to do this regularly: in just a few months you will increase your vocabulary, improve your visual memory and analyze information faster. Think about what you read, look for questions that hooked you. Set aside at least half an hour every day for this.
Universal recommendations: professional literature and classics, foreign and Russian. We seem to remember the books by Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky from school. But try to remember what boots are – not everyone will succeed, and that's not surprising.
Select scientific literature. It will take longer to delve into the terminology, but it will bear fruit: the more you start looking for answers, the smarter you will become.
2. Train your memory
At school we studied poetry, at university we squeezed books and notes. Now, someone may have taken a job at a prestigious company and been working there for several years. And that means that there you already know everything by heart. In this case, it is very important to use different high-quality memory training methods.
Get rid of to-do lists and shopping lists: nothing will happen if one day you don't buy coffee. But then you'll start rereading the list more often before you leave, and then maybe get rid of it altogether.
Learn dates of birth and phone numbers that are important to you, memorize recipes, and finally your passport details.
Try to remember what the person is wearing during the meeting. Remember the details at night when you go to bed. Learn a foreign language: it can be useful in any area of life.
3. Get out of your comfort zone
Security is our basic need, just like sleeping and eating. It is important to get enough sleep and monitor your health, feel comfortable, but not allow automatism to appear.
Change the environment to one where you have to think about what to do, what to talk about, how to behave. The longer a person is in a state of rest and doesn't find something new, the less he wants to change something. This is natural: we are afraid of acquaintances and impressions, we are too lazy to think.
Getting out of the monotonous regime: studying, traveling, getting to know, taking reasonable risks. It is emotions and new events that help to change thinking and get rid of habitual patterns. You can start small: change your route from work to home or have lunch at a new cafe. According to scientists, time flies faster over the years precisely because of the lack of novelty in life.
4. Learn to ask questions
This is one of the most important skills in life. Ask successful people about their approach to life, rich people about how they got there, and brave people about what keeps them from giving up. Don't be afraid to look stupid. A stupid person who doesn't ask questions can never become wiser. An intelligent person, asking constantly, will increase his knowledge.
Formulate questions clearly, shorten them, clarify if you're not sure you got it right. Ask for examples – then you will understand how to apply the knowledge in practice. Ask open-ended questions to get the interlocutor to think about the topic of interest. Imagine yourself as a journalist: use critical, rhetorical, provocative, controlling questions if you feel it is necessary.
5. Systematize learning and knowledge
If you unsystematically pull information from different areas in parts, it will take a long time to get the result. Choose the direction that interests you most and study it little by little. Everything must be gradual. Think deeper: it's easier for us to process and remember related data that arrives sequentially.
For example, when learning English, we start with simple sounds, words and rules. Next, we study more complex rules and, exceptions to the rules, new sentences and sentence structures. So we started to perceive texts by ear, learned to write correctly, studied accents and started using aphorisms. A person receives a lot of information, but the brain is still able to process and store it.
How to develop emotional intelligence
For career growth, emotional intelligence, according to some psychologists, is even more important than IQ. For example, if a remark was made to you at work and you misunderstood it, it could lead to depression.
So what do you need to do to develop emotional intelligence? Focus on four of its components.
- awareness of thoughtsfeelings and behaviors will help you learn faster and accumulate knowledge.
- Self-esteem is responsible for determiningthe ability to not depend on other people's opinions and optimism.
- Motivation allows us to set goalsovercome setbacks, learn new things. Motivated people love to engage in self-development and rejoice in accomplishments.
- Adaptability is responsible for empathy, communication and stress resistance. These people are hardworking, but they often experience imposter syndrome.
That is all! Develop financial thinking with Ilya Sitnov. Subscribe to our newsletter here and on Yandex.Zen so you don't miss out on useful materials.