Intelligence is Overrated

You can have many types of intelligence.

Book smarts. Street smarts. A genius with music. A genius with locating discount grocery store coupons.

Whatever.

There’s a few main areas I’ve personally noticed over the years:

THINKING WHILE OTHER PEOPLE TALK:

Right off the bat, if you’re the kind of person who creates a lot of value by THINKING then it’s probably going to be hard to locate the off-switch.

Learning is an addiction.

Once your brain has been forced into a gear where it’s learning all the time it goes from being tiring and annoying to enlivening and awesome.

You start to see the bigger picture and realize all the potential.

Over the years you become a fiend for more knowledge.

The same goes for analysing information into useable, practical bite-sized chunks.

Analysis is an addiction. So you think and think, and then think and think some more.

The problem is that while other people are talking, what are you doing??

THINKING.

After all, if you’re thinking in terms of big picture concepts then you’re probably holding up all sorts of images in your head and trying to weave them together into something coherent.

Ironically it’s often when you relax for a minute (while listening) that the jumble of information starts to congele into some sort of epiphany.

So you’re listening to somebody and –C-L-I-C-K- you have a realization.

“Wait a sec man…Wait a sec…Did you realize blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…”

The problem here is that it’s always about YOU.

You’re interrupting the other person and they don’t feel like you’re listening to them.

The solution to this one is to make a firm life commitment to “let some of them go” in terms of your ideas.

This was actually a point made to me about five years ago by a buddy of mine.

He told me point blank “Dude you HAVE to decide what’s more important to you. Vocalizing every idea or having people think you’re a cool guy. It’s up to you.”

I said to him “Yeah but my attention span is short. If I don’t get it out I’ll lose it.”

Again he said “It’s up to you man. It’s one or the other. Do what you want but it’s up to you.”

This hit me hard and I never forgot it. From then on whenever anyone spoke I made the choice to listen to them one hundred percent.

The bottom line is that when another person is talking, you have to allow your awareness to be on THEM as opposed to your own train of thought.

If you have a realization while they’re talking you have to accept that you might lose it.

“I might forget this and NEVER get it back. That’s fine. The world will be OK.”

TELLING PEOPLE THAT YOU’VE ALREADY THOUGHT OF THEIR IDEAS:

Next is probably one of the biggest ways that “smart folk” successfully alienate themselves from untold legions of people.

That’s that in all likelihood, you’ve already thought of almost every idea that the majority of people have ever had.

Now of course, that doesn’t mean that you have nothing to learn from people.

It’s just that the average person who is trapped in the day-to-day grind of running the rat race and keeping up with the Jones’ probably hasn’t had a lot of “free time” to consider their ideas under a microscope.

They’re either too busy or too indifferent. They have other priorities.

The result is that when they share with you an idea they’re really proud of, you’ve probably already thought of it, analysed it, and weighed out the pros and cons.

The problem with this is that there’s nothing more obnoxious than when somebody shares an idea and you say “Oh yeah I already thought of that. Have you considered blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…”

Many years ago I remember there was this guy who worked at the Pita Pit who told me the most genius idea he ever had.

Are you ready for it??

It was to create a website called www.bootycall.com.

He even made me to promise to hold it as a secret so he could make the millions, although I guess I kind of blew that one by posting it here.

Sorry!!

I offered him a litany of good reasons it was a non-practical idea, and as you can expect, he was super appreciate.

Uhhhhhhh, or not.

The issue is that you might think you’re helping the other person but they’ll almost always dislike you for it.

And with good reason.

Most likely they were NOT asking you for your advice. They were just socializing and wanted to get excited about something with you.

Or maybe, just maybe, they want to make their own mistakes?? Ever thought of that one…..SMART GUY??

Instead you’ve got to learn the art of saying “Oh cool man…That sounds awesome.”

This allows people to feel good about themselves, and even cooler, you come across as intelligent automatically because most people care more about being understood than receiving critical feedback.

Obviously there’s cases where people want real feedback, and that’s a matter of common sense.

But you already knew that.

Truth be told you REALLY CAN learn something from everybody. Even people who appear not to be “with it” entirely.

It might not be “analytical” but it can be very practical, and a lot deeper than you would ever expect.

In my opinion it’s the people who realize that they can learn from every single person they meet who are the most intelligent.

GIVING ADVICE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY HAPPY WITH WHERE THEY’RE AT:

Over the years I’d say that the dumbest, most useless thing I’ve ever done is offer advice to people who are perfectly happy with where they’re at.

The key to understand here is that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to be dissatisfied.

Why??

Because you know what your potential is.

You know full well how to make an outstanding life, exactly what it would look like, and the steps involved in building it.

But most people are happy with easier, simpler lives. They appreciate the little things.

It might sound belittling but it’s not.

Having traveled to South America, Asia, and Europe over the past few years, I can say for sure that many people who appreciate the little things have a very DIFFERENT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE than the so called “intelligentsia”.

They’ve learned to love life passionately and gain happiness from the fun they share with people around them. Or maybe from playing soccer or a musical instrument. It doesn’t matter.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t have both an outstanding life and an appreciation for the little things, but many people simply do not need that.

(And trying to convince otherwise them is no different than an advertiser who tries to make you feel incomplete for not owning their product).

Up until about two years ago I would give advice to anyone who I thought could benefit.

Then I started restricting who I would offer advice to, and even actively changing the topic when people asked for it.

From there I picked up the extra slack by “brain-dumping” the people who I care about the most — because I always wanted them up to speed with all the cool stuff I’d figured out.

However I’ve since realized, funny enough as recently as this week, that that is not a good way of relating to them, and in fact it’s even MORE important not to bombard people who are close to me with advice.

It might come from a super positive intention, but it’s not serving the greater good of the relationship.

Here is the rule I’ve since devised.

If you’re talking to somebody in casual conversation, the only time you offer advice is when you say “I could offer some advice if you want.”

That means it’s very specific that you are now “offering advice” and it does three things.

First it’s just a lot more polite in case the person wants to say “Ahhhh actually screw it, I really don’t care that much.”

Second, it confirms that you’re doing the other person a favour, as opposed to being an annoying dude who bombards people with your opinions.

And third, which I think is most important, is that it forces you to be aware of how often you’re giving advice. You can’t very easily say “I can offer you some advice” more than once or at most twice in a conversation, so it pretty much autocorrects the whole tendency.

In fact this rabbit hole also goes deeper than you might have realized.

When you offer too much advice to people you’re close with they may stop taking care of themselves.

They’ll begrudgingly accept your role as the “dad” while simultaneously being somewhat annoyed in circumstances where you haven’t taken care of everything.

You have to let people make their own mistakes.

Chances are that YOU gained your best knowledge through various screw-ups, and you have to give people the gift of making these screw-ups for themselves.

This week I’ve made a firm resolution to offer advice to people only within two contexts.

First is if they make an appointment to ask for it, and second if I’m being paid within a professional context.

Make sense??

Good. I hope you appreciate this advice.

JUDGING PEOPLE BY YOUR OWN STANDARDS INSTEAD OF LETTING THEM LIVE THEIR LIVES:

Hands down, I’d say one of the biggest problems that smart people have with meeting women is that they harbour an arrogance that most girls are simply not on their “level”.

“She’s not smart enough for me…She’s LUCKY I would even talk to her.”

This is 180 degrees different from the playful cockiness that a lot of cool, attractive guys have.

The issue here is a deep seated incongruence between your belief about a woman’s so-called “worth” and the fact that you STILL want to sleep with her.

On one level you’re trying to imagine yourself as being superior. But on another level you feel the desire to be with her.

Maybe she works at a make-up counter and likes to read “US Magazine”. Maybe she actually cares about being trendy and listens to Brittany Spears. But you still want her and it bothers you because on some level a rejection would make you feel de-valued.

The issue here is that there is a difference between an intellectual connection and an emotional/physical connection.

You want a physical connection with her, not an intellectual one. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are both absolutely valid.

Your desire for her is because she’s developed a side of her femininity that you find exotic and engaging. As a man, to attract a girl like that, you have to develop your masculinity on a similar level.

The “worth” of a person is not defined by their level of actualization, because that is every person’s personal preference. You might judge a girl negatively for it, but really you are just judging yourself.

And you don’t have to.

Just because you don’t judge somebody else doesn’t mean you give up your own personal standards.

It actually means that you’re smart enough to distinguish the needs of other people from your own.

FAILING TO SEPARATE WORK FROM PLAY:

And the mind goes “Whiiiiiiiirlllllll and whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrllllll!!”

Vroom, vroom, and more vroom. It just doesn’t want to stop.

And that’s a good thing because it gets you success, while other poor saps languish in a purgatory of mediocrity.

But to have a satisfying and happy life, you have to have firm distinctions between your time for work and your time for play.

Otherwise you wind up like Howard Hughes. Who appears pretty cool in “The Aviator” but is not actually how you want to wind up.

Morning = 20 minutes meditation.

That gets your day off on the right foot.

From there you need firm resolutions that you will NOT violate as to when you’ll let your mind run off in all its crazy, albeit highly productive directions.

If you do your best thinking at night then allocate 8 hours at night to do so. Whatever. All that matters is that work is work, time off is time off.

Force yourself to stick to this.

Punish yourself by NOT writing down your best ideas that you have outside of the work period, otherwise it will never stop.

You’ll work, work, work, and then DIE having done nothing but work.

Not very cool. Or sustainable. Or attractive to girls. AT ALL.

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