How can you get smarter?
From school, we remember that grief is from the mind, and still sometimes we think about how we can become smarter. As Bertrand Russell once said, “The problem with this world is that fools and fanatics are too sure of themselves, and smart people are full of doubts."
Who can be considered smart?
But what kind of person can be considered smart: educated, rich, successful in understanding the majority? Or is it a high IQ person? Let's remember the excellent students in school: most of them understood many things, but few of them became successful in life. So, education and intelligence are completely different categories.
It is not the knowledge of biology, physics and technical analysis that is responsible for success, but more flexible skills. Emotional intelligence is the ability of a person 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, but 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 more difficult the material, the more the brain will have to work, the better. It is important to do this regularly: in just a few months you will increase your vocabulary, improve 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, both foreign and current. It seems to us that we remember the books of Lermontov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky from school. But try to remember what boots are – not everyone will succeed, and this is not surprising.
Select scientific literature. It will take longer to delve into the terminology, but it will bear fruit: the more often you start looking for answers, the smarter you become.
2 Train your memory
At school we studied poetry, at the university we crammed textbooks and notes. Now someone may have taken a job at a prestigious firm and has been working there for several years. And this means that there you already know everything by heart. In this case, it is very important to use different methods of high-quality memory training.
Get rid of to-do lists and grocery lists: nothing will happen if one day you don't buy coffee. But then you will start to re-read the list more often before leaving, 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 in the evening 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 sleep and food. It is important to get enough sleep and monitor your health, feel comfortable, but not allow automaticity 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 stays at rest and does not encounter 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.
Break out of the monotonous regime: study, travel, meet, take reasonable risks. It is emotions and new events that help change thinking and get rid of habitual patterns. You can start small: change the 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 life skills. 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 grow wiser. An intelligent person, by constantly asking, will increase his knowledge.
Formulate questions clearly, narrow them down, clarify if you are not sure that you understood correctly. Ask for examples – then you will understand how to apply knowledge in practice. Ask open-ended questions so that the interlocutor thinks about the topic of interest to you. Imagine yourself as a journalist: use critical, rhetorical, provocative, control questions if you feel it is necessary.
5 Organize learning and knowledge
If you snatch information from different areas in parts, unsystematically, you will take a long time to get to the result. Choose the direction that interests you the most and gradually study it. Everything should be gradual. Think deeper: It is easier for us to process and remember related data that comes in sequentially.
For example, when learning English, we start with simple sounds, words, and rules. Then we study more complex rules and, exceptions to the rules, new phrases and sentence structures. Then we begin to perceive texts by ear, learn to write correctly, study accents, and begin to use aphorisms. A person receives a large amount of information, but the brain still manages 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, this can lead to depression.
So what do you need to do to develop emotional intelligence? Focus on four of its components.
- Mindfulness of thoughts, feelings and behavior will help you learn faster and accumulate knowledge.
- Self-esteem is responsible for decisiveness, the ability not to depend on other people's opinions and optimism.
- Motivation allows us to set goals, overcome setbacks, learn new things. Motivated people love to engage in self-development and rejoice in achievements.
- Adaptability is responsible for empathy, sociability and stress resistance. Such people are hardworking, but often experience impostor syndrome.