Signs That Make You Not as Smart as You Think

 

It’s a concept that can be difficult to come to terms with, but like it or not our intellect (or our perceived intellect) can often work against us in life. The indications are all there once you have the eyes to see them. Have you fallen into the “I think I’m too smart for my own good” trap? Don’t worry the big part of correcting a mistake is realizing it exists! Check out these signs you are not as smart as you think you are and see if any or all apply to you. Coming quickly to terms with them and correcting this kind of self-defeating behavior can make you truly smarter fast! And perhaps more importantly, much happier too.

Lack of Professional Success

Opinions are by their nature subjective – think of beauty as being in the eyes of the beholder as a classic example – while end results, like numbers in a pay check are very much objective and impossible to argue with. Smart people leverage their intelligence into professional success. If you are thirty five years old, consider yourself brilliant yet are living in your parent’s house, it’s pretty clear you are not as smart as you think you are. Smart people figure out a way to make money not make excuses!

READ FURTHER DOWN AFTER THE CUT

Reasons Great Careers Require Imagination

The faster the world changes, the more critical it becomes to exercise your imagination. If you don't, you'll always be surprised by what happens next.
I get calls and emails from all sorts of people, but the most interesting ones are from people who look at the world around us and imagine something different than exists today. Some want to reinvent entertainment industry with a new S.W.A.G. Others want to make  Banking more customer-friendly, or do the same to a different industry. All have an active imagination, or have partnered with someone who does.
There used to be lots of careers in which you could thrive without an imagination. Many industries did not change that fast, and many career paths were pretty stable. Neither of these statements is still true.
Here are reasons career – and life – success requires that you exercise your imagination:

All business growth starts with imagination. Every new product and service starts with someone saying, "What if?" To succeed in this realm, you don't need to have the imagination of a great artist or inventor. You might simply ask: what if we offered a different size, or package, or payment plan, or service plan, or logo?
Long ago, when I worked at a finance firm called Kakawa Discount House Limited , I was often surprised at how a tiny change in idea would result in millions of Naira in incremental sales of investment packages.  .

Qualities of Truly Confident People

 

Confidence is not bravado, or swagger, or an overt pretense of bravery. Confidence is not some bold or brash air of self-belief directed at others.Confidence is quiet: It’s a natural expression of ability, expertise, and self-regard.

I’m fortunate to know a number of truly confident people. Many work with me, others are fellow founders of their own startups some of whom I've met through Nollywood. But the majority are people I’ve met through my career and who work in a variety of industries and professions.

It comes as no surprise they all share a number of qualities:

They take a stand not because they think they are always right… but because they are not afraid to be wrong.

Cocky and conceited people tend to take a position and then proclaim, bluster, and totally disregard differing opinions or points of view. They know they’re right – and they want (actually they need) you to know it too.

Their behavior isn’t a sign of confidence, though; it’s the hallmark of an intellectual bully.

Truly confident people don’t mind being proven wrong. They feel finding out what is right is a lot more important than being right. And when they’re wrong, they’re secure enough to back down graciously.

Truly confident people often admit they’re wrong or don’t have all the answers; intellectual bullies never do.

To Know Yourself: Why It Matters---- Wisdom and Illusion

Wisdom has become a musty word even though it described the highest vision of life for many centuries. In a previous post I described what the wisdom principle is. But the only real test must come in daily life. Someone who makes wise choices in life should wind up happier and more successful than someone who doesn't. This test depends on knowing what wise choices are and what they aren't.
One can take a very broad view of wisdom - it was taught by Jesus, Buddha, Confucius, Plato, and Muhammad, different as they were from one another. Because we classify these figures as either religious or philosophical, the application of wisdom to the hard realities of work, family, relationships, and so on has been largely ignored. That, I think, is a grave mistake. Wisdom is about skill in living, here and now.
In the earlier post I suggested that the first requirement for anyone who wants to be wise is a desire to know reality. The world's wisdom traditions agree on this point. The desire to know reality implies many things. The first is that reality doesn't exist right before your eyes. It is veiled by illusion, and illusion is born of the mind. Here is a list of illusory ideas that countless people live by, today, as much as they did two thousand years ago.