“Intelligence is the wife, imagination is the mistress, memory is the servant.”
- Victor Hugo
Genetics have a lot to do with your potential IQ, but intelligence is not only about the ability to understand and learn new things – the more you know about things the more intelligent you appear to be and the easier it is for you to master things.
You can become more intelligent by certain habits that most intelligent people have, and although our genetics may set us some limits, we are often not even close to those limits, and by training regularly it is quite easy to become a faster learner, and reason and understand things quicker, which on the other hand will help us in many aspects of life, such as work, business, and social life.
Here are the top 5 habits that intelligent people have:
1. Teach Other People
It really is true that by teaching other people you will learn much faster than in any other way.
When you have to explain something to other people, you first have to actually understand the whole idea you are trying to teach, and then you also have to use your reasoning skills to be able to explain it in a simple way, so that other people are able to learn it.
Even if you don’t have the possibility to teach other people directly, you can use the same idea by writing an abstract every time you are trying to learn something.
The easiest way of becoming an expert in something and honing your intelligence is to start writing a blog about a subject that you love. You will learn new things faster than you ever could imagine – not only by writing and teaching your readers, but also because creating a website is full of small obstacles that need your intelligence and reasoning skills to be conquered.
2. Read
Reading is a good way of making you more intelligent, because you get a lot of new information by reading that helps you to understand different concepts and increases your learning capacity.
Like every bodybuilder has to train in order to make their muscles grow, our brains need exercise to become more intelligent as well, and focused reading is one of the best ways of brain training.
It would be quite difficult to get new ideas, if there were no possibility to pick other people’s brain by reading their writings. It doesn’t matter if you are reading a book, magazine, or a blog, as long as you are challenging your mind and learning new things.
3. Learn by Doing
It seems like the only way of actually understanding a subject is by getting into action and learning by doing.
When you read about something, your own view of the world affects how you understand the things you are trying to learn, and only by doing things yourself it is possible to know how things really work.
You can read a thousand books about sailing, but if you have never sailed, you will not know much about sailing.
Doing new things hones your intelligence by setting small obstacles ahead of you all the time that you must pass in order to succeed. Those are the best learning opportunities and are equally important for your intelligence than a good weight training session is for your muscles.
4. Focus on One Thing
The way our society works makes those people appear more intelligent who have mastered one thing very well.
I don’t particularly like this idea, because I think it is quite rewarding to learn many subjects reasonably well, but fact is that mastery of a subject is highly rewarded in our society.
If you want to appear more intelligent by becoming an expert in something, it requires that you become almost obsessed about that one thing for a long time, and focus almost only on that, being persistent all the time and not giving up before you know everything about that particular subject.
5. Be Open-Minded
Quite often people stick to their own thoughts and ideas about life, hang out with people that are like-minded and look the same, and listen to music genres that they are familiar with.
In my opinion, this kind of closed-mindedness and sticking to old habits prevents you from becoming more intelligent, because doing the things we have already done for a long time isn’t particularly challenging to our brains.
Instead of that, do something new today:
- Try to meet one new person (the kind of guy you usually wouldn’t want to get to know)
- Listen to songs that other people say are good but that are from genres you don’t usually like
- Go to somewhere you haven’t been before
- Watch a new movie you thought you would hate
- Read an argument about something that is completely opposite with your ideas and try to find out if you were wrong
Being open-minded will also open up new opportunities in the long run that you will never find if you are too scared of challenging yourself mentally. That is probably even more important and useful than becoming a little bit more intelligent.
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Hey Petteri,
I particularly like being open minded. I recently wrote a post on inspiration and trying new things featured high on that list. It teaches us new things, opens more doors and lets insiration and motivation flow wonderfully. And younever know, you might like something you would previously never have even thought about!
Kate
Hello Kate.
Yeah, that’s definitely something everyone should focus on, because it makes our lives so much more fulfilling.
I would probably have missed most of the great things in my life if I had decided not to try anything new when I was 18 years old.
But it’s not always easy – it’s much easier to stay in the routines and stick to the “normal” life. You have to push the limits all the time consciously.
Petteri, I also like to turn my car into a “university on wheels.” Whenever I’m driving, I’m listening to books on CD or MP3. Considering all the time we spend in the car here in the states, I get more information doing this than any other single habit.
Great post!