I'm smart enough to know I'm not as smart as people tell me I am

I do agree that overthinking is the biggest killer for smart people. Many smart people seem to forget that there are an infinite variable to consider. It is impossible to take everything into account.

"Intelligence is a gift, but range is what makes you whole." - Mark Manson

A brilliant English scientist around 1860 published a book with an interesting idea: that it's not the strongest, the most intelligent, or the most beautiful creature that survives and thrives, but the one that can adapt best to its environment.:goodvibes:

I loved the quote at the end. "Real life, the messy, fulfilling kind, demands more than your intellect. It demands the courage to feel, the humility to grow, and the willingness to be many things, not just one." It struck something inside me

It's crazy how every one of your videos is packed with information that doesn't feel like everybody else has already talked about.

"A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one."

I'm not so sure I'm a smart person, but I know I lacked courage, and because of that, I missed many opportunities to experience something special. What sometimes helps me is a principle from chess: don't look for the perfect move just eliminate the bad ones.

Your ability to obtain the things that you want is an excellent measure of intelligence, well said. Indecision is not smart. Overthinking is not smart. Inability to rationally manage your emotions, caring too much about what people think of you & wanting external validation is not smart.

My biggest flaw is the fact that I can spend hours overthinking something that, in reality, takes five minutes. In fact, I’m doing it right now. I have a lab report that’s due today, and I just barely got started on it because I’m honestly terrified of failure, or my writing not being good enough.

Advantage of being smart is that we can make complex things simple, the disadvantage of it is that we can make simple things complex... 😅

I love that humility was on the table. People need more reminders about humility. Excellent!

I used to be the smartest person in the room, until I realized I barely make money, I don't have a girlfriend, and most people don't invite me to Friday dinners. So I stopped reading and started talking to people, exploring my emotional realm, and connecting to my inner world. And travel. I started traveling a lot. Intelligence = intellectual + emotional + social.

It takes immense awareness and intelligence to recognize and talk about this problem. You are one of them Mark

Hits home with my younger self. I spent a lot of time obsessing over how to meet and engage with women for dating, and roadblocked myself endlessly. Now at 55, I just start a conversation with anybody I am interested in without the analysis. If they are interested in more, they will usually make that known and the outcome always exceeds my failures to try.

I have done so much of these sorts of mistakes all through my teens and twenties, just an endless meander of excuses for why not, and even though true in isolation these are false in context, and are based on the fear I have not confronted in myself. Great video!

I think it was Dr Wayne Dwyer who used to say that the 4 dimensions of ego are: 1. I am what I do 2. I am what I have 3. I am what other people think of me 4. I am the groups that I belong to With the key point being that if I define myself by those things, then when they’re gone, what am I now? For most people if you peel back just a layer or two you very quickly find that there’s nothing left because they went far too narrow and deep on their identity and taking away those few things is so profoundly damaging to the psyche that many people simply never recover. Why we fail or at least struggle to diversify our identify or expand our range becomes the critical question really.

Exactly. People tell me that I'm smart, but I pride myself on my self awareness and flexibility.

I found myself that the greatest sign of true unintelligence is a complete lack of self awareness. It doesn’t matter if you can split the atom if you can’t split your ego from reality. Humility, accountability, and empathy are the truest signs of intelligence because those are the traits that will leave the greatest mark on the world. Those are the things you will be remembered for. No one’s gonna give a shit how many degrees you have if you’re an asshole.

I came from an uneducated family but was tested as highly gifted. I went into chemical engineering then specialized in environmental engineering. Once the pandemic hit, I decided to return to school for a masters in biomedical engineering. Only at the graduate level do you START seeing connections between scientific sub disciplines and I love that! But I was made fun of for maintaining a generalist STEM perspective. As an engineer, I maintained my education in the arts too, including being a musician. This creates opportunities for success because you can converse with anyone. IMO, being a generalist AND conscientious is what begets success in professional life while meta cognition and EQ is what begets success in personal lives 😊