Good Morning,
My current read is ‘Outliers: The Stories of Success’ by Malcolm Gladwell. (http://www.gladwell.com/outliers/index.html). Let me start off by saying that I simply love reading anything by Malcolm Gladwell. His writing style just sucks me in and I understand the concepts he is sharing very quickly. I love his first two books, ‘Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink’ and already love ‘Outliers.’ If you have not read them, please do, I am sure you will get a lot out of them too.
About a third of the way through the book Malcolm Gladwell talks about the correlation of genius to success and that in several long term sociological experiments. Having high IQ’s does not necessarily map to having a successful life. He goes on to show that the difference from having an average IQ to being above average in IQ does have implications in being successful, but once you get into the genius level IQ range, having an IQ of 150 or 190 does not have that much impact on the success of your life.
What does this mean?
Like all things, it is diminishing returns. After a certain point, the value of ‘better’ starts dropping off. Even with genius.
Also, IQ is also not all that it’s cracked up to be. These days we have identified other qualities which can have even more impact on our lives, like EQ, Emotional Quotient (from Emotional Intelligence as covered in Dr. Daniel Goleman’s books on the subject). Being able to operate well in a society of people can have a lot more implications than being smarter than the group of people you work with. Especially if they don’t like or trust you. We have seen the stuck-up prodigy who could care less that another human beings were alive in their presence. Makes me want to get their autograph….
This also means that we should not limit ourselves by what we feel our IQ is. That is, if we are average or slightly above average, the doors that close in our live are often those that we close for ourselves because we feel we are not smart enough. We give up on ourselves and make erroneous conclusions of what we can and cannot do based on what we know about ourselves.
It reminds me of a
This means that we can all be successful the way we are. We are smart enough for most things in life. Ok, not all of us will qualify for MENSA, but does that we really limit our lives? Only if we let it.
We don’t have to be a genius to be successful in life. Studies have shown, and as I am learning from ‘Outliers’ there are many factors that go into success. Intelligence, while being a part of the puzzle is not a large part.
That’s good news!
Enjoy!
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