Many confuse improving ourselves with another topic altogether and that is, “can we actually improve our lives?”
What does it take to have a better life?
Would understanding what Intelligence is do the trick? Could we relate better with people and to the challenges of life if we had some understanding of what intelligence is and how it can help us?
I often wondered where all those geniuses went after they left school and I must say I was never all that tempted to find out, however I did understand one thing. It was that what I had understood as intelligence when I was at school was merely a good memory and the ability to apply the information to examinations. Alright it might have had something to do with IQ, but that’s more intellect rather than intelligence.
Early on (and in my ignorance), I did learn to memorise much of whatever I studied in the hope that this so called intelligence would be borne in me out of all this information, and that life from that point onwards would be a breeze. What a joke!
As Gottfredson, (1997, page 13) said, “there is consensus amongst most experts that intelligence is a very general, mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill………..but rather it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings-catching on, making sense of things or figuring out what to do.”
Most of humanity is so busy putting food on the table that this question itself, in reality is only for a few and sadly not for as many as it could be; we could, if we only had the intelligence, combat poverty, eliminate war and raise education standards to name just a few things.
I think it is fair to say that with a little intelligence we can learn to look at things in a completely different way, have more distance from our challenges, troubles and problems, learn to be more forgiving of each other and keep the pursuit of success, money and how others should be, out of our relationships.
Learning to laugh at ourselves and forgive ourselves, makes it easy to be easier on others and perhaps a fresh intelligence might arise from which we can then solve our problems, learn new skills, and improve our lives and relationships.
Chris Borrett
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If by chance, you have not encountered my previous posts outside this blog, one of my favourites is about “A Woman’s Labour of Love.” You have the luxury of reading it by clicking here.