You Can Increase Your Intelligence
Most of us wish we were more intelligent. Our performance in exams, and in many areas of life both at work and at home, has gone a long way to define how intelligent we think we are. We think our levels of intelligence are fixed and there is little we can do to change that. However, this is not true.
Where would you be now if you were more intelligent? Well, you can actually increase your intelligence!
In her seminal book, the Mindset, the Stanford University researcher, Dr. Carol Dweck, opened my eyes in this particular area by laying out ways that any individual can see marked improvement in their levels of intelligence.
What is Mindset?
This is defined as a person’s way of thinking and their opinions.
She asserts that there are basically two kinds of mindsets: The Fixed Mindset and the Growth Mindset.
· The Fixed Mindset: A belief that human qualities, such as intelligence or personality, are carved in stone. It’s a belief that we have fixed levels of, for example, the amount of intelligence that we are born with.
· The Growth Mindset: On the other hand, this is a belief that these human qualities such as intelligence, personality, and grit can be developed or grown though continuous education and practice
Intelligence
This is usually measured by the Intelligence Quotient (I.Q) tests.
Usually, Fixed Mindsets are passed on early from school or from our homes. At school, teachers believe that our marks in particular subjects like Math or Science define our levels of intelligence. Our teachers, parents and ourselves acquire beliefs such as: we are only as good as our test score and there is nothing we can change about it. We carry this belief into adulthood and it affects the choices we make along the way.
For instance, I know of people who have avoided entrepreneurship because it may involve learning about accounting yet they have always regarded themselves as poor at math. Their decision-forming process is fixed on their belief that they can’t do anything that involves numbers.
Think about how many opportunities we have not pursued in different areas such as entrepreneurship or leadership because of the fixed mindsets we have as concerns those particular areas.
Researchers like Dr Carol Dweck, Dr Caroline Leaf, Alfred Binet and so many others have proven that these human qualities, such as intelligence, can be changed.
Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test, is mentioned as have thought the following:
Alfred Binet didn’t design the test to summarise children’s unchangeable level of intelligence as most of us regard it to be. He designed the test to identify children who were not profiting from the French public schools so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track. Here is a quote from one of his books: Modern Ideas About Children.
“ …a few modern philosophers…assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism…With practice, training, and above all method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally we become more intelligent than we were before.
On the other hand of the Intelligence argument, The Growth Mindset is based on the belief our basic human qualities can be improved through being intentional about growth by learning, practice and help from others. Dr. Dweck states that:
The Growth Mindset doesn’t imply that anyone can be anything or that anyone with the proper motivation and education can become Einstein. It’s a belief that anyone’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.
Get Smarter!
Dr Caroline Leaf, an accomplished Neuroscientist, also confirms this in her book, Switch on your Brain. She states that according to her research and clinical practice, she trained teachers and students how to direct their attention in a systematic, organised and logical way that followed how the brain builds thought. This involved using her own 5-Step Switch on Your Brain learning process. By changing the learning process, the academic performance of the students and teachers under her research showed significant improvement as did their intelligence.
Scientific research has, therefore, proven beyond doubt that we can definitely improve our intelligence. The issue now is: do we want to increase our intelligence? and iAnd if we were to increase our level of intelligence, how would it improve our lives and the lives of those around us?
