Hello!
Seiiti Arata.
Think about someone you know, someone who is very smart.
Do you think that person was simply born smart, or that they developed their own intelligence?
Do you think someone who was born dumb can become smart over time?
Or is intelligence determined by genetics, just like the colour of our eyes, the shape
of our face or our shoe size?
Many scientists have already tried to answer these questions.
And the current agreement is that genetics indeed have an influence over our level of
intelligence at the time of birth.
However, your attitude and behaviour make a greater difference.
Through your commitment, it is possible to become much smarter, if you devote yourself
to developing your own brain.
But, to do that, you need to believe in that possibility and have a growth mindset.
[source: https://arata.se/source-ub8t]
In an honest and straightforward language, I will tell you that you can become smarter
even if you believe you were born dumb.
The first step to do so is to be sure that developing your intelligence is possible.
You need to have a growth mindset in order to develop your intelligence.
It is possible to split people into two large groups.
Those who believe that people are born genetically determined to have a certain skill level are
people who have a fixed mindset.
Those who believe that any skill can be developed are people who have a growth mindset.
Think about two fictional girls called Alice and Barbara.
Alice was supposedly born with an inborn talent to play the piano (and the idea of having
an inborn talent is also debatable - we will talk about it in a bit.
For the time being, just pretend that this inborn talent exists, and Alice has that talent
ever since she was born).
Barbara was not born with that talent.
But Alice, who was born with that gift, never had access to a piano, she never practised
with it.
And Barbara, who was not born with the gift, was encouraged to play the piano from an early
age, took classes, and practised thousands of hours.
Which one of them do you think plays best today?
Your mindset shapes your belief about what you can achieve.
If you think you can develop your intelligence, you just need to be committed to that goal
the right way, and be constant.
This way, you will become smarter and smarter, little by little.
We all have our limits, be it genetics, age, or our own living conditions.
So, you may never be as smart as the latest physics Nobel prize winner.
But that should not be your goal.
Your goal should be to develop YOUR intelligence, to focus on YOUR target, comparing yourself
with YOUR past level of intelligence.
This is very important.
No one is intelligent in every single field.
Take a physics Nobel prize winner and make them coach a football team and their intelligence
will not be useful at all.
That is why you should always focus on your own needs.
Natural talent exists, but it is not a final sentence about your intelligence level.
People with a fixed mindset think everything comes down to talent.
A fixed mindset means believing that some people are born with a gift.
That gift would be an inborn talent for a specific skill.
And these gifted people naturally develop that skill and, therefore, are good at it.
But, is it that simple?
Let’s think about it.
In some cases, this natural talent can mess up a skill.
Someone who has a lot of talent for something could think that they do not need to practise
and train that skill.
And, depending on the case, they could be surpassed by someone less talented, but with
a growth mindset, who is trying to improve their own skills.
Let’s go back to the example of Alice and Barbara.
Let’s now imagine that Alice had access to a piano and, thanks to the natural talent
she had, she became a great pianist.
But playing the piano was so easy for her, that she did not really dedicate herself to
practising that much.
Barbara did not have that talent.
That is why she had to try three times harder than Alice.
In the long run, all that effort is accumulated to the point where Barbara can be considered
a better pianist than Alice.
Scientists did not find a definite answer about whether genetics determine or not your
initial level of talent to develop skills.
But, in practice, it does not matter.
Whatever the answer is, genetics will only determine your starting point.
Imagine someone who is two metres high.
They have a genetic advantage to play basketball.
But, if they do not train, this advantage won’t be used.
Training will make a great difference.
And training will influence their development from the genetic starting point.
And the good thing is that training is their responsibility.
By having a growth mindset, you can start developing your own intelligence right now.
Choose which aspect from your intelligence you want to develop and begin a continuous
improvement process.
Now that you have understood that you need to have a growth mentality and believe that
you can develop your intelligence, it is time to take action.
You need to actually take action to increase your intelligence levels, especially in the
fields that are important to you.
For example, let’s imagine the case of a systems analyst.
This person states that, in order to grow in her professional career, she needs to be
smarter in fields such as maths, logic programming and interpersonal skills.
To do that, she needs to invest time, energy and sometimes even money to develop in those
fields.
She needs to read books, take courses, solve practical problems of her job…
There is not a definitive list of the activities that will increase your intelligence.
But there is a clear rule that you can follow: everything that requires an active effort
from your brain will develop your intelligence.
And everything that puts your brain into a passive mode does not increase your intelligence.
For example, laying on the couch watching tv shows, making your brain passively consume
information, is not an activity that will help you develop your intelligence.
On the other hand, actively solving math problems is something that will help you develop your
intelligence in that specific field.
You can make an analogy with your body muscles.
If you go to the gym and do exercises that require an active participation of your muscles,
they will become stronger over time.
But if you spend your whole life in front of the computer, your muscles will stay passively
inactive, and will become more stunted over time.
Stop and think about it.
How much of your time do you use to do tasks that require an active involvement of your
brain?
And how much time do you spend doing tasks that put your brain in a passive mode, just
consuming information or resting?
Make a written list and compare the two groups.
Then, see what passive tasks can be replaced by active training to develop your intelligence.
These training sessions have to be a deliberate practice to develop the skills you chose.
Do not avoid problems.
On the contrary, try to train your skills in a way that challenges your own intelligence.
Failing at those training sessions is not something negative, it is exactly what you
are looking for in order to grow.
Also remember that you do not have to be smart in every field.
Your job is to choose what types of intelligence you need to develop first.
Try to focus on the two or three skills that are most important to you at the moment.
You will be able to add more in the future.
Regardless of the types of intelligence you choose, you should always spend some time
learning how to learn, every single time.
Focus on metalearning.
Learning how to learn is the most important skill to develop your intelligence.
There is a group of skills that is essential to develop your intelligence.
Knowing how to read a book, how to remember important things, how to relate ideas, how
to take notes.
All of these skills make up the so-called metalearning, that is, the ability to learn
how to learn.
If you are able to learn more, and faster, you will be able to develop your intelligence
in different fields as fast as possible.
It is as if you could download a skill anytime you needed to add a new piece of knowledge
to your brain.
Therefore, besides choosing the specific skills you want to develop, like maths, logic or
interpersonal skills, you also have to devote yourself to developing your ability to learn.
Study how to read books in the faster and most efficient way possible.
Learn how to memorise concepts and explore your long-term memory as far as possible.
Find how to combine ideas to find creative remedies to your problems.
All of this needs to be done with consistency.
The same way muscles need constant training to become stronger, your intelligence needs
to be trained every day so it can be developed over time.
The important thing is that, every time you read a book, study a subject or practise a
skill, you become better at it.
If you do it day after day, you will develop your intelligence in the long run to the point
where other people will think that you were simply born smart.
If you have a growth mindset and you know that you can develop your own intelligence,
Arata Academy has a complete online course about metalearning for you.
In the Arata Academy Intelligence course, you will discover the step by step process
of how to develop the skill of learning how to learn.
You will learn how to read books in half the time, learning twice as much; you will understand
how to have a super memory by using memory hooks; you will learn how to combine ideas
to find a creative solution for your problems, and much more.
Find out how the Arata Academy Intelligence course works by accessing right now https://arata.se/intelligence