Now, that's something you don't hear everyday! Intelligence is highly regarded in today's society more so than in the past. But what exactly is intelligence? What makes it so valuable and highly sought after?
Intelligence is one characteristic that sets humans apart from other forms of life. It allows for more flexibility and adapting to changing environments and situations. This allows us to challenge our physical limitations and create ways to overcome them. It also allows us to reach our full potential by learning how to enhance our senses.
Intelligence is defined as the ability to think rationally, apply knowledge from past experiences, and effectively deal with others. Of course, this is the clinical term so therefore it doesn't cover all types of intelligence.
It differs from achievement which is defined as the knowledge and skills gained from experience, which essentially means what you know and can do. It generally involves specific content or subject such as history, math, art or music.
There are different areas of intelligence. They are verbal and linguistic, logical and mathematical, visual, musical, interpersonal, intra-personal, bodily kinesthetic, naturalist and existential intelligence. These areas are equally valuable and not everyone has each intelligence, everyone has a mix of a few certain ones or is highly dominant in one or two.
Aside from those are what we call creative smarts and street smarts. Creative smarts are the ability to think outside of the box and street smarts are called the practical smarts. Creative smarts and practical smarts are used in situations such as being lost or losing your wallet etc.
And lastly there's emotional intelligence. It said it is often the reason why smart people don't end up as successful as expected. Emotional intelligence is just as important as any other intelligence, sometimes even more so. It consists of five factors. Self-awareness is important no matter where you are or what you're doing, it gives clarity of thought and helps us behave rationally. Self-motivation helps us keeping going when we need that extra boost to get through a difficult time, it is also the difference between a good job and a great job. Mood management is key to handling any situation and is needed to avoid unnecessary confrontations and clashes with others. Impulse control is needed in order to accomplish tasks without always putting them off for later in order to do something fun. And lastly, people skills,s something we all need more than ever in today's world where interaction is unavoidable and frankly needed.
Intelligence in the end, is subjective, there's really no way to truly measure it and understand it in all its forms.
So, occasionally, I like to be a bit wordy (well, maybe most of the time!) and talk about different topics that can be considered a bit academic.This week is one of those weeks. I'll probably post only one or two of these a month, unless something really interesting comes along.
As always, let me know what you think!
Hope you all are having a great week so far!