Increase Your Intelligence

Is that possible?

Before you read any more, please decide which of these statements you agree with:

1. You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can't really do much to change it; you can learn new things but you can't change your basic inelligence.

or

2. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are; you can even change your basic intelligence level considerably.

Some facts you probably didn't know:

1. Winston Churchill repeated a year during primary school.  He was put bottom of the bottom class.

2. Beethoven's teacher called him a 'hopeless' musician

3. Albert Einstein's teacher described him as 'academically subnormal'

4. Charles Darwin wrote: 'I was considered by all my masters and my father, a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard of intellect'

5. Thomas Edison's teachers said he was 'too stupid to learn anything'. He was fired from his first two jobs for not being productive enough

6. Oprah Winfrey was fired from her job as a television reporter because she was 'unfit for TV'

7. Soichiro Honda (founder of Honda) was turned down by Toyota for a job as an engineer and spent quite a time unemployed.

If, like me the first time I read it, you basically agreed with statement #1 above you may well be feeling completely shocked at this moment.

This theory of 'Mindsets'(developed by Dr Carol S Dweck professor of psychology at Stamford University and her team) could literally change your life!

Dweck shows us that 'the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life' People who believe that their (and other people's) abilities are set in stone

have a 'fixed mindset'. People who believe that we can cultivate and develop our basic qualities through our own efforts have a 'growth mindset'.

So who has a fixed mindset? - well I did, for one.  When I was young I believed I was clever.  I believed  that people with brains didn't need to work hard.  I was motivated by praise. I needed people to tell me I was clever.  Frankly, I basked in flatteryand felt diminished as a person by criticism. I should also add that I generally failed to live up to the potential people saw in me. There came a point where I realised the words on my tombstonre should be : 'she had a lot of potential'

People with a fixed mindset look for praise, for validation of their brilliance or their power or their talents. Typically they see effort as a reflection of low intelligence; when faced with a setback they often give up

What about those bankers whose activities caused the crisis we're still dealing with? fixed mindsets? certainly they believed they could walk on water; they needed to be the 'smartest guys in the room' and they despised anyone who contradicted them.  They were interested in self-promotion far more than in self-or company development. You can probably think of dozens more examples of people with fixed mindets.

People with a growth mindset, on the other hand, see effort as a necessary part of success. When faced with a setback they simply try harder.  They use effort to overcome difficulty.

So who has a growth mindset? well, what about the people on the list above for a start? (By the way, I'm glad to say I've developed one now, too!)

Experiments show that mindsets can be fixed in early childhood. I'll come back to this in a future post, but meanwhile - especially if you 're a parent - you may like to read this article

The good news is that we can all develop a growth mindset.  Just knowing about mindsets can start the process off for many people. But there are definite steps we can take and I'll look at those in the next

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