The Thing More Important Than Intelligence and Ability

And 10 ideas to help you boost your potential

Ever think about all the things you tie your self-worth to? Money? Looks? IQ? Muscles? Clothes? Cars? Furniture? Assets? Investments? Friends? Accomplishments? Trophies?

I want to share with you something more powerful than any of those “things” that influence our pursuit of an awesome life.

There are some experts on spirituality and mindfulness that will tell you to find true happiness by forgetting all of that. But I’m not about to go down that route and tell you those things don’t matter. You can find those spiritual and mindfulness books for that. Those things do matter because they often make up a part of who we are.

Without the trophies, we may not have the go getter attitude that helped us maintain a successful business and fit body. Without the IQ, we may not have made it through school successfully, snagged the great job, and found the awesome relationship. Without accomplishments, we may not have found that great group of like-minded friends.

It all matters to an extent.

Yet somewhere, if you think about it enough, you’ll realize that a lot of happiness and success doesn’t come from the end-result themselves. They come from the process of doing and being in the moment of trying to achieve said goal or ambition.

And for every great achiever out there who wants to achieve more, there are many people who are not living up to their fullest potential.

And for both types of people, it isn’t intelligence you’re missing. And it isn’t ability either. But let’s take a look at both of those areas before we tackle the most powerful force you’ve got going for you.

Intelligence

It’s easy to think that because of intelligence, we are not capable of doing something phenomenal. But more than ever, people are realizing that it isn’t intelligence that is the factor to success. But the ability to obtain knowledge.

And knowledge can be obtained by reading. You are getting knowledge that you can use right now, simply by reading this article.

Just because you don’t know or understand quantum physics doesn’t mean you’re incapable of success. Unless of course you want to be a quantum physicist. And just because someone isn’t good at fishing, and doesn’t know how to hook a worm, doesn’t mean they aren’t intelligent either. Because as long as you try to obtain that knowledge, you are intelligent.

And you don’t necessarily need a lot of it to do most things. You just need a lot of intelligence in at least one area. Maybe you are intelligent in the area of telling funny jokes or lightening up the mood in a group. Or maybe you are knowledgeable in the area of lawn care or woodwork — that means you don’t need to score A’s on your college SAT’s.

And it goes without saying, that the more you know, and the more you learn, the more effectively you can achieve your goals. But it doesn’t mean you have to learn complex ideas like computer coding and organic chemistry.

Jack Ma, founder of China’s Amazon — Alibaba, says he wasn’t very smart and didn’t know many things. But what he did know was people. That’s it. He credit’s his massive success to knowing and understanding people.

So it’s important to have some intelligence. But more importantly, you want to have the willingness to go learn things from smart people. Or at least learn the things that will help you become successful. You don’t necessarily need to learn the things that aren’t going to improve your life or career.

And now that that’s out of the way, let’s examine the next idea…

Ability

So maybe you’re not the tallest, fastest, strongest, handsomest, beautifulest, thinnest, or whatever… All of that is only a part of anything you want to achieve in life. And on one hand, it’s easy to want to attach our worth to our ability to achieve. But there is more to achievement and winning and personal success than our ability.

Having a lot of natural ability is great, but it is not a reliable strategy for 90% of people. I say 90% because I estimate at least 10% of people find their strengths and natural abilities — even if they don’t master it to Olympian levels. The other 90% of people probably take a longer time to find their strengths, and only a small portion find it.

Being born already on the path to success is awesome — I can only assume that because I don’t know for sure. And yes it is possible to be born with certain natural gifts. And most of us have a gift even when we haven’t realized it yet.

What’s more important is our willingness and determination to achieve.

The top athletes in the world have a natural athleticism to them. Think Michael Phelps and his body proportions. But they wouldn’t be who they are, without tremendous amount of practice. By assuming people like LeBron James or Adele sit around all day talking about being good at basketball or singing, we discredit them. But what’s worse, we discredit our own potential because when we assume others don’t have to work hard, we might start to believe we somehow aren’t capable of achieving things no matter how hard we work.

And that has idea has been proven wrong time and time again. Carol S. Dweck, the author of Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, discusses those things even more important than intelligence and ability. And as you can tell by the title of the book, all of it comes down to…

Mindset

Mindset is a very popular concept today. And despite the overuse of the term, the value of the concept of mindset is tremendous. Because it means that even if we aren’t the most intelligent or the most capable person in the room, we can still succeed if we believe we can.

Don’t let the popularity of the idea fool you. If you’re like me, you tend to avoid jargon and almost cliché terms. But I realize more that popular concepts, aren’t necessarily bad concepts.

For example, you’ve probably heard of the importance of goal setting hundreds of times. And you’ve probably read articles that tell you to “stop setting goals and try…” something else instead. And the article will substitute that “something else” with an attempt at a unique angle like “milestone,” “target,” “vision,” or “mission.” But the truth is, goals are still important. Just like mindset is important.

And mindset is a combination of many characteristics. Mindset is a combination of things like grit, persistence, determination, and even belief in your ability.

All things being equal, the only difference between someone who says they can achieve a goal, and someone who says they can’t achieve a goal, is all the thoughts in their head.

The person who says they can’t is coming up with all the reasons why they can’t achieve something. Most of which is not based on what’s reality. The person who says they can, is coming up with all the reasons they can achieve something, even if it isn’t based on reality. Or they’re faking it.

But either way, here’s a question: which one will attempt it?

It doesn’t matter if they succeed or not. But the person who believes they can is more likely to at least try.

And that makes all the difference.

So to help you out, here are…

10 Ideas to Improve Your Mindset and Boost Your Potential

1. Snap Yourself Out of It

What if it’s possible that you’ve tricked yourself into believing you aren’t capable? What if just a few bad past experiences have affected what you believe about yourself? Snap yourself out of it! Take a second to consider whether there is any basis to your negative thoughts right now. Don’t base everything on your past. Snap out of the past.

2. Live in the Present

Mindfulness is as hot of a topic as mindset is today. Mindset is a combination of the grit, determination, perseverance and more to succeed. Mindfulness is about the ability to be present. Mindfulness isn’t easy for everyone though and it can take work to know what it means to be present. But when you become mindful, and when you become aware of what’s going on in the moment you’re experiencing, you’ll come to realize all those negative thoughts aren’t real at all.

3. Understand Your Motivations

Some people spend their entire lives working toward rewards. The taste of winning is greater than any possible failure. They pursue the trophies, the goals, the jobs, the ambitions, and achievements. They see the reward, and they will work their tail off to get it.

Other’s will spend their entire lives trying to avoid things. They will avoid new relationships because of the discomfort of having to try something different. They will eat the same food for most of their life because they want to avoid trying something they might not like. They might avoid success because they are concerned about what might come with success. So are you motivated to work for something? Or are you working harder to avoid things?

Both motivations can be put toward positive ends.

4. Do What You’ve Been Avoiding

Sometimes we can’t do what we’ve been avoiding simply because we don’t have the right tools or knowledge. But for the most part, we are simply avoiding it.

Say for example you’ve always wanted to be a writer or painter. There is nothing stopping anyone from picking up a pen and paper to write. There is nothing stopping anyone from going to the local store to pick up a $20 paint set and painting. Well there is one person, and that’s ourselves. We often avoid what we want to achieve.

But painting and writing is easy. Those bigger goals aren’t always as easy as starting a journal or going to the store. And here’s the solution to that…

5. Find What You Don’t Know

This doesn’t have to do with intellect or ability. T. Harv Eker, the author of The Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, says that when people are not at the level of success they want, the problem is they don’t know something.

When we are not succeeding, we simply don’t know. It doesn’t take a genius to find the number to the person who can say yes to a big business deal. Although they might be called a genius when they close the deal. You might need to be a genius to develop a new mathematical equation that explains how life is created. But you don’t need to be a genius to find that person necessarily. And if you want to meet that person, the thing that you don’t know isn’t math. The thing you don’t know is either who that person is, or how to contact that person.

If you want to create a business, but you’re not doing it well, there is something you don’t know. Maybe you don’t know what kind of business to start, or you don’t know who can help you grow your business, or you don’t know enough about a business activity like sales or marketing. You might also not know what your greatest strength is, and how to contribute that to your venture.

And while it might be hard to find what we don’t know, and it might take a lot of self-reflection to know what we don’t know, it doesn’t require massive intelligence or ability to look for it.

6. Managing Your Network

They say you become the average of the five people you spend the most time with. If you aren’t where you want to be, you might want to consider who you are spending time with. We’ll leave it at that and you’ll have to decide how to proceed.

7. Go a Little Further

I was talking to a friend of mine a little while ago who said they were having difficulty reaching a fitness milestone. And this wasn’t someone in peak physical condition where a small improvement meant a lot more work, like say a strongman who is trying to add an extra 10 pounds to his already 800 pound deadlift.

The more accomplished you are, the harder it might to hit those higher milestones.

But my friend was someone who was just regularly fit and they had been running 6 laps per day, multiple times per week. The distance isn’t that important. It was tough for them and they complained it was getting tougher. So I told them to run 9 laps. And after running 9 laps, they went back to 6 a few days later, and they found it easier.

The point is, we can often go just a bit further than we feel like we can. And sometimes we just need to push ourselves a bit more to overcome our plateaus or roadblocks. It doesn’t require a completely new level of intelligence or ability or anything like that. We just need to go a little further.

8. Find Mentors

Entrepreneur, mentor, and investor Tai Lopez says you should have a few different types of people you regularly stay in communication with. You want a portion of the people you work with to be a bit more successful than you, and to learn from them. You want a portion of the people you associate with to be your peers and equal in terms of career or success. And you want at least a handful of people who you mentor.

9. Imagination

If you can’t imagine what it is you want, you probably will have a difficult time getting it. Painters, writers, businesspeople, entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, artists, scientists — they can often imagine and visualize what it is they want to achieve. The entrepreneur imagines the business. The artist can visualize their masterpiece. The scientist sets a hypothesis on what could happen with an experiment.

And the better you can imagine both the end goal and the path to get there, the more likely you’ll be able to achieve it. And the more time you spend thinking and imagining what you want, the better your chances of getting it.

The proof is as easy as this. If you can’t imagine it, if you can’t possibly see yourself achieving something, you have much less of a chance getting it than the person who spends day after day thinking and planning toward their goal. Because it won’t just magically appear for you if you don’t even know what it is you want. And even if it did appear in front of you, you might not even recognize it.

But the person who knows what they are looking for, will be more likely to recognize it.

10. Books

I think it’s in Ryan Holiday’s book Stillness is the Key, where he writes that Tolstoy once said something along the lines of “how can so many people not want to learn from the smartest people who have ever lived?” Books are where you can find great mentors too. And also very valuable, back to our point number 5 “find what you don’t know,” books are a great way to find what you don’t know.

And books can cost as little as the amount of time and money it costs you to get to the library. And there is a book with a clue to just about anything you want to achieve.

Altogether, you don’t need more intelligence and ability to go after what you want. You only need a minimal amount of intelligence and ability to read.

But most of success and achievement starts with the thoughts going on in your mind. And then, apply just a few of the 10 ideas you just read about, and you can go further than you have before.

Best Wishes,

Emmett

P.S. For other helpful thoughts and ideas, be sure to check out the exclusive mailing list for The Ideator Journal