First of all you’re probably wondering: “What the heck does it mean to be too smart for your own good?”
You can have many types of intelligence.
Book smarts. Street smarts. A genius with music. A genius with locating discount grocery store coupons.
Whatever.
This topic is how being a smarty-pants plays out in your social life.
There is a few main areas I have personally noticed over the years.
Let us run them through.
THINKING WHILE OTHER PEOPLE TALK:
Right off the bat, if you are the kind of person who creates a lot of value by THINKING, then it is probably going to be hard to locate the off-switch.
Learning is an addiction.
Once your brain has been forced into a gear where it is learning all the time it goes from being tiring and annoying to enlivening and awesome.
You start to see the bigger picture and realize all the potential.
Over the years you become a fiend for more knowledge.
The same goes for analysing information into useable, practical bite-sized chunks.
Analysis is an addiction. So you think and think, and then think and think some more.
The problem is that while other people are talking, what are you doing?
THINKING.
After all, if you are thinking in terms of big picture concepts, then you are probably holding up all sorts of images in your head and trying to weave them together into something coherent.
Ironically, it is often when you relax for a minute (while listening) that the jumble of information starts to congele into some sort of epiphany.
So you’re listening to somebody and –C-L-I-C-K- you have a realization.
“Wait a sec man…Wait a sec…Did you realize blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…”
The problem here is that it is always about YOU.
You are interrupting the other person and they do not feel like you are listening to them.
The solution to this one is to make a firm life commitment to “let some of them go” in terms of your ideas.
This was actually a point made to me about five years ago by a buddy of mine.
He told me point blank “Dude you HAVE to decide what’s more important to you. Vocalizing every idea or having people think you’re a cool guy. It’s up to you.”
I said to him “Yeah but my attention span is short. If I don’t get it out I’ll lose it.”
Again he said “It’s up to you man. It’s one or the other. Do what you want but it’s up to you.”
This hit me hard and I never forgot it. From then on whenever anyone spoke I made the choice to listen to them one hundred percent.
The bottom line is that when another person is talking, you have to allow your awareness to be on THEM as opposed to your own train of thought.
If you have a realization while they are talking, you have to accept that you might lose it.
“I might forget this and NEVER get it back. That’s fine. The world will be OK.”
TELLING PEOPLE THAT YOU HAVE ALREADY THOUGHT OF THEIR IDEAS:
Next is probably one of the biggest ways that “smart folk” successfully alienate themselves from untold legions of people.
That is that in all likelihood, you have already thought of almost every idea that the majority of people have ever had.
Now of course, that does not mean that you have nothing to learn from people.
It is just that the average person who is trapped in the day-to-day grind of running the rat race and keeping up with the Jones’ probably has not had a lot of “free time” to consider their ideas under a microscope.
They are either too busy or too indifferent. They have other priorities.
The result is that when they share with you an idea they are really proud of, you have probably already thought of it, analyzed it, and weighed out the pros and cons.
The problem with this is that there is nothing more obnoxious than when somebody shares an idea and you say: “Oh yeah I already thought of that. Have you considered blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…”
The issue is that you might think you are helping the other person but they will almost always dislike you for it.
And with good reason.
Most likely they were NOT asking you for your advice. They were just socializing and wanted to get excited about something with you.
Or maybe, just maybe, they want to make their own mistakes? Ever thought of that one, SMART GUY??
Instead you have got to learn the art of saying: “Oh cool man…That sounds awesome.”
This allows people to feel good about themselves, and even cooler, you come across as intelligent automatically because most people care more about being understood than receiving critical feedback.
Obviously there are cases where people want real feedback, and that is a matter of common sense.
But you already knew that.
Truth be told you REALLY CAN learn something from everybody. Even people who appear not to be “with it” entirely.
It might not be “analytical” but it can be very practical, and a lot deeper than you would ever expect.
In my opinion, it is the people who realize that they can learn from every single person they meet who are the most intelligent.
GIVING ADVICE TO PEOPLE WHO ARE ALREADY HAPPY WITH WHERE THEY ARE AT:
Over the years, I would say that the dumbest, most useless thing I have ever done is offer advice to people who are perfectly happy with where they are at.
The key to understand here is that the smarter you are, the more likely you are to be dissatisfied.
Why?
Because you know what your potential is.
You know full well how to make an outstanding life, exactly what it would look like, and the steps involved in building it.
But most people are happy with easier, simpler lives. They appreciate the little things.
It might sound belittling but it is not.
Being a globetrotter and having traveled extensively, I can say for sure that many people who appreciate the little things have a very DIFFERENT KIND OF INTELLIGENCE than the so called “intelligentsia”.
They have learned to love life passionately and gain happiness from the fun they share with people around them. Or maybe from playing soccer or a musical instrument. It does not matter.
That does not mean that you cannot have both an outstanding life and an appreciation for the little things, but many people simply do not need that.
(And trying to convince otherwise them is no different than an advertiser who tries to make you feel incomplete for not owning their product).
Up until about two years ago I would give advice to anyone who I thought could benefit.
Then I started restricting who I would offer advice to, and even actively changing the topic when people asked for it.
From there, I picked up the extra slack by “brain-dumping” the people who I care about the most — because I always wanted them up to speed with all the cool stuff I had figured out.
However, I have since realized, funny enough as recently as this week, that that is not a good way of relating to them, and in fact it is even MORE important not to bombard people who are close to me with advice.
It might come from a super positive intention, but it is not serving the greater good of the relationship.
In fact this rabbit hole also goes deeper than you might have realized.
When you offer too much advice to people you are close with, they may stop taking care of themselves.
They will begrudgingly accept your role as the “dad” while simultaneously being somewhat annoyed in circumstances where you have not taken care of everything.
You have to let people make their own mistakes.
Chances are that YOU gained your best knowledge through various screw-ups, and you have to give people the gift of making these screw-ups for themselves.
This year, I have made a firm resolution to offer advice to people only within two contexts.
First is if they make an appointment to ask for it, and second if I am being paid within a professional context (coaching, events, etc).
Make sense?
JUDGING PEOPLE BY YOUR OWN STANDARDS INSTEAD OF LETTING THEM LIVE THEIR LIVES:
The “worth” of a person is not defined by their level of actualization, because that is every person’s personal preference. You might judge an individual negatively for it, but really you are just judging yourself.
And you do not have to.
Just because you do not judge somebody else does not mean you give up your own personal standards.
It actually means that you are smart enough to distinguish the needs of other people from your own.
