Does your lifestyle increase your intelligence?
When I ask people what they would do to increase their intelligence it surprises me how many people say, “go back to school”. So many people associate school with learning and have a hard time thinking of other ways to improve their minds. I believe that intelligence means a persons ability to handle new information and make good decisions with that information. I also believe that you can be intelligent in certain areas and a complete idiot in other areas. Some intelligence is “natural” but I think that most people focus too much on that part. I think that most people can become intelligent in areas that they are currently weak in.
The human brain is a special machine designed to take in information from the environment and make adjustments and improvements to how it will tell you to handle that information. It’s important to challenge your brain with many different kinds of new information. This information that I’m talking about is anything that you can see, hear, smell, touch, or feel. Basically anything at all that you can notice that is happening around you. If you are doing the same thing every day, your brain is taking in the same information all the time and it has no chance to grow or improve itself. People who interact with different people all the time increase their social intelligence. They are able to see how different kinds of people react to different things. Their brains can then use that information to make adjustments and give them a better plan for dealing with people. You learn from experience what kinds of things make people laugh, what kinds of things make people feel uncomfortable, what kind of things make people want to do business with you. If you only socialize with a small group of the same people all the time, you will know what to expect and you won’t learn anything. The key is to always be doing new things and challenging yourself. Any other area of intelligence is the same. If you want to be better at solving computer problems, the only way to do that is to always give your brain different kinds of computer problems to solve. You’ll get faster and better at doing it the more you do it. Your brain is always learning from the new experiences. Its not simply the amount of time. You could spend hours on the computer just writing emails and chatting with your friends and you’d learn almost nothing. You could also keep doing the same task over and over again. Again, you’d learn nothing. The key is to keep challenging yourself with new experiences. If you want to improve your English, you must learn new words and talk about new things that challenge you. Its easy to get stuck at one English level. Many people get to a level where they have no problem in daily communication but seem to never be able to talk about more advanced topics. It’s not because they aren’t smart enough, its just because they keep talking about the same things and doing the same things.
If you want to increase your intelligence in any area you must be constantly doing new things. Ask yourself how many new experiences have you had over the past month. If your life seems to be almost the same every day than you are probably learning very little. Make a point of reading something new, making a friend with a person unlike your other friends, eating a new kind of food, going to a new place for a vacation, playing a different sport. Make sure you aren’t doing the same thing day after day, watching the same TV shows all the time, and hanging out with the same kinds of people all the time. To start out, make sure that at least once a week you will do something that you’ve never done before. Even if its go to a new restaurant or read a new book. Start out small but make sure you are making more and bigger changes as you grow.
I’d love to hear your comments and experiences.
Andrew
July 2nd, 2007 at 11:16 am
oh,god!My everyday life is exactly the same!I ‘ve been learning so hard on English!I lost my purpose of life!
July 5th, 2007 at 1:59 am
wow! I am completely agree with your opinion. I believe challenge can make one’s life more colorful. Unfortunately, I have be taking a boring work since I graduated from college, and I became very depressed during the first two years, but at last I gradually understand the key isn’t the situcation where you are in, the most important thing is the attitude that you take toward life, so I decide to be a positive person. Now, I study english and piano other than work everyday, I feel very happy.
July 7th, 2007 at 9:44 am
Hi, that’s my first time to post comment, but I have listened to you guys podcasts for a long time. They are very useful, thanks a lot for giving me a chance to listen to native English. I have improved a lot in my listening skills.
I come from Hong Kong and I can say that why people saying “going to school” can increase their intellgence. It’s because of Chinese culture. Unlike western countries, without high education standard, one can never get a well-paid job. This is rooted in one’s mind since one entre a rat-race. I can not blame the education system in HK, but I believe that you guys may have heard that HK students love taking tuturial lessons after normal school & at weekend. Why are they doing this for? I am not one of them, but I can say that the thought of ” the higher mark one can get in tests/exams, the more intellgent he/she is”.
And this is quite true in HK, people who are not great in their academic result usually labelled as a loser, especially in two extremely important public exams. And students who are not competitive enough can not go to university. Chinese parents are so proud of their childern if they can gain a seat in university. However, they will never consider how intellgant their children are. That’s why chinese students work so hard in their studies but ignore other skills which are truly needed in reality.
July 19th, 2007 at 2:27 am
I love what you talk about and the way you talk..
July 19th, 2007 at 2:36 am
speaking of the school, it is happening in Korea as well.
there has been one big issue.
there are the person well known and very professional in the art area, it turns out she deceived her educational background to get a good position of art area for around ten years..
one similar case happened, the person who is well known and very professional in english education area, it turns out she deceived her educational background as well. even she has been working at the radio station for the english section. she got fired today.
however most of audience thinks she is a amazing lecturer.
why some people are lying on their education background?
because they can get a better job and people admire them they are good at a certain area..
August 2nd, 2007 at 6:42 am
Ya,you are absolutely right, Andrew. We need to refresh our boring life and make it with more challenges. But the worst thing is that people always complain that how boring thier job is, nearly doing the same thing everyday, life becomes negatively etc…Maybe people should complain less, and take more action.
August 19th, 2007 at 2:53 pm
When I assumed the responsibilities at my new job, I felt I would be unable to carry out the duties as it seems so difficult. Then the work became so monotonous, I felt I was just doing the same thing every day until I decided to challenge myself, each day I endeavour to learn something new, it may be a new word, or simple expand my knowledge on the job function, now it does not seem so bad. One thing I’m trying to work on now is gaining confidence in my speech, I sometimes develop a mental block when communicating or I become nervous with excessive sweting (both hands and feet). This happens when I am in an uncertain situation, say an interview. The only way I believe I can overcome this is if I knew everything there is or be a polymath. As I said though it is something that I am working on, so I try to read the news paper, listen to the news, read a book, do some research on the net and try to appy it to my daily life.
January 28th, 2008 at 2:37 am
I like experiencing new things,but sth. i could not dare to do,at least at current times.(i don’t mean the illegal things)
eg.i never seen a complete horror movie,even though i don’t believe there is ghost in this world, but i have no courage to watch that kind of film.should i watch such a film to make myself more brave?
second,i once had a bf,but i have no experience of sex.my parents told me don’t do that before marriage, i am 22now, should i neglect my parent’sadvice and have a try?
third,i want to find a job in the city i like,eg,Dalian, a costal city.but the salary level there is not high.my parent want me go back to my hometown and stay near them ,caz i am the only child of my family.
i want have a change, but i should not be too selfish.
am i right?
could you please offer me some advice,thankyou very much^^
Susan.
February 28th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
It is an interesting topic about people’s intelligence increased by lifestyle. People do not accept at all to tough with new things that means they are continuously downgrading in the community. In other word, they are keeping lifestyle at an limited level. As I see it, people when they are satisfied with their livings, naturally do not want to have any change in their lifestyles. They would think it is ok, mostly because if they would get it changed, something bad could possibly happen that they do not want to.
I suppose everyone here should have heard the presidential election in the USA. The candidate, Obama, has a remarkable slogan that is ” Obama for Change”. I like the slogan very much. Most Americans seem to support him as you can see his poll is steadily increasing. What does it stand for? I think people is expecting a real intelligent guy to be their president in order to not to be involved in certain wars, or something bad like economical recession that they really do not want it happened. Overall, they desire to have a peaceful world and a strong, well economical country. People’s hopes are because of their common intelligence, thinking more changes about their country.
If patterns of lifestyle are not diversifying and changing, how can we manage when a hard situation happens?
March 9th, 2008 at 5:42 am
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