ARE YOU AS SMART OR AS BAD AS YOU THINK YOU ARE?

My dad once told me something that I wasn't able to appreciate until much later --- that it's not about being "smart", but about sustained focus, dedication, and discipline. I didn't believe him. I figured that some people are just born smarter, and there's an upper limit on your intelligence that holds you back, and that I had hit that limit. No doubt some people are more predisposed to certain kinds of achievement. It's very very easy to blame your intelligence than your motivation when by all accounts, you are busting your ass, killing yourself spending 20 hours on each analysis problem set and those guys are spending less than 5.


Years later only when i found out that, yes, what my dad told me years ago did worked. I realized that "genius" is overrated. It is rarely just there. You have to focus and keep pushing yourself to get there.





These thoughts had confirmed what I suspected all along. It's not about being clever, but it's about your commitment, your dedication and self-discipline. No one is born smarter, no matter what people seem to look like from your perspective. I've blamed my own intelligence than my motivation similar to the post above when in fact, I've just not been working hard enough. 

I really hope someone reads this and gets the message. 

The best way to learn how to learn is to push yourself into situations where you aren't the smartest person in the room, and to observe and get help from the people who are the smartest, to find out how they do it.