How smart people fight compensate negative self image

Not all of us have a positive perception of ourselves. Maybe this is one of the best motivations to take classes in self-improvement. Fortunately, it seems that high IQ can balance off some disadvantages we may have. This is a complex subject, and it certainly deserves several articles on this blog. You can find more information about the subject here, here, here, here, here, here and here.

Personality disadvantages

Family background, individual traits, various traumatic experience and other factors may form our personality and identity as we mature. After the adolescence, our identity and personality appear to be complete. Scientists can measure them using questionnaires and tests. We do grow and change further throughout our life, and our personality and identity also change. Career progress, family life, hobbies and social circles, immigration and deep cultural experiences, personal traumas and lifestyle changes can modify how we feel about ourselves. It has long been known that high IQ is correlated with life satisfaction and longevity. One of the common themes was financial wellbeing. Recently, scientists started to point out that higher IQ can actually change our personality.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is a controversial subject, maybe because it is strongly linked with other forms of intelligence. Smart people read and take courses. This lifelong learning habit combines technological and scientific subjects, with psychology, social sciences, and fiction. People that read about other people eventually develop deep insights. These insights often allow us to understand what we feel and what other people feel with exceptional clarity. Smart people also tend to invest in unique experiences, initially because our role models advise to do so. These experiences not only improve the personal happiness rate but also provide further insights. Experiencing new cultures, learning historical context and participating in life-changing events, we deepen our emotional intelligence. As a result, people with high intellectual abilities also gain emotional intelligence.

Compensating effects

Common personality traits, like emotional sensitivity, introversion, and neuroticism, may have an adverse effect on our ability to make friends and influence people. Most people want to generate money and climb the career ladder. We use friends and peers to fight our intellectual ignorance. We use our intelligence to make friends and be interesting partners. Eventually, the intellect has a larger compensating effect than the personality. This means it is easier for a smart person to make friends than for a socially active person to solve problems. For most achievement-related outcomes like education, cognitive ability is always the strongest predictor. For marital stability and mental health, personality is way more important – but a smart person can compensate taking the right counseling and understanding the outcomes of bad choices.

Personal branding

Being painfully aware of how other people perceive us might be a good thing. We can measure various things that we do in terms of our personal brand. Focusing on things that make us special and reframing these things in a positive light is a part of personal branding. Understanding how our personal brands interact with brands of other people and companies helps us make friends and maintain relationships.

When we understand our own brand, we can overcome the natural introversion, neurotic and sensitivity. Writing blogs and being active in social media we leverage our research skills and creativity. For example, I rarely can think of a great argument during a face to face discussion. My better ideas come long after the discussion is over, and I have time to review its results. This can be disastrous in a quick face to face communication but is actually an advantage for writing.

What motivates us

When researching and acquiring new skills we are rarely motivated by something where we are average. More often we are great and enjoy using and leveraging the relevant skillset. Yet the most astonishing results are often shown by people who are weak at something, yet have high discipline and immense desire to improve.

Focus on learning can often be more important than cognitive abilities or personality. By systematically acquiring and applying the relevant skills we can become knowledgeable, capable and effective in anything we do.

Persistance

I quote:

In a series of five studies recently published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, researchers Kaitlin Wooley and Ayelet Fishbach at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business found that the experience of immediate rewards—such as enjoying the taste of a healthy food—predicted, more strongly than anticipated rewards did, how persistent people would be in pursuit of their goals to exercise more; study longer; eat healthier; stick with a new year’s resolution; or sustain a lifestyle change.

The things that motivate us to start a transformation, are a poor motivator for persistence. Once we start delaying gratifications, we need to find some other ways to stay happy. Visualizing how great our life will be once we reach our goal, is by far less effective than enjoying every step of the way.

This also explains Teresa Amabile’s and Steven Kramer’s discovery that the number one predictor of work engagement is a phenomenon they call “the progress principle.” At work, we throw ourselves into challenging projects not because our boss blankets us with warm fuzzies or because we think it will add another zero to the east side of our paycheck. More than anything else, people stay engaged in hard work when they feel like they are making progress on a project that matters.

Smart people are easily motivated by curiosity and challenge. We have multiple memories of sweet success in complex intellectual challenges, and thus are more likely to persist.

Dealing with critical inner voice

Many of our problems come from negative self-talk, an inner voice telling us we are not good enough. When we read fast we stop subvocalization. When we visualize we use creative positive images. With time we push the negative self-talk to the moments when we are tired and distracted. And even then we can practice mindfulness and self-compassion.

Negative self-talk does not disappear completely, and probably it should be with us to avoid dangerous manias and euphoria. However, it is not the guiding power for a smart person. There are so many things we are curious about, so many good and positive things we need to do, that we simply have much less time to fight with ourselves.

Fighting mental health blunders

Smart people are more critical about their mental health. We are less likely to proceed through life on autopilot. If we get addicted to something, we understand that too much of a good thing is bad and often try to mitigate the addiction. We use various visualizations and metaphors to make sense in the universe. If we are stuck in the wrong metaphor, we have a better chance of finding a viable alternative.

Why do I think so? Because we read and learn. We discover new ways to deal with challenges much faster than other people. We are proactively researching and occasionally stumble on things that change the way we think.