Are you SUPER smart?
A few days ago, during a conversation with my mentor, I was telling him about my new found passion with programming. I grew up labeling myself as a “business” person. I wrote my first line of code January this year. Next month, I am going into Hack Reactor, an immersive coding bootcamp. 3 months from now, I will be a software engineer. I will soon have the power to transform anything from my imagination into the web. 9 months, a complete change of identity. In the middle of our conversation, completely out of the blue, my mentor asked me:
“Are you super smart?”
Obviously, I love hearing that. It was a huge ego stroke. I took a while to scramble up an answer: “No, I am not super smart. I think that I have above average intelligence, as all of Berkeley students do. But I am no where near super smart.” In the past 5 months, I have consistently spent 4-5 hours everyday learning programming. If you saw the struggle I went through, you will know that I am not that smart. As I reflected more on this question, I started thinking about the individuals I would consider “super smart”:
Tony Stark, John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, and Eddie Morra while under the influence of NZT (Limitless).
Clearly, I have nothing in common with them. I am not a movie character and I am far away from being super smart. Why are these movies so popular? Movies capture our attentions and transport us to an alternate reality. I love watching Ironman because I get to be the cool, charming and super intelligent Tony Starkfor 90 minutes. We all want to be super smart, whether we are willing to admit it or not.
Why?
We want to be better than people around us. Being smart hints at something exceptional, something extraordinary. The concept of “smart” only exists in comparison to other people. Competition is built into our DNA. It is one of the powerful forces that drive us. This competitive force could take us very far, but we should be careful with it.
Getting caught up with your perceived level of intelligence is the worst way to approach life. Am I learning this faster than the other person? How long would it take to achieve X or Y? There are always someone better than you. Someone else out there could do the same thing you did in half the of time. So what?
It is not about how smart you are. Sure, we are all born with different hardwares. We shouldn’t compare ourselves to others because there is no good comparison. We have unique abilities and talents. As Einstein famously said: “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”
We came into this world alone and we leave alone. This journey is ours and ours alone. Somewhere along the way, we might cross path, but soon enough, we will be on our separate ways. Stop looking at everyone else, look within yourself.
Find your bliss.
Let go of expectations.
Put in the hours, day in day out.
What makes an exceptional human is the software. The hours, days and years dedicated to learning. The life long pursuit of self mastery. Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. Make it work for you instead of against you. Clark Kellogg, one of my favorite professors, said :