Stand Out and Thrive: How to Be EXCEPTIONAL in Today’s Competitive World
In today’s global community, people are generally not impressed by a person’s wealth. Rather, the quality of a person’s mind is what actually gets people’s attention. You see, rich people are common. That is, they can be found anywhere in the world, even in very poor countries. To attain riches, your mind doesn’t have to be remarkable because riches can be inherited. But you can never inherit a well-nourished intellect. An active intellect is the most valuable asset anyone can have.
If you want to develop your intellect, you would have to do it all by yourself. It takes an active conscious effort to develop the mind. In other words, it takes skill and hard work to build the intellect. But that’s not all.
Most importantly, in order to grow your intellect and become a creative and resourceful person, you would have to be deeply interested in learning. The intellect can only be nurtured through learning.
You can’t put information into your mind unless you are willing to learn. For that reason, your ability to become an effective leader is not so much about having intelligence as it is about having the willingness to learn.
But then, having the desire to learn isn’t as significant as knowing how to learn. To effectively utilize your intelligence, you must know how to learn because the things you learn will not only decide the level of your intelligence but will as well determine what you can do with your intellect.
In my interaction with leaders, I have realized that many of them do not set out with the intention to fail. Leaders don’t deliberately plan to fail. Most times, leaders fail because they got themselves involved in activities they thought were right. They didn’t realize they were on the wrong path until failure hits them.
Just because you are willing to learn doesn’t mean you know how to learn. Your strong desire to learn isn’t a guarantee that you’re going to learn the right thing in the end.
I would say that two of the most pitiable people I have met are: a person who is good at learning the wrong things and the one who wants to learn but doesn’t know how to learn. Fortunately, you can choose not to be like any of these people.
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This article was adapted from my book, The VIP Leader. Available on Amazon Kindle. To grab a copy, simply click on the link below:
