Define Yourself Through Your Circle

What does it mean to be intelligent?

Is it the amount of knowledge you have?

Is it your ability to solve a complex math equation or a difficult physics problem?

Or is it your ability to connect with people who know how to solve said math and physics problems?

Sure, we can spend our entire lives learning about every fathomable topic, but there will always be areas in which we know nothing.

So wouldn’t it make sense to solely learn a lot about the things you love, instead of learning a little bit of everything, while feeling like you know nothing?

The question now is, how can we access all of this knowledge while only knowing some of it?

It’s in our nature to learn. We are all born as blank slates and get fed knowledge/culture/experience through our parents/guardians. As life goes on, we learn from our peers, teachers, professors, bosses, and pretty much everyone we interact with.

A parrot will learn to repeat what its owner says. A child will learn to treat others with kindness as their mom and dad do. Artificial intelligence will have biases that its programmer subconsciously wrote in its code. These are all instances where the subject being influenced has no power over who influences them.

But, as we grow from toddlers to children to teenagers to adults, we develop the power to define our influences.

You can avoid the people who discourage you and laugh at your ambition.

You can hang around the people who motivate you to become a better version of yourself every day. The people who have ambitions as big as yours. The people that will be there at the top with you when you succeed.

You have the power to define yourself.