Life is offering you countless opportunities and many chances to be successful, to use your talents, skills, and knowledge. Are you taking advantage of them? Are you pursuing your dreams and goals? Are you using your intelligence to advance in life? Find out in this article, how being too smart can stop you from being successful:
1. Feeling entitled to become successful
Being smart doesn’t automatically makes you successful, your actions do. Don’t fall asleep thinking that just because you are smart, you are entitled to be successful. Yes, you deserve to be successful, but you are not entitled to it just because you are smart.
If you are smart and not as successful as you’d like might be caused by your feelings of entitlement.
These feelings might:
- Cloud your judgment,
- Prevent you from asking questions,
- Stop you from taking action,
- Make you sit and wait for things to happen,
- Blame outside forces for your lack of success,
- Lose your desire to challenge yourself,
- Overlook the (obvious) needs of your journey to success.
Feeling entitled can prevent you to put effort and dedication into your success journey, or even, start it all together.
2. Hoarding knowledge and information
Knowledge is power until you become addicted to it and stop moving forward; getting stuck in learning and searching for the “best” road to take.
There is no “one best road”. There are many pathways to get to the same outcome. The one for you is that one that fits you and not the other way around.
Design one plan of action, learn one skill, one way of getting what you want and go for it. Whatever else you might need to have to accomplish your dream, you can learn along the way.
Remind yourself that no one is doing things perfectly from the first try and no one is entirely confident before proving to themselves how much they can achieve.
Confidence comes mostly from your victories along the way.
3. No idea seems good enough
Smart people tend to notice and see things in minute details. Thus, any flaw, any crack, any reason why an idea might not work, jumps at you more than why it could and will work.
Embrace one idea and improve it as you go. Nothing is perfect in this world. Stop overthinking and analyzing why things can’t work. Find ways to make it work. Give up on doubts and drifting from one idea to another. Take action!
4. Getting bored of following one plan
We all need excitement, fun, and joy in our lives.
If you are a smart person and not successful YET, perhaps you are getting bored by staying on a particular road when you see so many other routes.
It is like going from New York to Paris and, instead of taking a direct flight, you go on a cruise around the world. Yes, on a cruise you see many places and discover new cultures, brilliant ideas, and people. However, by the time you get to Paris, you might have lost the chance to accomplish your goal, the purpose of going there.
Allowing boredom to get hold of you can stay on your way to success more than any failures and errors ever could. Keep your interest and enthusiasm alive. Inspire yourself from the best self-help books and get out of apathy.
5. Lack of consistency
Smart people tend to lose interest in their goal at the first sign they can do it, thinking that they can pick it up again at any point in time. It’s not a challenge anymore, and they give up, moving on to other, more stimulating things.
Be consistent! Find entertainment outside of your primary goal. Stay on your course by allowing yourself minor distractions just for the fun of it. When you have to take the train from one place to another, nothing can stop you enjoy the journey: reading a book, listening music, having a pleasant conversation.
Give yourself the best chance to become successful, be consistent! Find excitement, fun, and entertainment outside of your goal and stay on course.
Put your knowledge and intelligence into your effort and dedication to get what you want in life.
Even though, you’re not entitled to success just for being smart, remember that you deserve to be successful and your success is waiting for you no matter how long it takes to get there.
Now, few questions that use your intelligence and can help you on your journey to success:
- Why not get there sooner rather than later?
- Why not temperate your sense of entitlement and start taking action?
- Why not use the knowledge you already have and improve it along the way?
- Why not follow one idea and make it work?
- Why not take a direct flight to your destination?
- And why not staying on your course until you’re done?
Remind yourself that your success depends less on being smart and more on your willingness to move forward.