Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Are You Too Dumb To Fail?


A man told me he was a Mensa and, silly me, I thought he was confessing to being a transsexual having her period.
A 55-year-old man I know claims he is a member of Mensa and has an IQ of 152. Somehow, this is supposed to make him an extraordinary individual who can command an income of at least $300K a year. He refuses to work for less. Consequently, he has no job and lives off government handouts; something he has been doing since he was 40yrs old. If anything, having such a high IQ appears to be an impediment in his ability to achieve anything in life.
To be honest, my IQ is not high, but then I am not sure if there is any value having a high IQ. From what I have been told, having a high IQ means that we have the ability to recall all sorts of facts and figures, participate in quiz shows and make money. However, the only person I know who claims to have a high IQ, doesn’t seem to be able to make any money from quiz shows. You would think he would be bright enough to apply, but then maybe his light bulb has blown and he can’t afford a new one.
Napoleon Hill (Think and Grow Rich) reports that Henry Ford was taken to court to prove that he did not have a high IQ.  When the lawyer for the plaintiff attempted to demonstrate that Henry Ford was bereft of a high IQ, he did so by asking him general knowledge questions. Ford was wearied by the lawyer’s banal attempts to demonstrate that he himself was not a historian nor spent his day reading encyclopedias, and therefore did not have a high IQ. Henry Ford then demonstrated he was much more intelligent than the lawyer by effectively telling him and the court that if he needed to know answers to general knowledge, he would employ someone who specialized in reading books and regurgitating what they had read. I suppose, Henry thought if he did not have a high IQ, he could buy one somewhere.
History tells us that instead of being a pea-brain, Henry Ford excelled in providing tens of thousands of people with jobs—even lawyers.
What is the point of knowing things you do not need to know? If you are not going to be a librarian there is no need to learn the Dewey Decimal System of book classification, especially if you are going to spend your life on the beach playing volleyball or be a tennis player seeking to win the grand slam events.
We need to know what is important for us to get where we want to go or achieve our goals and purpose in life. It is one thing to be talking about what you can learn watching television quiz shows like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? It is another thing entirely, wanting to be a millionaire and setting realistic goals that will assist you in your quest. Too many people are in the wishful thinking category, daydreaming rather than taking action to achieve their current purpose.
Not everybody wants to be a millionaire. Some of us want to be billionaires. However, many of us (maybe even you) merely want to earn an income working from home, so we can spend more time with our partner, family and friends.  Too many people are caught up in the poverty trap and do not realize that the pursuit of money in itself can lead to impoverishment, the same as thinking we need to have an high IQ, even though we are unable to do anything worthwhile with our lives.
The most important factor in our lives has to be having a purpose for which to live and brighten up our day. Purposeful living means a quality lifestyle. What better way is there to enjoy a quality lifestyle other than knowing you do not have to be a slave to the system. Don’t laugh. You do not need a high IQ to begin your road to freedom. Anybody can blog and become better at blogging day by day. As I am finding, you can learn as you go.
If you desire to have fun and like to be free, begin your road to freedom here right NOW.
This entry was posted in Empower Network

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Agreed. However, it would also be wrong to assume that everyone with a high IQ is useless as well. Einstein, Newton, Tesla, many CEO's.

Anonymous said...

The IQ test was not invented until the 20th century. Therefore, Newton's IQ cannot be claimed to be genius because he never took a test for it. Similarly, Einstein and Tesla never took an IQ test. Were these men all geniuses - yes - but to say they had a high IQ without having actually taken the test is wrong. Although all these men were successful in math, the IQ test also measures other things, such as general knowledge, spelling, and verbal skills.

Also, the point of the article is not that you can't succeed as a genius, but rather that you can't succeed if you don't have initiative. People without initiative - genius or no - are not successful.