What if you are not intelligent

A study in the Journal of Individual Differences showed a correlation between people who scored high on IQ tests as a child and adults that were more curious and open to new ideas. Psychology research from Georgia Tech also showed that those with high curiosity are more tolerant of ambiguity, which requires a sophisticated thinking style. No, it's not a sign you're crazy--just the opposite. A study from psychologists Paloma Mari-Beffa and Alexander Kirkham of Bangor University showed that talking out loud to yourself improves self-control, an important form of intelligence.

They gave study participants a set of tasks and accompanying written instructions, asking them to read the instructions silently or out loud. Measured concentration and performance from those who read out loud was far better. Talking out loud nets control, which is why so many professional athletes talk to themselves out loud during games. Which brings us to the next sign. Whether you exercise self-control by talking to yourself out loud or just by willing it, it's an overlooked sign of intelligence.

A psychology study from Yale University gave participants IQ tests and offered them reward money they could receive immediately or later for a higher amount. Those choosing to wait also had higher IQ scores, indicating that resisting making impulsive decisions and carefully weighing options correlates with intelligence. If you like your own company and aren't constantly in need of being around others, that's a sign of intelligence.

A study published in the British Journal of Psychology showed a correlation between contentedness with being alone and intelligence. Mark was always one of the smartest kids in his class. Likewise, there are colleagues at his firm who have leapfrogged him.

Sound familiar? You might relate to Mark yourself, or have an employee or loved one who struggles with similar feelings. Smart people sometimes devalue other skills, like relationship building, and over-concentrate on intellect. For example, an individual who finds workplace diplomacy difficult might write this off as an irritation rather than as a core skill required for their role.

Similarly, they might see it as critical for a secretary to be personable, but not an executive. Bright kids typically receive a lot of reinforcement throughout their early lives that their intelligence is valuable. But in most workplaces, you need more than raw intelligence to get ahead.

And only focusing on your greatest strength, rather than also addressing your weaknesses, tends to be self-sabotaging.

Solution: Use your strengths to overcome your weaknesses. For instance, identify three specific workplace diplomacy behaviors that would improve your success in that area. Teamwork can be frustrating for very smart people. When someone grasps concepts quickly and has high standards for their own performance it can create difficulties when working with others who take longer to process information and pick up concepts.

If a person felt held back at school by being in a class with less smart kids, this frustration with teamwork can develop early — you know what this feels like if you routinely did most of the work on group projects, or got scolded for daydreaming during a class that was moving too slowly for you. These feelings can get re-triggered throughout life. When people develop an emotional raw spot as a child, they often have outsized internal reactions when that raw spot is rubbed in their adult life.

Smart people also sometimes find it difficult to delegate because of a sense they can do a task better regardless of whether this is actually true. This is especially likely for those who have a perfectionist streak.

Combine a lack of self-awareness with low cognitive ability and boom: You overestimate your own intelligence and competence. Wisdom is knowing that while you might know a lot, there's also a lot you don't know.

Wisdom is trying to find out what is right rather than trying to be right. Wisdom is realizing when you're wrong, and backing down graciously. If you aren't afraid to be wrong, if you aren't afraid to admit you don't have all the answers, if you aren't afraid to say "I think" instead of "I know," then you're likely to be smarter than you think.

Conventional wisdom says people who swear tend to have limited vocabularies; the F -word is your favorite adjective because you don't have better modifiers at your disposal. Turns out conventional wisdom is wrong.

According to this research , "The ability to generate taboo language is not an index of overall language poverty. So don't assume you're stupid just because you like to use certain cuss words as adjectives and nouns and verbs, sometimes all in the same sentence. If you like to get up early, you're in good company: The Wall Street Journal says that 4 a.

Yet research shows that night owls -- people who feel more alert and productive well after the sun goes down -- are more likely to have higher intelligence , better jobs, and larger incomes than early risers.

Waking up at an arbitrary time won't help you succeed. Making a thoughtful decision to wake up at the time that's most productive for you is all that matters. Research shows a definite link between intelligence and self-control.

In this study , participants chose between two rewards:. Makes sense: Having the ability to objectively weigh two outcomes and choose the better option is an obvious sign of intelligence. So if you're willing to exercise a little self-control in order to maximize the fruits of your effort, labor, investments, etc. And are much more likely to be successful. We all put things off. But few people would assume that putting off something important is a sign of intelligence.