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| WINNERS WHILE MOST ARE DREAMING OF SUCCESS, WINNERS WAKE-UP AND WORK HARD TO ACHIEVE IT |
What quality is more important for someone who is
successful? Is it intelligence or hard
work & effort? In the United States you
can breeze by in terms of academics from K-8th grade. A smart kid getting a public education
assuming their living situation isn’t screwed up (i.e. broken home, homeless,
etc.) should cruise through into high school.
The reason for this is the
education system grades based on the national percentiles so a kid of above
average intelligence will be able to crush the curve with little effort.
In high school, smart kids can still get into a decent
university purely based on their gifted IQs, just need to get a good SAT score
and solid GPA. The thing is if you want
to get into a top 5 university then you will need to have a mix of intelligence
and hard work. You will now be competing
against kids from around the nation for the few spots available in each
school. Princeton, Harvard, Yale,
Stanford, and MIT have plenty of kids applying with 4.0 GPAs and high SAT
scores but they look for things that make you stand out. So kids who don’t have a perfect academic record
need to put in the effort to do extracurricular activities and other stuff
outside of just doing well in class to get in.
College & the
Work Force
After high school, a hard worker will more often than not be
more successful than someone who is just smart.
Here’s the reasons
why intelligence won’t always equal success later in life:
Sense of entitlement-
Gifted kids who sail through the early years of school may develop a sense that
they should just succeed because they are better than everyone. School is so easy for them growing up that
when they finally are faced with challenges they don’t know how to handle it.
Loss of interest-
After succeeding for so long school and studying may seem pointless. Initially doing better than everyone may be
motivational but after a while if they don’t develop larger goals their
interest in continuing to excel can fade.
This can cause them to develop the bad habit of being lazy and
procrastinating.
Inability of overcome
challenges- If kids aren’t faced with challenges growing up then when they
finally do fail at something; it can cause them to lose confidence and motivation. They may develop a fear of failure since it
is such an unknown feeling to them and rather than try and fail they might just
rather give up than admit they that might be lacking in some way.
Why hard workers can excel:
Ability to bounce
back quickly: They can go with the
flow and chalk setbacks as a learning experience. They are constantly striving for some new
goal and by taking action they will develop skills that will help them along
the way.
Constantly working
towards the bigger goal- Gifted people sometimes only look at the “big
picture” or that final goal. They want
to be a millionaire, billionaire, doctor, and lawyer, whatever the big dream
is. When they stumble along the way it
they get depressed and if they do achieve a goal they tend to just relax for a
long time. Hard workers just aim for
smaller goals while working towards that big final goal. Example:
Smart kid gets into a good college, he feels proud of himself, and
decided he should just kick back and relax since he earned it. Hard working kid is happy that he got into a
good college, takes a little time to enjoy something he likes but then starts
working on looking for scholarships.
Finding new opportunities-
Like in the example above since the hard workers are always in action they will
find hidden opportunities, finding a job that no one knew about, a scholarship,
an investment, there are endless opportunities waiting to be found but the
first step is taking action.
In college and the real world, people are rewarded for
action. If applying to a job straight
out of college who do you think will get it, applicant A: kid with a lot of
internships during college and decent GPA or B: smart kid with no work
experience but he’s really smart. Most
jobs don’t have some standardize test you can take to ace and impress them so
you need to show them things you have done with good results to impress them.
All that being said, if you’re someone who is intelligent and
hardworking then the possibilities are truly limitless. Bill gates, Warren Buffet, Mark Zuckerberg
are all billionaire who are extremely intelligent but back it up with a ridiculous
work ethic. Intelligence may be a very valuable
asset on the road to becoming successful but like Thomas Edison said-
“There is no substitute for hard work.”
