Smartness Is The Key

My twenty plus years of living on earth has taught me that being brilliant is not enough. You can be brilliant but end up remaining stagnant in life because you did not make smart decisions. Most brilliant people I know are mostly indoors studying for one exam or the other. In as much as studying is good, it is not enough to take you high in life. You know being brilliant should give you an edge but it is not always the case. It has played out over and over again where the best students in class end up working for the average students or even less serious students. Why is it so? What are the brilliant students doing wrongly? Shouldn’t being brilliant make them bosses? Well it is not always the case because life is the survival of the fittest. If given these two words: smart and brilliant, I would choose smart. One must learn to make smart decisions in life in other to climb up to the peak of the ladder. Stop working hard and start working smart.

Build your communication skills

How often do you talk to people? How interactive are your conversations? Are you able to hold a conversation for a long period of time? One thing about communication is that you need to know something in order to talk about it. Seriously, you don’t need to be at the top of your class in order to do that. If you are able to read and write, then you don’t have any issue in building your communication skills. You should read broad. Know what is happening in the sport field, know a bit of politics, just know what is happening around you.

Someone won a job interview just because of his ability to interact. He migrated to USA recently and he needed to get a job. He went on the internet and browsed about the American football and the weather. On the interview day, the interviewer didn’t even focus on the job questions, he asked mostly general questions like “how different is the American weather from your home country’s weather?” So imagine he didn’t know, would he have been able to talk about it? Talking too much does not mean that you have good communication skill. There are people that would stand and talk and at the end of the day, their talks have no meaning or usefulness. Before you talk, know your audience, know the caliber of people they are, be able to identify their interests before you speak. One might ask, “how can I know people’s interests without meeting them for the first time?” Well it is your responsibility to ask questions before hand. Do your research. Sometimes people don’t get job offers not because they are not good for the job, but because they didn’t sell themselves. Selling yourself means being able to talk about yourself in a manner that will convince people that you are the perfect one for the job. If your communication skill is poor, start doing something about it.

Make connections

After building your communication skill, the next thing to do is to be open to meeting new people. Be open to learning new things. Often we meet new people at gatherings; so go to conferences, churches, travel to new places, join some forums online. You don’t know who you will meet that will take you to the next stage in life.

During conversations with people, someone can bluntly say something that you have been seeking help for, so imagine you didn’t have that conversation? I was listening to Robert Kiyosaki, the man that wrote “Rich Dad Poor Dad.” and something he did caught my attention. His best friend’s father was a business man and his father was a professor at the university but the business man was very wealthy while his own father barely survived even with all his degrees, it is a pity but some folks just want little in life. Because he couldn’t learn how to make money from his poor dad, he had to visit his best friend’s father someday and asked him to teach him how to make money and of-course he learnt because he is wealthy today. I like the fact that he made use of the opportunity he needed to learn, if he never approached his best friend’s father, I doubt that we would have heard about him today. Be open to meeting new people, they might not be useful immediately but in the long-run, they will be.

Always be ready

Leverage every good opportunity that comes your way because they won’t come knocking twice at your door. Even if you are not ready, get ready the next minute.

There are things I have done in this life even when I was not ready for them but I had to make myself ready. My lecturer walked up to me and asked me if I would like to participate in a conference. I had no idea what it takes to write an article in Russian or what the presentation should look like but I went home and I did my research. The next day, I told him that I was ready. Today I can boast of a certificate that shows that I participated in a medical conference and a medical article published in my name. I’m glad that I took up the challenge and succeeded. If you are looking for a job, but your dream job is not available, learn about the available ones and apply for them.

Don’t settle for less

Why settle for less if there is more. Some brilliant people just want to have a job and be making reports to their bosses till they die. Don’t you think that you can become your own boss? Don’t you want to have job security? Your job security increases if you are the owner of the hospital or company or industry and it reduces when you are working for someone. In the beginning, in order to gain experience, you need to work under someone but after you have gotten all the experience you need, it is wise to save up money and start up something in your name. In Nigeria today, some people retire with nothing to keep income flowing in, this is because they never invested into businesses. So if the pension from the government does not come, they will be so broke.

The bible says in Proverbs 13:22, a good person leaves an inheritance for their children’s children. If you don’t want to be smart for yourself, at least be for you children’s children. One should not be smart only in making wealth, but you should be smart in your relationships and other aspects of life. With all my life experiences, I can comfortably say that the more you learn broadly (relationship, work, sports, politics, cultures, religion, wealth etc), the smarter you become.

---

Do you want to study abroad? Book our services for help.