Self Improvement: Is Your Intellect Making You Unlucky?

I've mentioned a couple of times that I am dedicating this year to fixing a lot of my mindset and mental baggage. One of the things I have come to realize from my studies is how much I, and a lot of us in "the West" over-index on "Intellect".

Consider in our media and our work how much we assume that rationality, logic, facts, and figures, are the defacto main drivers of everything we do.

Of course, we compound this, intentionally, through the stories we enjoy and tell.

At the same time as we see people with different cognitive and neurological modes of behavior as broken, less-than, or "other", we downplay, suppress, or alienate feelings.

We tell people to "go with your gut" or "listen to your heart", then dismiss or mock people who act on that advice.

This is a mistake, and it reduces our capacity and potential. It's like disabling chips in our computer but expecting top performance.

Write Drunk, Edit Sober

Now I am not saying that one mode is better than the other, what I am saying is you are capable of more than you currently manifest if you allow yourself to be a whole person.

In writing, I learned to "write drunk, edit sober", because to get really creative, to be in flow, you need to turn down the volume of the critic part of your mind and hand the reigns to the creative, idea-generating, concept-connecting, lyrical part of you.

Once you have a draft, you can take a breath, take a step back, turn down your creative side and allow the analytical part of you to come to the fore.

You can do this over and over, like passing a baton in a race.

Instinct in Business Decisions

Have you ever wondered how some people can do the impossible in business?

Luck is always a factor, and I will talk about that more in just a second, but there are people who beat chance, who consistently out-pace pure probability.

Those people have an innate ability to connect dots that nobody else sees until it is too late. It is almost like they have the benefit of hindsight but in the present.

Are they perfect individuals? Not in the slightest, many of them are super annoying to be around. It's almost like a few of them were created by a Dungeon & Dragons character generator where they dialed down their charm and empathy to max out their instinct and wisdom!

Where they shine, however, is by seeing the hidden facts between the lines, inferring secrets, and planning their chess moves 20 steps ahead.

Luck is Trainable

Dr. Richard Wiseman has studied the science of luck over many years and has come to the conclusion that you can not only really be lucky or unlucky compared to the average, but you can improve your luck through training and making conscious changes to your behavior.

This is not a "Secret" positive-thinking manifestation thing, though it does play into mindset and positivity, it actually comes down to some practical, science-based, and perhaps most importantly, peer-reviewed analysis.

As with most human behavior, the seeds are planted at an early age, and then compounded over time, but due to our selective awareness, we reaffirm our assumption and make it more and more concrete.

It might be your family calling you lucky, or it might be your family believing you are cursed, and then you find ways to confirm that over time, becoming a part of your identity.

People who believed they were luckier performed better in their tests, to comical degrees!

Can you picture what happened next?

Yep, the "lucky" participants got to the "Stop Counting" page and laughed, the "Unlucky" participants counted through the entire thing right to the end. Is it any wonder that the people who tell themselves they are unlucky find themselves experiencing a harder time in life?

Allowing and Experiencing

Science is telling us that if our entire focus is on intellect, thought, analysis, critical judgment, we are missing out on opportunities, but it goes further than that.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where someone tells you something, you offer a solution, and they get offended?

Or worse, the person tells you a story, and you come back with a judgment or criticism, and they become upset?

I myself am a natural "problem solver", I have had to train myself to only start solving a problem if solicited to!

Humans use stories and sharing for connection - we don't always want a solution or grading. People who are "judgy" often feel they are truth-tellers but actually what they come across as is a downer, projecting their own inner-reality onto the world out of a need for more control. This causes other people to bristle rather than feel more connected, so the truthy plain-speaker tends to become brusker and less connected in favor of people who lift us up and make us feel better.

You know the people who light up a room when they walk into it, who change the energy just through their presence, and who everyone wants to be around? How often are they the group critic? Never, I would expect.

It is not that you need to be unrealistically positive all the time, but that taking a moment to experience, enjoy, be aware, to release control, enables us to participate and be present, causing our energy to shift to one of acceptance and connection.

Get Out of Your Own Way

A lot of us are feeling like the world is in a dark place, and there might be a lot of data to support that, but how much can we realistically change by dwelling on it? Is talking about it a lot going to improve the situation, or take us to a dark place?

Yes, it is enormously privileged to be able to put these things out of my mind, I am truly blessed! Being depressed will not make other people be better off, however.

When people enjoy being around us, more people will gravitate, and that will bring a wealth of opportunities and further connections. No mysticism or wishful thinking is required!

It is like they say on the airlines, put your own mask on first, then you are in a position to not judge, but actually help others.

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Chris Garrett / Maker Hacks

@chrisgarrett