{"id":47615,"date":"2022-08-03T10:50:37","date_gmt":"2022-08-03T10:50:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/?p=47615"},"modified":"2022-08-03T10:50:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-03T10:50:42","slug":"why-smart-people-can-be-really-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/2022\/08\/03\/why-smart-people-can-be-really-stupid\/","title":{"rendered":"Why smart people can be really stupid."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I coach a lot of very intelligent people.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I deeply appreciate that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s something about a truly bright mind that is both very helpful in coaching, and also frustrates it constantly, which makes the sessions very colorful and lively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019ve learned to use this high-level imagination, outside-of-the-box creativity, and quick thinking, to weave stories and go on mythical mental journeys that help people entertain more spaciousness, joy, and neutral awareness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It makes my job so much more exciting and versatile.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there\u2019s that, the helpful side of the equation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there\u2019s another, really interesting thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What I always find fascinating is how the intellect forms some sort of arrogant closed loop where its own importance and power are constantly highlighted and overestimated and revered, even if the results are obviously disappointing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Smart people tend to try and solve everything with more amounts of smartness, and although it truly IS a superpower, it also has huge flaws.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of those flaws is how the intellect is hardly capable of (and maybe willing to) recognizing its limits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When very intelligent people suffer from a state of low well-being, everything they do to fix that is just think more, and launch endless new stories and formulas and theories, and when that doesn\u2019t do anything, they simply crank up the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In other words: in a way, smart people can be really stupid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of them can\u2019t see that their mind is incapable of getting them out of chronic misery and unhappiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is really very obvious to me since it\u2019s not a fact that people who won Nobel prizes or really bright scientists and inventors live happier lives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it seems that their suffering is more sophisticated, and that’s about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I love it when I work with really bright minds, and somewhere along the line their very one-sided belief in the intellect and the intellect only, breaks, or shatters, or at least gets fucked up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That’s where lives change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can be scary and confusing when that happens, because now it becomes so clear that there are limits to what the intellect can do, so when you\u2019ve built a personal universe around your sharp mind there can be some earth-shattering realizations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But what I\u2019ve also seen is that these exceptionally quick and creative thinkers can accept these new, profound learnings, and use them to their advantage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s also smart, but not exactly the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Being able to use my own mind to work with highly developed other brains, is what keeps me deeply inspired, and I\u2019m never not in awe of the endless amounts of both creative problems AND solutions I encounter every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who knew that life could be so chronically fresh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Photo by @emilegt, for Unsplash)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I coach a lot of very intelligent people. And I deeply appreciate that. There\u2019s something about a truly bright mind that is both very helpful in coaching, and also frustrates it constantly, which makes the sessions very colorful and lively. I\u2019ve learned to use this high-level imagination, outside-of-the-box creativity, and quick thinking, to weave stories […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[99,102,97,96,117,100,116,113,107,103,112],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47615"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47617,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47615\/revisions\/47617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marnix.nl\/homepage\/welkom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}