Is It Important to Increase Your IQ?
Perhaps you think it would be great to increase your intelligence,
or at least your IQ score. There are certainly ways to accomplish
these goals (the latter being easier than the former). If you
want to increase your basic intelligence it's best to start when
you are young. Studies have shown that musical
education can raise IQ scores in young children, for example.
Later in life intelligence gains have been noted from brain exercises,
better diet, and regular activities involving hand-eye coordination.
On the other hand, is it worth the effort to increase your
IQ score by a few points? Maybe… or perhaps not. It 's unlikely
that you'll have any negative effects from having higher intelligence,
and there certainly can be positive effects. But that doesn't
answer the question. After all, there is a cost in time and effort,
and you might get more from putting your time and effort in another
direction.
Specifically, what if instead of putting your time and effort
into trying to increase your raw intelligence, you put it into
thinking in new and better ways? That doesn't require a higher
IQ, and you can do this starting right now.
Exactly what do you think you would get from a higher IQ score
in any case? Do you think you would make better decisions in
life? Certainly you can learn to do that without more basic intelligence
than you have, and if you think about it there are some really
smart people out their who make dumb decisions all the time.
Perhaps you think greater intelligence would impress people?
If that is your goal, there are many tricks to impress people--and
many of which others of very average IQ scores excel. Why not
just learn those techniques if you want others to think of you
in a certain way (or even better: stop trying to get your sense
of identity from other people's opinions of you).
Do you think you could solve problems better if you increase
your IQ, or be more creative? There is no proven correlation
(let alone cause and effect) between increasing one's IQ and
increasing one's creativity. And there are simple techniques
for solving problems that anyone can learn to use. There are
many books that can teach you how to have a hundred creative
new ideas and solutions to problems in one long afternoon. I
know--I've written one of them.
A brain that has more computing capacity won't help you make
money nearly as much as learning the specific principles involved
in smart business and investing. It won't help you have better
relationships or win the lottery either.
Imagine replacing the hard drive, memory and processor in
a computer with the best new versions, but not replacing the
crappy old operating system. Replacing a 160 GB hard drive with
one that is 1,000 GB might make a computer theoretically more
powerful, but what do you think you could do with this "improved"
computer if it still had a 1981 MS-DOS operating system in it?
You see, your brain is already far more powerful than that 1,000
GB hard drive, so although it might be nice to increase your
IQ, upgrading your operating system is of more importance.
Note: I have pages on what the research says about
how to increase your intelligence,
and pages on how to boost your IQ score
right now. I also report on related topics in The Mind
Power Report regularly.
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