Many of my clients and colleagues have a belief that they are not intelligent enough to learn certain things. I hear things such as, “I’m not smart enough to get a master’s degree.” Or “I could never learn that new operating system, so I’ve gone as far as I can go with my organization.” Or “Engineering is for really smart people. I could never do that.” It’s a chronic condition and it’s complete nonsense.

Education and learning new skills, concepts, etc. has little to do with innate intelligence and almost everything to do with confidence. There is little we humans can’t learn if we put our confidence toward it. I have a vivid memory of being in my master of psychology program and talking to one of the professors. She asked if I was going to continue my education and enter a doctoral program. I thought she was kidding and so I laughingly said, “I’m not smart enough for that. This was already a stretch for me.” Her response stopped me in my tracks when she said, “You don’t need more intelligence to get a doctorate, but rather more persistence and drive.”

How could it be that I had all of the intellectual ability I would need already in hand? What I really needed was the confidence that I could take on the challenge of lots of studying and the tenacity to conquer that doctoral program. My professor was right. I was smart enough at that very moment. The rest of the work was taming my fear of failure (or success), getting organized, and tackling the challenge of that education one class, one test, one paper at a time. It turns out I’m pretty darn tenacious, because I did it.

I learned in that program that we were all intelligent enough. The people that didn’t finish the program were not less smart than the rest of us. Rather, they either struggled to find the time, get organized, or get confident enough to move through the work. They may very well have tested far higher on an IQ test than those of us who made it through the program. The greatest lesson I learned from that doctoral program is that success often has little to do with our intellect and so much more to do with our emotional intelligence, which includes confidence.

So, what are you telling yourself about your ability to achieve your goals or your dreams? Are you telling yourself some silly lie about not being smart enough? It’s a complete fabrication of reality. The quicker you drop that story, the quicker you can increase your confidence and your follow-thru skills and start living the dreams you’ve always wanted.

Love,

Lisa Kaplin Psy. D. PCC