Intelligence as Fixed or Fluid?

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Research now shows how intelligence acts similar to what Ford claimed:

If you say you can or say you can’t – it’s true.”

When IQ is seen as fixed however, choices narrow.

Why extend our day to include multiple intelligence, if it cannot leave you smarter?

Why ramp up personal or social intelligences and use intuition to make decisions that advance our opportunities?

Why opt for common sense or use keen insights to share opportunities with friends?

When we miss the mental fluidity in our intelligence, we choose discontentment in the company of peers who grow and develop new mental acumen.

We may even laugh at others yet take ourselves too seriously.  A fixed IQ may well miss making that choice for a heaping dose of personal fun that only adds to a more clever you. Just as Ford implied – the brain comes equipped to grow IQ. Yet the brain reserves its fluidity for those who choose it and then use it…

If not fixed how does IQ fluidity make us smarter?

Every word spoken or music chosen can shape our day to sink or swim. Want words to come easier and meanings to yield more wealth? Then play with words, do crosswords, compete in scrabble, debate, or offer to speak at a local club. Search for new ideas on the internet, write a blog, or tell your best idea in 140 letters, as a driver to boost your linguistic brainpower.

Similarly, music choices can move our muse as fluid, or tank our talents as fixed.  Play Bach or Handel in the background during your next creative project, for example, and watch that moods improve, while stress flees. And there’s more.

What about our choice to move more? Hope to dance better? Want to move with coordinated grace? Then choose to shuffle and stretch so that kinesthetic intelligence kicks in with greater ease.  Do it to grow it regardless of skills lacking or other limitations that hold those “fixed” folks back. I start with hikes in a nearby park and gradually began to toss naturalistic intelligence into my mental mix with golf and I bowl with my grandchildren.

We may shoot photos, graph results to support our speech and grow our spatial intelligence through more deliberate use.

See its fluidity, and we choose to grow brainpower. It takes less effort than some folks realize. Simply start a schedule to plan the coming week, for instance, and we’re already stretching our logical-mathematical IQ. Like other intelligences math genius grows more through math or logical choices, not merely by being a numbers guru.  Start with baby steps and we lift off to new flights with use. Einstein put it this way: Education’s what remains after one’s forgotten everything learned in school. Do you agree?

Do use-it-or-lose-it warnings seem overly simplistic? Why believe research on the evidence of mental fluidity?  Why not see for ourselves?  If we suspect we possess any mental traits discussed here, why not survey our intelligences –  and alter a few daily choices that grow a few new prospects the way Ford fueled his choices.

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