Why smart people struggle to achieve success

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During our school life, many of us come across people who somehow always score well on tests, know the answer to everything, and complete their work on time. Such smart people were viewed to be gifted with instant success in whatever they did. However, being intelligent does not necessarily mean one will prosper in life. This often makes us wonder why smart people struggle to succeed, despite having an edge over the general population!

Many of us equate being smart with immediate success in life. We believe that people with higher IQs are more likely to succeed in everything they do. Yes, it is true that smart people will give you the key to get into a door. But many of them do not know how to continue living there successfully. 

Raw intelligence is undoubtedly a huge asset, but it isn’t everything. Look around yourself and you’ll realise that the people who are decorated in society aren’t exactly geniuses. Yet, they’ve managed to make a name for themselves, in contrast to the bunch of intellectually gifted people who keep facing problems one after the other. 

If you too are in a similar situation or have always wanted to understand the reason why smart people struggle in life, read on. The list below will not only point out the ways in which intelligent people are unable to achieve success, but will also express in detail what they can do to overcome their weaknesses. 

Smart people devalue social skills

The most pressing reason why smart people struggle to succeed in life is that they don't hold importance to social skills. Hence, they fail to develop crucial social skills like relationship building, active listening, effective communication, and empathy. This alienates them from the people around them.

Moreover, smart people have a tendency to completely rely on their intelligence for success. These set of people consequently believe that they should work more on becoming smarter, and less on their lack of social skills. Their emphasis on intellect makes them overvalue college and credentials, completely ignoring the social intelligence required to build relations with others. 

Another reason why smart people struggle to develop social skills is because of their natural bias towards nurturing their strength of being intelligent. Unfortunately, a constricted mindset like this further makes them ignore their weakness of not developing appropriate social skills.  

To overcome their lack of social skills, smart people should begin with utilising their strengths to conquer the weaknesses they possess. If their memory is sharp, they can try to memorise details about other people, like the interests they have, their likes and dislikes. This will help them come across as an active listener to the people around them, making it easy to build interpersonal relations with them. 

Teamwork frustrates them

Intelligent people share one thing in common; they are all lone wolves. The reason why smart people prefer working alone is because they think working in a team causes them to slow down. Not everyone can be at par with them when it comes to processing information and learning new concepts, making smart people feel that they are being held back by others. 

The feeling of wanting to work alone originates early on in life. When smart people are paired in school with those who aren’t as intelligent as them, it frustrates them. This happens due to several reasons. One explanation is that smart people find it difficult to delegate work due to their lack of communication skills.

One other reason why smart people struggle to work in a team is that they feel responsible for all the work and in turn get burdened with it. Many of them also have their own standards of performance, making it difficult to work with others. With their own “perfectionist” streak, smart people find it hard to rely on and trust other people with an important project. 

Such feelings which emerge in school can be triggered throughout their lives, making it difficult to work in a group setting. What they can try doing to reduce their frustration levels is to practice being compassionate towards others. This will help them deal with people who, according to them, slow them down, and also make them appreciate diverse ideas and understand the value of different inputs.  

Their self-esteem rests solely on intelligence

One explanation behind the struggle of smart people in life is because their self-esteem lies only on their intelligence levels. This makes it difficult for them to work with people who are smarter than them. They aren’t good at dealing with failed projects and critical feedback. 

Any situation that triggers a feeling of not being smart enough is experienced as highly threatening. A smart person may even seek to avoid those situations, which ultimately holds the person back. If confronted by such situations, they find themselves experiencing the imposter syndrome, a phenomenon which makes people feel chronic self-doubt. 

In such a situation, smart people should learn how to accept critical feedback as inputs which are constructive in helping them succeed. To avoid feeling threatened by others, they should develop relations with smart people around them. Such relations can be advantageous in encouraging them to learn more and not feel vulnerable. 

Smart people get bored easily

If you’re smart, curious, and have a knack for learning, you might find yourself quickly losing interest in anything once you’ve figured it all out. The execution side of performance might bore you, and you’d rather choose to learn new things constantly. And there are some types of successes that stem from doing fresh and creative work, but other types come from performing a set of behaviours repeatedly. 

The idea of following a routine does not excite smart people. This concept does not apply to scholars who like to do research, even though their methodology may require repetition. However, smart people working in other fields may lookout for more exciting tasks and believe that their “subordinates” should perform the monotonous work. 

Why smart people struggle with tolerating monotony is because their intelligence is driven by learning new things. But instead of attempting any dramatic changes, they should learn how to adjust with repetitive behaviour by reminding themselves that it can have a beneficial impact on their success. Smart people can easily get bored with the humdrum routine work, but they will have to understand that the skills of patience and tolerance prove to be quite lucrative in the long-term.

They spend too much time thinking and reflecting

Intelligent people are gifted with exceptional thinking skills but tend to overlook a simple yet effective approach. Why smart people struggle to curb their unhealthy obsession with overthinking is because they list out the probable consequences for every decision they make. This makes them analyse every situation and problem, even in places where it’s absolutely unnecessary. 

To stop attacking every situation with the many thoughts that fail to leave them, smart people should try taking breaks and reducing the amount of research they do for every project. Whenever they find themselves ruminating, they should disrupt it by taking out a few minutes for some other activity. This can be a surprisingly effective strategy for breaking out of their negative thinking process.

Smart people quite frequently fall in the trap of the patterns mentioned above. Nevertheless, they should not feel helpless or miserable about themselves. Rather, they should try to identify the patterns they are following in order to overcome their weaknesses. Letting go of such habits will really give smart people the push they need to produce the results they want. 

If you liked this article, you might want to check out the following articles:

1. Have you heard of the types of toughness required for success?
2. Hard Work Vs Smart Work? -By Aryama from Women's College Calcutta
3. ‘Success is no Accident' TEDx talk at IIM Amritsar