Intelligence and Wisdom

You know how sometimes you can't put how you're feeling into words, but then you discover someone in a book voiced those words for you and made things clearer? 

Well, that happened when I reread this in Richard Carlson's, Don't Worry, Make Money. And since this encouraged me, perhaps there's someone out there it will also help. Here it is in part:

"All things being equal, intelligence is a wonderful quality to possess. However, if you had to choose between the two, I'd say that wisdom is even more important than intelligence in your quest for joy and abundance. There are many intelligent people who fail to use their intelligence to best advantage. There are also many extremely intelligent people who live very unhappy lives...

"While you could rank order people in terms of their IQ, the number you assigned to a person would say nothing about their degree of success or happiness. Despite this fact, however, as a society, we continue to revere intelligence, yet barely even stop to consider wisdom at all.

"...Wisdom is invisible... As you discover and begin to trust your wisdom, you'll free yourself from your fixed and habitual patterns of thinking and problem solving and will more easily be able to navigate yourself toward joy and prosperity. In a nutshell, wisdom is the ability to "see" an answer without having to "think" of an answer. It exists outside of the confines of your thinking mind. Often, wisdom is seeing the obvious. And unlike the thinking mind, wisdom contains no worry...

"The people who have made the most money, or who have been the most successful in their careers, are certainly not always the most intelligent or most highly educated... Usually the people who make the most money and who have the most fun doing so are highly creative, highly motivated, have great intuition, solid gut reactions and instincts and/or the ability to see opportunities. These qualities, and others, stem not so much from intelligence, but from wisdom. This is not an argument against formal education or against standard intelligence. Yet it's critical to be aware that you don't need to use any lack of formal education as ammunition against yourself. Education is important and helpful. But don't let anyone convince you that if you aren't formally educated you are doomed to failure--because you're not.

"Keep your mind as clear as possible, know that a deeper, more intelligent type of thinking--your wisdom-- is available. When you feel your thinking is too frenetic, overactive, or that you are trying too hard, experiment with backing-off. You will find that a softer focus and less effort, not more, will usually result in a better use of the mind. Relax and succeed."


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Proverbs 4:6
Do not forsake wisdom, and she will protect you; love her, and she will watch over you.