5 signs of a highly intelligent person and what you can do to become smarter

Adam Gelencser
4 min readSep 5, 2022

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Being a brilliant person involves more than just being smart at science, and math and posseing a high IQ.

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Intelligent people are flexible in their thinking and can adopt to changes. They think before they seek, and they can manage their emotions. Here are 5 indicators of a high intelligence highly intelligent people have in common.

1. Curiosity — They’re open-minded.

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Curiosity is a key to knowledge and self-improvement. In addition a curious person tends to be a problem solver. People that are curious want to understand the causes of things, and if the explanations provided do not satisfy them, they will look elsewhere for the information. Curiosity has led to advancements in science and health. It serves as the impetus for creation, the arts, research, and learning. In addition, curiosity has multiple benefits for example uncovering new insights, constant and unconscious learning.

2. Awareness of limitations — They know they don’t know it all.

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Curious people know and operate to their full potential, and they have no problem admitting when they do not know something.

But, on the other hand, a brilliant person understands that humility can benefit learning. By remaining intellectually humble, intelligent people are motivated to learn and quiz themselves to check their understanding.

3. Flexible — They know how to adapt.

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The more intelligent amongst us know that to succeed in life you have to be flexible and adaptable. Being stubbornly set in your ways can mean you find it hard to rise to new challenges.

Those that are very intelligent tend to do well in any situation, whether it’s a new living environment or work environment. Rather than complaining about changes, they think about how they can best adapt to the new scenario.

4. Continous learning — They learn from their mistakes and move on.

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Highly intelligent people tend to understand that they will always make mistakes, but there’s no point in dwelling on them.

They will analyse the mistakes they make, consider what they can learn from them, and put them behind them, not allowing them to hold them back.

Also, they realise that learning definitely doesn’t end once you’ve graduated. The classroom is only the beginning. They know that life is one long learning experience, and they love absorbing as much information as possible, at all times.

5. Take time to think — They procrastinate.

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Procrastination isn’t always a sign of intelligence because some people are just simply unmotivated.

Contrary to popular belief, however, extremely intelligent people are frequently quite guilty of procrastination. Sometimes it’s because they are aware that when a deadline is looming, they perform better. Sometimes it’s because they simply can’t bring themselves to work on something that doesn’t interest them.

It’s not necessarily a waste of time to put anything off. It’s frequently spent thinking things out and making connections.

If your interested in becoming smarter, start doing these more often

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  • Learning a second language protects your brain from some negative affects of ageing.
  • Taking music lessons requires your brain to do multitasks
  • Reading is a great way to learn a new subject or skill
  • By Using puzzles you will get better memory skills, as well as an ability to plan, test ideas and solve problems.

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Adam Gelencser

Tech enthusiast, currently entrepreneuring — regularly sharing content on tech news and irregularly on other topics. Founder of QMapper.co video AI tool.