As with any privilege, with high IQ comes high responsibility. Leading a purposeful life is quite a challenge for regular people with all the noise in the world; even more so for a high IQ individual. I see many people running away from this responsibility by taking less than what they are capable of.
To feel that you are improving, you must continuously challenge yourself and decide to take the helm of your life. A high IQ gives you more opportunities, and thus a bigger challenge of creating the feeling that you are succeeding.
* labeling your expectations "unrealistic" may be a sign of fear of failure. Stretch yourself ever further.
* it's difficult for average people to deal with intelligent people too. Put some effort into your side of the situation.
* there's more to everything than meets the eye or any logical analysis. If you think questioning something could annoy someone, analyze instead why is that so and formulate a different question.
* it's hard enough to communicate simple ideas clearly among a large group. Traditions are a simple and effective way of keeping social cohesiveness, and realize this is important. Realize too that most progress comes from single, highly motivated individuals and not from "traditional" people. Live your social life, and life your intellectual life; don't mix when inappropriate.
* enjoying the simple pleasures of life takes understanding the value in simple things. Higher IQ gives the capability of seeing this value in the most surprising ways. Again, a high IQ individual is not easily satisfied. Put some effort in seeking pleasurable, deep ideas.
[...] In the Victorian era, the social climate or zeitgeist was indeed very repressive. If there were a motto that best described the social milieu of the time, it would have been "Don’t even think about it!" People were over-controlled and were programmed to be very apprehensive [...]
[...] our age is most characterized by its degree of permissiveness, license and privilege. And if there were a motto to best describe the Western cultural milieu, it would be as the once popular commercial advocated: Just, do it!. As a result, [...] modern culture has created a situation in which increasingly more people are not hung-up enough to restrain themselves from simply doing what they want to do and with a fair degree of indifference to the consequences [...]
To feel that you are improving, you must continuously challenge yourself and decide to take the helm of your life. A high IQ gives you more opportunities, and thus a bigger challenge of creating the feeling that you are succeeding.
* labeling your expectations "unrealistic" may be a sign of fear of failure. Stretch yourself ever further.
* it's difficult for average people to deal with intelligent people too. Put some effort into your side of the situation.
* there's more to everything than meets the eye or any logical analysis. If you think questioning something could annoy someone, analyze instead why is that so and formulate a different question.
* it's hard enough to communicate simple ideas clearly among a large group. Traditions are a simple and effective way of keeping social cohesiveness, and realize this is important. Realize too that most progress comes from single, highly motivated individuals and not from "traditional" people. Live your social life, and life your intellectual life; don't mix when inappropriate.
* enjoying the simple pleasures of life takes understanding the value in simple things. Higher IQ gives the capability of seeing this value in the most surprising ways. Again, a high IQ individual is not easily satisfied. Put some effort in seeking pleasurable, deep ideas.
* nobody finds a job as an employee rewarding.