The most interesting and most successful people I know are smart.

The best writers I know are frighteningly smart.

So being smarter and raising my IQ has long been a goal of mine.

Some say you’re stuck with the neural cards you’ve been dealt.

But I’m convinced that intelligence can be increased and IQ raised.

Increasingly, researchers are, too.

Here are some ways to do it…virtually instantly…

One is to think more and think more intelligently (duh!). Pay more attention. Zoom in and zoom out. By examining the small details. Then examining the “big picture.”  Then go back and forth.

Think and look at things more objectively—without preconceptions or assumptions. It’s not easy, but it can be done.

One way to do it is to look at something from different points of view (for example, from the point of view of someone you admire, from the point of view of a disinterested observer, from the point of view of a visitor from another planet).

See beyond descriptions, definitions and terminology which can be limiting, inexact, one-sided, and sometimes wrong. For example, what’s the opposite of hot?

Cold?

That’s what semanticist Korzybski calls “infantile thinking.” Because cold is not the opposite of hot. If you really think about it (big clue there!) cold is simply less warm than hot—a slower movement of atoms. (More Feldenkrais wisdom.)

So think more and think more deeply. Know and compensate for the things that limit your input and perceptions (for example, hearing and seeing within a very limited range, your cultural background), what limits your thinking (preconceptions, assumptions, definitions). Get into the habit of thinking and perceiving beyond those limitations.

Above all, ask more and different questions than you have been. The smartest people I know ask the most questions and the most thought-provoking questions.

Tune in next time and, if you’re interested, I’ll tell you about two techniques you can practice that have been scientifically proven to raise your IQ.