Success, Intelligence, and Aggression

As many of you have may well noticed from my writing, for some time now I've been on this intellectual quest to find out what exactly the underlying form of success is. For as many books as I've read by people who've done great things, the vast majority seem to always be contextually based- (how to succeed as a business person, how to succeed as a basketball player, how to succeed in real estate, etc.) and very few of them seem to expound on what the commonalities of all of these different journeys are as opposed to simply the particulars and the results of each one.

Futhermore, in reading the biographies and autobiographies of people who have done great things in their time, and having spend the past 4 years working for and spending time with self-made millionaires in the international entertainment industry and business community, I've also come to realize that despite increased levels of wealth, respect, and achievements, a great deal of the people who do great things still have an understanding of the world based solely on the particular angle that they see it from, with no particular desire to change that- much like the rest of us.

To be sure, I've met some pretty amazing exceptions. I recently worked as a bodyguard for the leader singer of a rock group who spent his New Years vacation studying Energy conservation techniques in New Mexico, and the two businessmen whom I feel have taught me the most about business both had vast book collections on every topic imaginable. Still, however, I felt as though having a really wide base of knowledge, and/or the desire to round-out one's thinking and to rid it of inconsistencies and falsehood-despite how intellectually painful of a process that may be- was not nearly as common among the rich and successful as I figured it would be.

In one way however, that conclusion seemed to make sense- in order to be extremely good at something, you have to study it all the time. In order to study it all the time, you can't spend your time studying other things. And a fair number of people who become rich, famous and successful (but certainly not all) do so, because in one particular way, they can perform to a degree that no one else can. As such, as a commodity, they are extremely marketable. Personally, it was actually this realization to a large degree that caused me to fold my dream of going to the Olympics for Taekwondo in favor of coming to Japan to find a new way- I just wasn't willing to give up my college education (and everything else), for the sake of only training for the years and years it would take to achieve that goal. It simply wasn't worth it to me.
Beyond that, that conclusion also seemed to explain why it is that both pop culture and politics always seem to be permeated with both moral mediocracy, and short-sightedness. (Like for example the fact that most of America's millionaires, (who are supposed to constitute our moral leadership as well as financial) be it in business, pop culture, or politics have spent the past 20 years ignoring scientific warnings of Global Warming and just burying their heads in the sand about it- more or less just like the rest of us.

In any event, if a well-rounded mentality that allows people to make faster, deeper, and more creative mental connections for problem solving, and a desire to grow by constantly searching out the weaknesses in one's own mentality or perspective weren't common to everyone who succeeded in being rich, successful, or at least the best at what they do, I had to wonder what other element could be causing their level of success. And I found what I believe to be the answer while working at a camp for kids in Chejudo, Korea this past winter.
While working at the camp, I had a lot of really great, really talented students, but two in particular who truly stood out- and both of whom in the end were rewarded as being the two top kids for their class. One who went by the English name, "Bobby" (who I named myself) and the other who went by "Eric".

In this blog, I'd like to not only delve into the differences in their respective characters, but also how those differences panned out in thier respective success at the camp.

Bobby
When I first met Bobby, he was extremely quiet and shy, and I didn't quite know what to make of him. He didn't speak to other kids so much, and initially when we'd study, he'd get so frustrated that he would come to tears. That, in and of itself clued me into the fact that he was different somehow...although it took me a minute to figure out how. As time passed however, I began to see little things that zeroed me in on what exactly the issue was: He was way smarter than average. For one, when another teacher tapped out the moris code for S.O.S. he actually knew what it was. And when I asked him how he even knew what moris code was (let alone an actual code), he just said. "I don't know...I read a lot." This kid was an elementary school student mind you. In another instance, when I tried to make things a little easier for him, so that he wouldn't get so frustrated, he wrote me a note that said:

"Teacher, the amount of work you give me is fine. I don't want any less. (How often do little kids say that?) I wanna be better at it. Why can't I do this well?"

With a little digging though, I came to find out that his issue was that for only being an elementary school student, he was somewhat of a math and science prodigy, and could easily outperform most middle school kids in both fields. The reason he was so frustrated with English was because even formal language study requires a lot of trial and error, and no matter how smart you are, there are times where you just don't get it. He was frustrated because from his own perspective, he couldn't learn fast enough, and having to learn simply through trial, error and making and correcting mistakes was inconsistent with the framework he had already developed to excel in math and science. Once I and my assistant teacher, Young, explained that to him however, he understood that, quit crying, set about the goal of adapting his thinking to that end, and began to quietly excel through concentrating his energy on understanding the logic of the processes.

Eric
Eric on the other hand, despite the fact that he wasn't the biggest kid, nor the best English speaker in class, established himself as a leader right away. He excelled in all areas, more than anything else, simply because he hated losing to other kids. Despite his size, all the other kids seemed to respect him, and he seemed perfectly at home with having that respect. In terms of learning the language, he seemed relatively unconcerned with the particulars of it. What he enjoyed, was getting the right answers, and if there was one, getting the prize at the end. If there was no prize or no competition involved, he didn't particularly care.

A classic example of the dynamic of the two of them was when we would play hangman for 'happy stickers' (A camp currency used for buying snacks and things). Eric routinely dominated the game by constantly getting his hand up before other students, and throwing out as many guesses as it took for him to figure it out. Bobby, on the other hand, half or more of the time if I asked him quietly and personally at the onset of the game, would tell me exactly what the answer was- but then refused to engage in the game simply because he wasn't sure of the word's spelling, because he knew that happy stickers meant less to him than to the other students in class, or because since he already knew the answer, he saw no particular reason to partake. He would simply busy himself with other things.
When I offered a taekwondo class for fun, Bobby joined and was the fastest learning and most adaptable student I had...but he was also almost perfectly passive. For the most part, he seemed more concerned with figuring out the logic of the system itself than with actually doing it. Eric on the other hand, never actually tried the Taekwondo class- he was already too busy playing (usually in a leadership role) on every sports team he could get his hands on...where he regularly revelled in his victories, and lamented his losses. In the end, as aforementioned, both boys ended up with lots of rewards at the end of the camp- Eric, by far brought home the most things from the 'happy market', and won an award for being the most hard-working student. Bobby on the other hand, had almost no happy stickers, but he brought home several awards simply as a function of the quality of the work he would produce- for example a speech he wrote and delivered on the important of producing non-violent videogames.

In comparing these two boys, this is not to say that even these two personality types are the only kind that will lead to success. I had another student who went by "Rose" that I'm sure will be extremely successful based purely on her almost perfect confidence in herself, and outstanding (and seemingly unshakable) moral fibre. Another example was 'Rosa' who I'm sure will be reknowned as an amazing animator- simply because she was so passionate about it, and even at her young age, had already started studying Japanese for the sake of pursuing a career in it.
What I did feel however, was that in comparing and contrasting these two, I had a much stronger understanding of how it is that different people find their way to success. I could understand how it is that I've met some wealthy people who are so wildly intelligent, but others who, to be frank, were quite the opposite. Or on the converse, I could also see why some people who are so wildly intelligent people can have relatively mediocre or -even low- incomes. (And example of the latter, being some of the other foreign English teachers I met working on Peaceboat- who had learned as many as five languages on their own, but spent most of their time working for NGOs or living in empoverish countries- where they make next to nothing.

As if on cue, I had also recently read that being passive by nature is more strongly correlated with intelligence than being agressive or really competitive. If that's the case, than that could also explain a lot too, as it would naturally imply (and the studies backed it up) that the best, sharpest, and most amazing thinkers of any given society are, on average, in Academia (where there is not too much in the way of glory or money, and rewards are almost entirely intrinsic) whereas most of the most competitive people are in business, sports, and entertainment (where suprise, suprise, there is a lot of money and glory). I think the tragedy of this is that it naturally infers that the most intelligent people are generally always at the wimp of the most competitive. What are the success-oriented intelligent people to do then? My answer I guess, would be to learn to be competitive. When in Rome.