To develop practical intelligence:
- Recognize your pattern of strengths and weaknesses. Ask yourself, What do I do well? Consider not going into activities that are outside of your strengths.Be honest with yourself. Do you have a flair for solitary work but not for working with teams? Perhaps becoming a desktop publisher is more realistic than becoming a management consultant.
- Strengthen those skills in which you excel, and find a way around those skills in which you don't do well. Example: If you recognize that you're not good at taking tests, get yourself a tutor or enroll in a pretest class.
- Believe in yourself. Can do attitudes succeed. Conversely, if you think you can't, you probably won't. Most authors can wallpaper a room with the rejection notices they received during the inception of their careers. But many have persevered and then have gone on to sell the very works that were originally rejected.
Robert Sternberg, PhD, IBM professor of psychology and education in the department of psychology at Yale University and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is author of many books, including Successful Intelligence: How Practical and Creative Intelligence Determine Success in Life, Simon & Schuster
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