If you believe IQ is fixed, then it could well be so for you, because of the way belief fuels or limits mental plasticity and brainpower. Want more intelligence by the end of today though? Then simply act on one or more of your multiple intelligences, and expect your dendrite brain cells to reconfigure for more intelligence in that domain. How are you smart? You’ll likely agree with researchers – that’s a far more accurate question, than the traditional – How smart are you? It also makes room to develop higher IQ in several areas. How so?

1. Looking for more linguistic intelligence? Want words to come easier, poetry to mean more, speeches to ring truer, or books to yield more wealth? Then play with words, do crosswords, compete in scrabble, debate, or offer to speak to a local club. Search for new ideas on the internet, write a blog, or tell your best idea in 140 letters or less, and and that too will boost your linguistic brainpower. What could you do today, to gain even more mastery over language?

2. Interested in more musical intelligence? Want music to move and shake your creative projects? Pop on Gregorian Chant to pop you out of stress. Play Bach or Handel to plan your next creative project. Toss tunes from Shumann, Chopin or Liszt into your romance and watch it grow. Or gain inspiration from Soul, Blues or Calypso. Don Campbell shows how to gain musical intelligence to jack up productivity, or to improve your moods on a bad day?

3. Want more intrapersonal intelligence? Need intuition for better decisions, common sense for keen insights, contentment in your own company, simple ability to laugh more on a busy day? Thanks to neurogenesis, we now know this intelligence too will grow with use. Panic a bit too fast? Feel sidelined a bit too much? Run from risks or new adventures? Grow sad when others celebrate family ties? If so, you’d enjoy a heaping dose of intrapersonal smarts to add contentment and turn those tougher days around. Plan a lunch alone at your favorite digs, practice smiling to improve a mood, ask a question to your day, or plan a risk today that would ratchet up contentment.  Simply put, whenever you do tasks related to introspection or personal intelligence, your brain begins to rewire brainpower for a more clever you.

4. Need more bodily kinesthetic intelligence? Would you like to dance, better? Then step and move beside a person who dances well. Want to move with coordinated grace? Then shuffle and stretch in ways you hope to grow more memory within body muscles themselves. It’s much the same for skills intelligence to smack a tennis ball with greater ease, or put together furniture with finer flare. Do it to grow it. Then watch for wonder as the brain kicks into kinesthetic mode or shifts into movement gears that zap alive with use, regardless of age or limitations that hold too many folks back.

5. Dream of more mathematical or logical intelligence? Why not start a schedule to plan your next week, since sequencing and patterning is at math smart’s core. So’s organization at the heart of math IQ as is seeing the bigger picture. Like other intelligences mathematical genius grows more through math ideas that take you feet first, and then on new flights – with use. Mistakes add growth in math, yet schools use errors as arrows to kill a brain’s best. Even Einstein said that Education’s what remains after one’s forgotten everything learned in school. Have you found ways to use and grow logical mathematical, in spite of limitations learned at school?

6. After more visual or spatial intelligence? Grab a paper along with anything that writes and sketch your funniest memory in the last few weeks? Attend an art class, and learn to paint. Visit galleries, surround yourself with images that teach you more about life, or create an avatar to show your thoughts to an online community. Graph ideas, select visuals to explain life, or take photographs to record the week of people you value to use your spatial intelligence and to develop more through use.

7. Into higher interpersonal intelligence? Interview a person you know to discover what makes that person smart? Ask, “How are you smart?” rather than the more traditional question “How smart are you? Narrow that person’s narrative about personal intelligence into one or two words, and you have already grown intelligence interpersonally. Would you agree that people high in interpersonal intelligence will come away with amazing insights here? Or can you see how the exchange itself offers opportunity to expand one’s interpersonal acumen?

8. Long for more naturalistic intelligence? If you spend excessive time breathing in refreshing scents of spring, surrounded by sounds of brooks running, or captivated by natures’ change for different seasons, you likely possess good amounts of naturalistic intelligence. You’ll gain more though, by using patterns and designs found outside to solve problem faced in any situation. Soil types, animal or tree patterns, or rock formations – all amount to nature’s wisdom.

It may be far too simple to say use it or lose it, when you consider that you possess more than one or two intelligences. For better balance why not take brainpower to new levels.  First, survey your multiple intelligences to see what’s stronger and what acumen you’d like to expand. Then, plan one activity today that involves a strength you most enjoy, and another that dips into a weaker area you hope to strengthen, for a smoother ride in one of the areas listed above. What shifts would an additional intelligence add to top your IQ image? Why not add that intelligence today and expect the best?

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Ask,  How smart are you? and a person tends to respond negatively and in numerical scores. This question – as worded above – increasingly causes problems, because of new facts that identify differing areas where several intelligences reside in human brains.

Unlike  general intelligence ideas, that guided test writers, we now know that people who are smart in one area, may be less intelligent in others. Current research throws IQ scores and other standardized scores into serious question, yet it also opens amazing segues for robust mental development well beyond senior years.

Most experts agree that IQ scores offer too small a scope for holistic mental validity. Yet, the key to vigorous mental development starts with a sense of what it means to be smart. Would you agree?

If so, you’ll want to first consider a new question, “How are you smart? which differs from the original question that opened this post. The new question allows for your unique mix of human intelligences.  Mental ability grows, shrinks or stagnates, depending on how it’s engaged.

Smart skill 7 – Question to Know How You are Smart

Use these intelligences to solve problems and to create products that others value and you capitalize on multiple intelligences.

Interestingly, we now know that  because of amazing plasticity, dendrite brain cells develop and grow with use. Consider the following two-footed questions below as a guide to recognizing and tapping more mental acumen:

1. Do you solve problems well, use logic, organize your time, and handle finances well? Do any tasks in these areas to ratchet up your logical mathematical intelligence.

2. Have you read a great book lately, discussed political or religious concerns without emotion, completed crossword puzzles, or contacted a person you respect to discuss new ideas? Each of these areas show your verbal linguistic intelligence, and each can be further developed with practice.

3. Do you frequent musical performances, compose new lyrics, play background music to sustain creativity, or notice music’s keen influence on yourself or others? Music changes moods and shifts brain waves so that those who are musically intelligent find innovative cadence for several areas of their lives.

4. Do you use images to communicate, read graphs well, or engage visual portrayals to know and express ideas at the peak. Take an art course, discuss use of visual with graphic designers, or retrofit your wardrobe or office, and you have already begun to connect dendrite brain cells for more spatial or visual intelligence.

5. When was the last time you built a prototype of something, moved to music, or engaged in a new or favorite sport? All of the above tasks engage and grow bodily-kinesthetic intelligence which is far more useful to problem solving and mental fitness, than many suspect.

6. Do others seek you out for fun friendship or for serious interactions? Interpersonal intelligence enables you to both teach and learn from many different people. Others look to you for your ability to respond well to moods, as well as motivate and inspire a group.

7. When was the last time you enjoyed time alone, took yourself out to a special event, or planned a reflective day to think,  plan, or create? Intrapersonal intelligence taps into your self knowledge, ethical choices, and intuitive well being. Sometimes termed common sense, this intelligence too can expand with related tasks that engage deeper parts of your brain.

8. Does walking in a park appeal to you, as a way to think through problems? Do you see real solutions for a community, framed in issues of sustainability or naturalistic growth? It’s likely no surprise that you’d draw on patterns and designs in nature as a way to grow naturalistic intelligence.

Speaking of surprise, can you see how intelligences have evolved to include many more areas of the human brain? Practice using each intelligence daily, as a surefire way to keep more brain areas alive and well, far beyond your senior years.  It’s also a way to hold many mental weaknesses at bay. Have you seen it happen?

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