Next time you think you are the Smartest person in the room ... Don't.

I absolutely, 100%, buy in to the idea that surrounding yourself with good, positive people makes YOU better. Another mantra of mine is, "you are the sum of the 5 people you spend the most time with." Really makes you think about the people around you, doesn't it? However, the reason I'm writing today is to talk about the words, "I'm the smartest person in the room."

My girlfriend has multiple degrees including her masters from a major university, and is currently enjoying a career as a Speech-Language Pathologist at one of the nation's most well known rehab centers. She uses words I've never heard, but is sweet enough to stop and explain something when I clearly am searching for the meaning. She knows more about science, the brain, and the human body than I could hope to understand. She is in touch socially, politically, and culturally. She's brilliant and I love her for it...but enough bragging about my girlfriend and back to the story. Recently, we were having a conversation about something (that I can't even recall), when she looks at me and says, "you're smart." I laughed, and pointed out that she was the smart one - using all the points above. That's when she said, "there are different kinds of smart, and I like your brain." This was something that I knew, but had never really believed until I heard her say it and saw the genuine look of appreciation in her eyes.

There is a Harvard psychologist name Howard Gardner who published a book in 1983 called "Frames of Mind" that opened a whole new way of looking at intelligence.

In this book, Gardner delineated the following kinds of intelligence (or smarts): linguistic, musical, logical-mathematical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, and the personal. He went on to expand his theory to include eight intelligences, the personal intelligences defined as interpersonal and intrapersonal and with the addition of a naturalist intelligence.

Here is the link to the wikipedia page if you would like learn more about them.

There is also the over simplified version of this theory which is broken down in two kinds of smart by most people. "Street Smart" and "Book Smart". To think that one is better then the other, is to truly have neither! However, having a preference is completely natural.

Can you fix a car? Can you quote Shakespeare? Can you read music? Can you do calculus? Are you an expert on social media? Can you write code? Can you perform surgery? Can you help a person walk/talk/breath again? Can you be a leader? Can you raise a child? Can you raise a farm? etc.

I believe it's easy to find yourself in situations where you don't feel like you fit in, or where you feel like you would be better off anywhere else at that exact moment. You have two choices: one, live in your own little reality where you are king, setting unrealistic expectations for everything; or two, open your eyes to the world around you and realize that there is something that the person across from you knows, that you don't know squat about!

The next time you are sitting with someone you feel you can't relate to, or someone on a totally different level of intelligence, knowledge, or social class...ASK A QUESTION! Then ask another question, and another. I promise, you will learn something about them, the world, and most importantly - about yourself.

There is a reason that they say, "curiosity is the key to success." In the big picture that is this world, we know very little, but we have so much opportunity to learn.

So next time you find yourself thinking you're "the smartest person in the room," don't! You may be the smartest at something, but we all have different knowledge that we bring to the table!