Psychologize with me #4: Why intelligent people fail

I often hang out at Mensa gatherings (the community of people with IQ higher than 132 on Stanford-Binet scale, or 148 on Cattell scale). Most of them (or us, hoho :D) are very smart, fun, and interesting to talk with. However, there are some members who have surely stepped into the adulthood long time ago, but who still haven't finished their studies, and/or who are still living at their parents' never having enough money for drinks, or are working at jobs that are much below their intellectual capacity.

I do not want to say that everyone have to use their potentials to the fullest, or that people with high IQ must neccessarily be intellectuals (working in IT!). A very intelligent person can become a successful dancer or a fitness instructor, or a famous hairdresser, and those sound like awesome and fulfilling career paths. I think that high intelligence is just a tool to help you achieve your goals easier.

What I want to discuss here is one frequent reason why some people who have a very good basis for growing a successful and fulfilling career (family with a good socioeconomic status, good health, and a normal or high IQ) spend their time drinking or serving drinks, feeling totally lost about their life at age 30.

The infamous Peter Pan Syndrome

The Peter Pan Syndrome is an infamous term in popular psychology describing those who do not feel like growing up and being responsible for themselves, while just dreaming of exciting and hardly achievable careers.

I believe that this 'syndrome' is particularly common among us Millenials. That is due to being constantly bombarded by those stories of extremelly successful entrepreneurs living their dream lives while doing what they love  ('If I succeeded [= made 5.000.000...000 dollars in a year at age 25 following my real passion], you can also' :D), as well as the law of attraction and that whole positive-thinking drama. We believe in our greatness, and expect of ourselves, our lives, and our careers so much, that the gap between our current real state and our goals is too big to be filled studies, courses, certain job, and reasonable financial and time resources.

Do you remember this sentence from the movie? :)

'Symptoms' of the 'syndrome'

Instead of just listing the 'symptoms', in order to make this text more powerful I will write most frequent irrational thoughts lying behind the so-called Peter Pan Syndrome regarding career success. Below each one of them there are the back-to-reality ways of thinking, hopefully leading to the mindset prepared for realistic and achievable success.

1. 'If I don't feel motivated to do it, it means I shouldn't do it. I live from the inside out.'

Actually, there are two types of jobs - those that make us feel good most of the time while doing them (like playing the piano), and those that make us feel good after we achieve some small goal (all writers know that the process of writing usually feels painful in the beginning, and healing in the end :D!). 

Also, a person can feel bored and unmotivated even when doing what they love the most - it is just impossible to enjoy ANYTHING all the time.

2. 'If it was meant for me/my real passion, it would go easily and effortlessly. So I will look for something else more suitable for me.'

All of us, or at least most of us have at least a couple of talents and potential passions. Nobody or almost nobody is meant only for one thing. At the Career Counselling course of my Psychology studies I learned that the good 'tactics' for fulfilling your multiple passions if you feel lost is to write them down, then choose a general profitable career path that fulfills one of them, or combination of a couple of them, and the rest to fulfill with hobbies.

Besides this, no success comes immediately (or maybe in 0.0001% cases), but with lots of commitment and uncertainty that is inevitable.

3. 'I am talented/smart/intelligent/Nikola Tesla, I don't have to try hard.'

Many really successful people will tell you that behind every success is 90% of hard work and 10% of talent or intelligence (or some similar proportion; you know what I mean :p).

4. 'Networking is pointless, as I am more intelligent = superior.'

Psychologists, or at least some of us, believe that every person is a teacher, meaning that from everyone we can learn something. 

Besides that, in most cases success comes from connections with people who give us right information or opportunity.

Also, intelligence is just one very very tiny component of one's personality and smartness, so all the comparisons with the other people regarding intelligence are useless in practical life.

5. 'I am not motivated / I feel too much pressure because my parents expected too much from me / never expected anything from me.'

One more I-don't-want-to-grow-up-alike thought. It is really nice if we can relate our current issues with something that happened in our past, or something that our parents did to us. However, after the awareness of the causes, the next step is taking responsibility and doing our best to overcome our mental obstacles.

And finally, as the whipped-cream-on-the-cake - my personal favourite demon:

6. 'This job is not interesting / challenging enough for me.'

Surely we should all look for most possibly enjoyable jobs. However, as written in 1., no job is constantly enjoyable. Also, there is no such thing as a perfect career with no ups and downs. 

Lastly, everyone has to pay at least food and bills. So, interesting and challenging job is desirable but not neccessary in life. The best option, in my opinion, is to do the job we can do right now responsibly, while constantly being open and looking for possibly better opportunities.

 Katarina Milivojević

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You may also be interested in the following posts: 

Psychologize with me #2: Different perspective on personality disorders

Psychologize with me #3: Why do girls make drama?

How to use envy to succeed? 

Disclaimer: I do not own rights to any image used is this article. I just found them online and wanted to share them with you.