Many people like to be praised for being smart, but there are many definitions of smart.
In school, students who are quick-witted and do well in their studies are praised for being smart. But when they enter society, the standards for evaluating a person become multifaceted. It’s no longer just about looks or IQ.
A younger student complained to me that the industry is not doing well lately. Many companies are closing down, and he’s been looking for a job everywhere. But even with a flashy resume, no one wants to hire him.
The reason is simple. The younger student, though smart and having good grades since he was young, always got interview opportunities after submitting his resume. However, he often failed during interviews because he was nervous.
“Because the position you’re applying for is a middle management position, we want to find someone who’s better at communication,” one of the interview managers rejected him.
The younger student didn’t understand. He was clearly talkative and witty when he was with his friends. Why couldn’t he show that during the interview?
It turned out that the younger student’s friends were mostly classmates from back then. After graduation, they all got different jobs and had nothing much to talk about in their careers. When they got together, they mostly reminisced about the fun times they had in school or asked each other about their lives and relationships. This kind of idle chatter was useless in interviews.
Among his friends, the younger student seemed to have high IQ and EQ. But this kind of EQ didn’t bring him any real benefit. The reason was that the younger student was only smart in academics, not in real emotional intelligence.
We meet many people every day. Therefore, emotional intelligence, which is closely related to interpersonal skills, has become an important standard for measuring “smartness.”
We can’t see a person’s daily life, but we can tell a lot about a person based on just one thing: how they make friends.
Birds of a feather flock together. Often, by looking at the kind of friends someone has, we can get a general idea of what kind of person they are. Not only that, but we can also tell from how someone makes friends whether they are truly “smart.”
First, they don’t quickly become friends with people.
As the saying goes, “You can tell a person’s face, but not their heart.” Many people seem kind on the surface, but this kindness is a facade. When making friends, it’s hard to tell right away if someone is trustworthy.
As the saying goes, “Don’t have a malicious heart, but don’t be without a cautious heart.” Making friends with people of bad character can not only lead to financial or reputational losses, but also have a negative influence.
Therefore, truly smart people don’t become friends with someone the first time they meet.
Just a little time spent together can reveal a person’s character from their behavior. For unfamiliar people, more time spent together and more understanding are needed to determine if they are worth making friends with.
Second, they treat people kindly, but they don’t necessarily have many friends.
Smart people are well-mannered and treat everyone kindly, but they don’t have a lot of friends.
Maintaining friendships takes energy, but everyone’s time and energy are limited. Smart people choose to “do important things” and maintain “important friendships.”
Many people have hundreds of contacts in their address book and thousands of friends . It seems like they’re not lonely, but they spend most of their day scrolling through their feed or liking and commenting on various posts.
Although it seems like they’re living a busy life, they don’t have many friends who can truly help them. Therefore, smart people choose their friends. They are polite and friendly to others, maintaining a certain social distance to avoid wasting time and energy.
Third, they don’t shy away from social gatherings, but they also know how to be alone.
Many times, friends get together for drinks and food. It’s fine if it’s a way to relieve stress and chat with close friends. But if it’s just for the sake of being together, smart people sometimes choose not to attend.
Smart people know how to focus their attention on important things. Because they’re focused, they don’t easily feel lonely and don’t need to have friends around all the time. Because of this, they know how to be alone better than most people.
For smart people, if they lack common ground, they would rather stay silent and do something else instead of attending a gathering with drinking buddies for the sake of being sociable.
However, when they decline invitations, they are usually polite and friendly because they don’t shy away from social gatherings. They just prefer to have deeper relationships with people who are more similar to them and maintain friendly, ordinary relationships with others.
Fourth, they are more likely to be calm in their interactions with others.
Even the best of friends can have disagreements. People often have differences because of different ideas, different interests, and so on.
Some people get anxious and easily angered when things don’t go their way. But smart people know how to control their emotions, which allows them to be more calm in their interactions with others. Whether they’re resolving conflicts or making choices, they are always appropriate.
This isn’t because they have a good temper. In fact, smart people are more aware of their own boundaries. Once those boundaries are crossed, they will clearly express themselves, even take action, but they don’t easily get angry.
This also makes them more friendly, even leading others to think they are “nice guys.”
Actually, smart people are just more focused, their minds are clearer, and they know what’s important. Therefore, they are less anxious when doing things and are less likely to be sensitive about social issues.
People who see through things but don’t say them don’t get angry at others’ mistakes and errors. Instead, they try to find ways to solve, remedy, and avoid them. This is the way of smart people.
From the friends someone has, we can tell a lot about their personality and abilities. It’s hard for outstanding people to associate with ordinary people, not because they are discriminatory, but because they don’t have common ground and it’s hard for them to help each other.
From how someone interacts with friends, we can tell a lot about their emotional intelligence. The way someone’s social circle looks reflects their image in society to a large extent.
When we feel like our social circle isn’t good enough, we should first think about whether we’ve been carefully selecting our friends and whether we’ve been using truly effective methods to build our social circle.