High IQ, expecting immediate results, and failure

I suspect that I may not be the only one who does this. This is somewhat of a personal post, but, as I said, more than likely a problem more common than isolated to one person. Therefore, I’ll speak of myself and allow you to take what you can identify with – or understand someone you know who might have the same problem.

High IQ allows you to learn fast

I have always been a fast learner, generally speaking. I rarely have to struggle with anything, I understand key points easily, I have a good memory, and I connect ideas fast and reliably. However, when I find a problem that doesn’t make instant sense, I kinda panic. I feel that I can’t learn it if I don’t understand it straight away.

Mathematics, to me, is my biggest failure. It combined several stumbling blocks. First of all, it didn’t make instant sense – although I can’t say that I found maths difficult as a student, I could easily keep up during classes, but when I went home to practice, the problems started. My mother is a math wizz. She’s BRILLIANT at maths, and it was important to her, that I show the same aptitude to maths than she does. Therefore, she too got frustrated, when I struggled.

I hate feeling stupid

When my mom expected immediate results from me, she got frustrated, I felt stupid, and as I feel stupid, I cannot cope. When my friends came over for maths lessons, as they did, my mother was NOTHING but angelic and patient toward them – she had no expectations of the neighbor’s kids to do well at all, so she explained things patiently and from the start. When I had a question, she hissed at me to be quiet and do my job.

Therefore, I learned that I am stupid and on top of that unloved and unwanted. Hating the feeling of being slow, stupid, unwanted, insufficient, and all possible negative feelings, my brain started rejecting all things maths at the sight of a number. Today, I struggle with 6+7. That is exactly where my brain starts to scream for help. 6+6 is easy, 6+7 – I can’t cope.

Therefore, every time I sense that same sense of “I don’t know how this works”, I crumble inside. I don’t know how to cope with it. So rather than persist, I easily give up and sometimes pretend I don’t want to learn, or it is not important to me.

The universe is infallible, however

Still, having said that, the Universe works in mysterious ways – and when I say mysterious, I mean highly predictable ways. It is as reliable as this: everyone always gets 100% of what they have wanted, and that includes the exact life lessons they need to achieve what they need. I am certain, for instance, that my mother wants to be the best mother in the world, and as such, she had to fail BIG TIME to realize this is not how you do “great mother”. (Her current definition of a great mother is “one who suffers and absorbs the (needless) blaming, and thus suffers tremendously”. She cannot accept blame, guilt, or any part in actually creating an environment where her children fail at life, but she wants the credit for having suffered so much for their child’s ingratitude. That’s now how you do “amazing mother”. In fact, that’s a recipe for really shitty parenting.)

Anyway, the situation that my mother created was the perfect one for what my soul has needed since before humanity: To know how it all works.

When you know you were destined for greatness, and you find yourself crumbling and failing and sitting in a “storage room” alone waiting for your life to finally get started… Or more to the point to hurry to its boring end, you have to turn into yourself to seek for a meaning to all of this. And therefore, your soul turns toward the path it was meant for; understanding how everything works.

The impossible task

If I can see a task that someone else has already accomplished and mastered; playing the guitar, writing a song, acing an acting career, running a successful Instagram account… Whatever I cannot cope with the sensation of having to LEARN what someone else already knows. I feel stupid and slow – particularly the older I get the more embarrassed I feel for not knowing it yet. And I know how it feels on the other end, you just go “you think this happened without practice and work? You insolent asshole!”

I took it upon myself to create a theory that would combine psychology, spirituality, and different areas of science where needed, to heal all world. That, as a task, doesn’t seem daunting to me. It feels like a nice little challenge. The reason being, that nobody else has done it before, and I can fail without feeling mortified. Of course, I’m going to fail, I tell myself logically, as emotionally, I fully believe I’m going to ace it. A great set up for it. I believe I’m going to fix it all. I KNOW I will. And yet, my logic tells me I’m going to fail, my emotion says I won’t.

Yet. I crumble at the thought of asking someone how to promote my Instagram account.

When you expect to ace it the first go

When people go into new things and expect to ace it all at the first attempt, clearly, they’re going to find themselves a failure. Ei kukaan ole seppä syntyessään, “nobody is a blacksmith the day they’re born”, is a Finnish saying to remind you that you need to learn your trade before you can expect to be any good at it. As there is a saying to underline the fact, I suppose it comes as news to a few people. However, one would wish that the lesson doesn’t come from reading a blog post, but from your parent who patiently reminded you to keep on trying, as even the simplest of tasks need a couple of tries to be aced… Let alone the big tasks…

And I hope someone reminded you that not only do you need to be great at everything you try for the first time, expecting that makes you the asshole who thinks whatever everyone else does is easy and can just be picked up by any fucking asshole who gives it a crack.

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