15 Habits That Make You Smarter - Young Women's Essence

Let’s be honest, we all want to be that intellectual and smart version of ourselves. We all want to be able to articulate our thoughts, words, and ideas effectively. We all want to become smarter. And the good news is that we can become the smarter and much more intellectual version of ourselves. No one was born a natural genius. No, not even Albert Einstein. Genius lays in developing habits every day that sharpens our brains. It is habits that challenges our thinking and expand our knowledge. Let’s discover 15 habits that make you smarter.

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1. Read for at least 30 Minutes Every Single Day

One habit that all cleverly smart women have in common is reading. Even if they read a self-help book, article, or novel, smart women make reading include reading into their daily routine. So, if you want to sound smarter, articulate your words better, and become knowable on a variety of topics, then, make reading everyday a habit. As a matter of fact, reading each day helps you to expand your vocabulary, sharpen your focus and critical thinking, deepen your comprehension skills, and deepen your perspective.

Read books that encourage you to think. Reading self-help, philosophical, psychological, and finance books, the neurons in your brain form connections between ideas, therefore, sharpening them.

Moreover, reading for 30 minutes is a great habit to start if you want to become smarter.

2. Journaling for Mental Clarity

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A great habit to learn how to become clever is journaling. Journaling doesn’t only improve your mental health but also make you a more intelligent and deeper thinker. When you journal, you improve your ability to express your thoughts, words, and ideas clearly. Moreover, journaling boosts your emotional intelligence because you begin to organize thoughts and reflect on your behavior.

Also, what makes journaling one of the 15 habits that make you smarter is your ability to think rationally and make better decisions. You won’t make decision off of the whim anymore that you will become to regret. Instead, you will think of all of the possibilities and outcome of each decision you make before you make them. Sometime becoming smarter isn’t about studying more or harder. Sometimes becoming a smarter person means making smarter decisions and you can do this by journaling.

3. Protect Your Focus Like a Gem

We’re living in a world where everything is fighting for our attention. From social media to the latest celebrity gossip, all of these things are battling for our focus because our focus is power. Wherever we focus on have no choice but to manifest itself in our live. If we focus on bad things, then bad things will show up in our lives. If we focus on growth, then growth will show up in your life. That’s why every intelligent woman protect their focus like it is a gem. They master the ability to regulate what they spend their attention on.

How do you become smarter? Build the habit of ignoring everything that is distracting to you.

Moreover, when you are focus your brain’s ability to retain information becomes stronger overtime. An the more information you can retain, the smarter you will become. As a matter of fact, the secret to becoming a understanding and learning faster, is to give your undivided focus to one task at a time. So, the next time you’re studying, learning a new concept, or reading a book, block out all oof your distractions and deeply focus on the task at hand. As a result, you’ll begin to notice your attention span increase and your learning curve begins to accelerate.

A woman who controls what she does and doesn’t allow to get her focus is a powerful woman.

4. Ask Better Questions

In all honesty, your intelligence doesn’t lay in what you know, but it lays in asking all of the right questions. If you want to know how to become clever, ask better questions. Becoming smart is getting the right answers by asking the right questions. So, the next time you feel hesitant of asking a question, remember your curious nature is what will make you smarter. In fact, making asking the correct questions a habit of yours will make you become a deeper thinker. You will no longer be a shallow level thinker but someone who think beyond the surface level. As a result, improving your critical thinking skills. Remarkably intelligent women always challenge thoughts and ideas, even if it is their own.

5. Be the Designer of Your Environment

Did you know that your thought patterns are heavily influence by the environment you’re in? If you’re in an environment with shallow minded people, more than likely you’ll be shallow minded. If you’re in an environment with critical and smart thinkers, more than likely you’ll become a critical and smart thinker. Therefore, if you want to become smarter one of the good habits to start is to become the designer of your environment. Be intentional about what you allow and who you allow into your space. Surround yourself with critical thinkers, ambitious people, growth-oriented conversations, and educational content that’ll feed your intellect. One of the most transformational habits you can have is being the controller of your environment.

6. Move Your Body Regularly

One of the habits that make you smarter is doing physical activities on a frequent basis. When you move your body, it improves your brain activity. The blood flow in your brain increases, as a result, enhancing your memory, bettering your mood, and improving your focus. Moreover, exercising regularly promotes neuroplasticity, which makes your learning and adapting to new concepts better. If you want to learn how to get smarter in a practical way, making movement a habit is a must. A healthy brain is the refection of a healthy body.

7. Get Comfortable with Discomfort

To grow intellectually, you must be willing to be uncomfortable. Growth doesn’t come from your comfort zone. Hence, read challenging materials, learn difficult skills, and have hard conversations that allows you to grow. When you do these things, overtime you become mentally resilient. You will become accustom and stick to learning any challenge concept that you’re face with. So, stick with difficult materials even when it gets hard. One of the good habits to start to build to become smarter is resisting the urge to quit on something when it becomes cognitively challenging to satisfy your comfort. When you lean into complexity instead of escaping it, your mind expands.

8. Don’t Keep What You Learn to Yourself; Teach it to Someone Else

One of the 15 habits that make you smarter is teaching someone what you’ve learned. Teaching someone what you’ve learn is a great way to recall and retain the information you’ve learned. When you explain a concept to someone else, you begin to understand it more thoroughly, which deepens your understanding. So, the next time you read an article or learn a fun fact, consider teaching it to someone else. The more people you teach, the deeper your understanding of a particular concept become. Whether you share it with a friend, write a blog article, or simply teach it to yourself, this habit will ensure that you understand what you learn. A great rule of thumb is every time you learn something new, teach it.

9. Regulate Your Mental Environment

If you want to learn how to become clever, you must first control what you allow to fester in your mind. Your thoughts are shaped by what you allow to enter and linger in them. Moreover, your thoughts are shaped by what you consume. Instead of mindlessly scrolling and overindulging in ‘brain-rotting’ content, listen to an educational podcast, watch skill-based videos, and read thought provoking books. Smart women intentionally curate their information diet. When you consistently consume content that challenges you intellectually, your conversations improve, your ideas deepen, and your confidence grows. Your mental environment is a reflection of what you put in it.

10. Make Sleep a Priority

If you want to become smarter, the quality of your sleep matters. Sleep is crucial for your smartness because it allows your brain to repair, process information, and strengthen memories. Without sufficient sleep, you are unable to think clearly, make wise decisions, concentrate, or be creative. Hence, getting up to seven hours of rest each night is important to becoming intellectual.

If you’re serious about building habits that make you smarter, you need to fix your sleeping habits first. Your brain can’t function properly when you’re sleep deprived.

A mind that has sufficient rest is a mind that makes you learn and comprehend things fast. As a result, making you smarter.

11. Reflect Weekly

When you reflect on your experiences, you turn them into wisdom. Making it a habit to reflect each week on what you’ve learned, your experiences, what worked for you, what didn’t work for you, and what you need to change improves your self-awareness, problem-solving skills, and thinking more strategically. Reflecting weekly improves your abilty to recognize patterns in your behavior and long-term planning.

Moreover, reflecting prevents you from making the same mistakes and accelerate your learning. When it comes to learning how to become clever, you must be willing to analyze and adjust.

12. Master Emotional Intelligent

An intelligent woman is one that doesn’t let anyone, any circumstances, or outward environment dictate how she feels emotionally. One of the good habits to start if you want to become smarter, is to learn how to control your emotions. Your cognitive intelligence matter, but your emotional intelligence is what helps you to utilize it properly.

Moreover, when you master your emotions, you began to make better decisions, control your emotions, react better, and empathize with others.

Being emotionally intelligent sharpens your leadership and communication skills and shows that you are mature.

13. Practice Deep Work

Deep work is when you focus on deep cognitive demanding tasks without interruptions. If you want to know, how do you become smarter, being able to practice deep work is important. This strengthens your problem-solving skills and enhances your ability to process complex information. Real growth is rooted in deep work.

Scheduling distraction-free blocks of time to study, write, or build skills is one of the most effective habits that make you smarter. Your ability to concentrate is what builds intellectual endurance.

14. Embrace Opposing ideas

One of the 15 habits that make you smarter is being able to expose yourself to different perspectives. Intellectual growth requires mental flexibility. Reading materials that challenge your beliefs sharpens your reasoning skills and strengthens your critical thinking. Instead of avoiding opposing ideas and thought, welcome them. Analyzing different viewpoints expand your mind and strengthen your ability to articulate your own ideas. A trait that every intellectual woman has in common is to step out of their intellectual comfort zone and challenge opposing ideas.

15. Making Learning a Lifestlye

The smartest women treat growth as a lifelong commitment. They continuously seek new knowledge, develop skills, and explore unfamiliar subjects. Learning doesn’t end when they completed their academic careers.

Whether through books, documentaries, courses, research, or your experiences, always find a way to learn something new. Learning consistently keeps your brain sharp and easy adaptable to new concepts and ideas. If you truly want to know, how do you become smarter, it is simple: make learning a lifestyle. Overtime your lifelong curiosity will turn into wisdom. Hence, always find an opportunity to learn something new.

To Sum Up

The truth is no one is born a genius, not even the people with the highest IQ. Becoming a smarter person comes from developing habits that make you smarter. When we start challenging ideas, making learning a lifelong process, and consuming thought-provoking content, this makes you become smarter each day. So, start with one or two of these habits today and you’ll notice a difference in the way you think, talk, and handle your emotions.

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