Getting motivated to become smarter
Now, to be honest, if you're reading this article you're probably already motivated to become smarter. It's like saying, getting motivated to not have pimples. Everyone wants to be smarter, and no one wants pimples. BUT-there is a subtler side to it; there are ways in which what is initially a vague, general sort of emotion can be turned into a laser beam that cuts through all the gunk, buildup, and superfluous garbage of your life and makes you into the sort of person you've always dreamed of being. So let's look at a few ways in which you can get motivated to get smarter.
1. Let's talk about a general principle of existence that should come in quite handy when getting motivated to get smarter. That is, motivation increases as you reach and experience your goals. In other words, getting motivated to become smarter starts right now, with reading this article. Then you set a goal for yourself. Let's say you want to be smarter about great literature. I'd suggest you start with someone fairly straightforward like Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, Scott Fitzgerald, etc. You can probably think of a few names yourself. Sherlock Homes stories would count, the science fiction of H.G. Wells would count, you've got this whole map to range in.
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2. Well, pick a place on the map and start. Make yourself get through that book. If a passage is hard the first time, read it again. If a passage is hard the second time, read it again. Make sure you've got a dictionary so that you can look up all unfamiliar words. If you go a third, fourth, fifth time and it's still baffling you, you've got one of three choices. 1) You can skip the passage and come back to it later. 2) You can ask a friend etc., maybe someone who did English in college for help. This shouldn't be embarrassing. Most people are flattered by such a request, and genuinely pleased to see someone reading good stuff. 3) If you've got the Internet, there are plenty of resources for helping a beginner get through the more difficult passages of a great work.
3. "Smarter" really is a vague word; if you just want to appear more all around generally bright, conversant, and well read, you can always buy books such as The Modern Mind by Peter Watson, which is a summary of the most important trends in 20th century intellectual thought. Paul Johnson is another great historian who writes clearly about whole epochs so that by the end you've got a pretty clear picture of, say, Jewish history or Napoleon's campaigns.
4. For other areas of "smartness," such as math, science, history, the motivations are endless. You may want a better job, you may want to move up in the job you're currently working on, you may want to complete a complicated home improvement project but haven't the know for this part, and so on and so forth.
5. Again, no matter what your motives, the key is to act on that first little impulse, and to work hard at it until understanding comes, until the breakthrough occurs. That breakthrough will give you more motivation than you know what to do with. For example, I remember tackling Shakespeare for the first time and it was literally sweaty work. Remember, when we start reading again we're dealing with words that have gone out of usage, or, if it's in a more technical field with psychology, we're dealing with a whole jargon and vocabulary that has to be learned like you'd learn Spanish. It's not quite as hard as learning a completely new language, of course, but it takes some time. You're already motivated to become smarter. I remember the morning I read Hamlet from cover as if it was Winnie-the-Pooh. That was motivation in its purest form. If it can happen to me, it can happen to anybody.
