How do you know if what you’re doing is something intelligent or not? While I was listening to an audio program by Brian Tracy a few days ago, I came across the following definition:
Every time that you’re doing something that moves you closer to your goals, you’re acting intelligently. Every time that you’re doing something that moves you further from your goals, you’re acting with stupidity.
It’s tempting to overlook this definition as common sense, but if you think about it and you analyze the activities that you do during your day, as I did, you may find out that some of them are not as intelligent as you may have thought.
Let’s take a simple example; eating an ice-cream. I wanted to talk about this specific example as it’s something that affects me directly. During the last few weeks, I picked up a habit of going out in the evening and buying a couple of ice-creams for me and for my fiancee. In this situation, am I acting intelligently? It turns out that it depends. It depends on what my goals are and on the context I’m in. For example, if I consider my health goals, it’s certainly a stupid thing to do. It’s also not good financially speaking, as if I buy two ice-creams four times a week, then I will spend around 60 euros a month. But if I consider the fact that I can share some lovely time with my fiancee enjoying something that we like together, it doesn’t look like a stupid idea anymore, or does it?
Like with anything, you have to weight the pro and cons of everything you do. You’ll never get everything right, but with practice you can certainly become very good at judging your own actions.
Constantly asking yourself wherever what you’re doing is moving you closer or further from your goals is something that can help you to stay on track, especially with little things.
You may find it hard or painful to answer that question initially, especially if you have some bad habits and you know about them, but I guess you’ll have to deal with it sooner or later anyway, and from my experience, it’s better to solve bad things as soon as possible.
Should I continue to eat ice-cream? It’s hard to have a definite answer, but I can certainly start by finding alternative activities that are healthier, and are also more enjoyable.