What is our potential?

I have engaged in dialogue with a few other bloggers recently regarding human potential, creativity and how we attempt to reach our potential.

Coincidentally, I have just begun reading a book called How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb.


So far, this book has pointed several interesting facts. The following has been paraphrased from the Introduction of the book.

Most people believe intelligence can be evaluated with an IQ test and that intelligence potential is fixed at birth.

However, recent studies have shown that only 48 percent of IQ can be attributed to genes. 52 percent is based on prenatal care, environment and education.

The second weakness in IQ evaluation is that verbal and mathmatical reasoning skills measured by IQ tests (and SAT's) are the sine qua nons of intelligence. This narrow view of intelligence has been debunked by contemporary phsycological research.

At least 7 measurable intelligences have been identified:

• Logical-Mathmatical
• Verbal-Linguistic
• Spatial-Mechanical
• Musical
• Bodily-Kinesthetic
• Interpersonal-Social
• Interpersonal (Self Knowledge)

Your brain is much better than you think. Contemplate the following:your brain

• is more flexible and multidimensional than any supercomputer.
• can learn seven facts per second, every second, for the rest of your life and still have plenty of room left to learn more.
• will improve with age if you use it properly.
• is not just in your head. Intelligence is located not only in the brain but in cells that are distributed throughtou the body...The traditional separation of mental processes, including emotions, from the body is no longer valid.
• is unique. Of the six billion people currently living and the more than ninety billion people who have ever lived, there has never, unless you are an identical twin, been anyone quite like you. Your creative gifts, your fingerprints, your expressions, your DNA, your dreams, are unprecedented and unique.
• is capable of making a virtually unlimited number of synaptic connections or potential patterns of thought.

Our nuerons are capable of making increasingly complex new connections throughout our lives. And, our nuronal endowment is so great that, even if we lost a thousand brain cells everyday for the rest of our lives, it would still be less than 1 percent of our total.

Pyotr Anokhin of Moscow University proclaims that no man or woman, past or present, has fully explored the capacities of the brain.

As I continue to make my way through this book, I will try to pass along more, but to get the full picture it would be best to read it yourself.

Michael J. Gelb has worked with executives and Dupont, Merck, Microsoft and Nike and has written a companion to this book called the How to think like da Vinci Workbook.