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I wanted to talk to you today about being smart.

I actually had a couple of experiences in the past few days that I realized how easy it is for people to come across looking so stupid because they don’t know this little trick.  I’ve been doing this tiny trick since I was a little kid.  And I am shocked by how easy it is AND how horrible it is that people don’t know this simple thing.

Let me give you the two examples.

One was in the national media with the republican nominee for President, Ben Carson, who thought it was wise to share his thoughts on what you should do if confronted by a gunman in a classroom.  Now I don’t care how you spin this, he’s basically blaming the victim.  The fact of the matter is no one knows how they would react, especially as young teenagers or young adults who were mostly in that classroom – not having any idea that someone was about to confront them with gunfire.

So that’s one example.

The second example I wanted to share was a personal one. I have this friend who constantly feels the need to share medical advice even though she has no actual experience or education in the medical field whatsoever.  So, if you just say you have a headache, all of a sudden we’re going down this rabbit hole of medical information that she’s clearly gotten from WebMD and whatever crazy show she’s watching on television.  She just ends up looking like an idiot.  And yesterday I kinda confronted her on it and so it made me think about doing this blog post.

Here’s the trick to appearing smart:

First of all, realizing that there is nobody on the planet – not Einstein when he was alive or even someone like Stephen Hawking – who knows everything about everything. Nobody does.  Admitting that you don’t know or have to have an answer to everything is the first step. It’s okay not to know everything.  And since I was a little kid, I’ve never spoken about things I know nothing about.

If I don’t know something that someone’s talking about, I will actually say to them; “You know what, I don’t know anything about that subject.”  Or I can’t give an opinion because I don’t know enough about it.  What this does is allows people to understand that you have some humility and that you’re not trying to be a bragging person, but it also allows you to be an expert in the things you are an expert about (or think you’re an expert about).   And it also frees you from always having to have an answer.

Anyways, I just wanted to share that.  I’m sure a lot of you know the kind of people I’m talking about who are constantly talking about things they know nothing about. And the irony is, they think they’re being smart, they think they have one up on you, but you know they’re actually very stupid – because even things that they’re saying, make no sense whatsoever.  It reminds me of an In Living Color skit that I had to post here.  And it just made me laugh so I had to share it.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by again.  I hope you’re having a great day, definitely have a sweet day and I hope to be back again real soon.

Music by Chris Zabriskie, Prelude No. 23