What Kind Of Smart Are You?

I get all my great ideas in the shower or on walks. Something about the sound of the water falling drowns out the noise in my head and I’m able to work through my thoughts. Maybe it’s the metaphysical equivalent of singing in the shower. All my thoughts are bounced off the walls and the steam until they converge into one harmonic chord.

So this morning, in the shower, I was thinking of all the different kinds of smart a person can be. I have friends and colleagues, each with one or more of these types of smarts, and I admire each of them. I began to create my shower list of all the kinds of smart I could think of, and the list was endless; cleverness, emotional intelligence, street smart, business savvy, topic smart, leader smart, influence smart, patient smart, quiet smart, creative smart, color smart.

Dictionary.com lists a few definitions for the adjective ’smart’ that I think categorize my list well:

• Having or showing quick intelligence or ready mental capability: a smart student.
• Shrewd or sharp, as a person in dealing with others or as in business dealings: a smart businessman.
• Clever, witty, or readily effective, as a speaker, speech, rejoinder, etc.
• Dashingly or impressively neat or trim in appearance, as persons, dress, etc.
• Socially elegant; sophisticated or fashionable: the smart crowd.
• Saucy; pert: smart remarks.
• Equipped with, using, or containing electronic control devices, as computer systems, microprocessors, or missiles: a smart phone; a smart copier.

The one thing that all of these kinds of smart have in common is the requirement that the subject be aware. It seems as though being smart is really more of a receptive quality; the ability to receive information. So what kind of smart are you? How can you be more aware to your world?