A common trait in successful people: their ability to synthesize

Most definitions of intelligence point to the ability to solve problems. According to this perspective, the most intelligent people are those who know how to find a solution to more conflicts or larger problems.

Rephrasing the famous phrase: “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it”, those who do not make an effort to find the obstacles who put themselves in the way are condemned to live stumbling.

There are no unique formulas for happiness, but it is worth it practice from time to time the synthesis to understand ourselves and understand others better.

What personality do successful people have?

In recent decades, the debate on What qualities do successful people possess?

There has been talk of the emotional intelligence as alternative to the classic test of intelligence quotient.

But it is not the only alternative: the same daniel golemanwho is credited with popularizing this concept, in another of his books presents the social intelligencea term also used by Karl Albrecht in a play on the same subject, such as something differentiated from emotional.

When asked about the difference between emotional intelligence and social intelligenceAlbrecht used one of the most popular American presidents in history as an example: Ronald Reagan.

The republican leader had a very high social intelligence that allowed him to connect immediately with the massessometimes through a simple joke from his repertoire.

Instead, his biographers maintain that he lacked emotional intelligence when it came to dealing with his closest environment, especially his family. It is said, for example, that he was unable to recognize his own son when she approached him during an academic act that he presided over.

In any case, no one doubts that there are different types of intelligence: numerical, linguistic, artistic, emotional, social and many others that have been named to evaluate the different intellectual fields of human action.

The question is: What do all these intelligences have in common? Do a calculation genius, a Nobel Prize winner for Literature, and a public speaker share any special qualities?

Ability to synthesize in successful people

Personally, I have come to the conclusion that they all have a gift that we do not usually give enough importance to: the synthesis capacity.

The mathematician or physicist is capable of extracting of a forest of figures that fundamental formula which explains how it works. Similarly, the good writer knows how to capture the essence of his time and his characters embody archetypes with which readers can identify. For their part, the professional speaker makes a synthesis of each public and knows how strike a chord with well-directed observations and comments.

The importance of the ability to synthesize

A second question that we can ask ourselves is: How important is the capacity for synthesis in the ravages of everyday life?

when examining any situation of conflict, we will see that its resolution depends directly on the synthesis that has been made of it, that is, to capture the fundamentals.

A practical example would be a person who repeatedly fails in the field of the couple, but does not deal with look for the keys to understand where the problem is.

Someone with little or no capacity for synthesis will attribute what happened to bad luck or malicious behavior on the part of the other party. He will not be capable of extract what the lived situations have in common and make the necessary changes so that they do not repeat themselves.

The same can be said for people who constantly lose their jobs or fail to make a group of friends. They have not developed the ability to reduce the problem to its essential keys and, therefore, they do not know what they must do to reverse the situation.

In the end there are no unique formulas for happiness, but it is worth practicing synthesis from time to time to understand ourselves and understand others better.