Today I have the honor of hosting a man who embodies the concept of total success. He is a dentist, a successful businessman in America, an author, and above all, a devoted family man.
In our show, Conversations for a Better Life, on GreekRadioFL, which is aimed at people who choose to live either in America, Australia, other countries of the world or even in today's Greece, we are looking for exactly this secret: how one can build a life of success and happiness.
Our guest has written an excellent book entitled "Intelligence and Its 65 Characteristics", and through his knowledge and experience, he will help us understand: how we can organize ourselves, plan our lives, and improve our personal "score" of intelligence and success.
1. PM. What does “success” mean to you? And how have you managed to build it on so many different levels – professional, family and personal?
Dr. A: How do we define success? My definition of success is: A person is successful if they truly feel successful in their overall situation or achievements in life. In other words, if you genuinely feel that you have succeeded in achieving your goals in life, then by your own standards you are successful. If, on the other hand, you complain about things and people and make excuses, then by your own admission, you are not successful. Based on our original definition of intelligence, which is the ability to solve one’s problems and capitalize on the opportunities that come their way in life, an intelligent person is by definition a successful person.
To write what I write in my book about intelligence, it took me 50 years of hard study on a wide range of subjects, accompanied by vast experience, business, education, and travel across four continents.
The fact that I had a clear goal and a clear plan was the primary factor in my being able to complete that goal without wasting any time, or, to put it another way, I was able to make my time count more effectively than other students. And this happened because I had to create time so that I could catch up with others who were more advanced than me, and I also had to create time so that I could work at the same time so that I could pay for my school fees. For example, I didn't go to my high school prom because I had to be at work that night. I always felt bad about it until it was time for my own children to go to their proms. What I saw was that, in addition to having to spend a lot of money, they also had to spend a huge amount of time preparing for this event.
Don't get me wrong, a prom is a very beautiful and unforgettable experience, but the excess of wasting money and time is not.
MP: You often talk about the importance of organization and planning. Can you give us an example from your own daily life that shows how these two factors influence your success?
Dr.A: This characteristic is related to the ability to discriminate and to
the intelligence of goals and perseverance. As you pursue your goals in life and try to make the right choices about which path to follow and with whom to travel, a lot of things come your way that require time and energy from you, as you have to deal with them. However, you have to prioritize, since it is impossible to handle the incredible amount of information and requests from other people that come your way. Therefore, you have to learn to prioritize, otherwise you will drown.
Today, in the electronic society we live in, we are bombarded with data. Information from everywhere. We can’t possibly handle all of this data, and we shouldn’t, since much of it is useless anyway. We should only handle what we need to handle, and we should prioritize it, otherwise we will never achieve our goals. Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you were a magazine or newspaper editor who had to fill hundreds of pages every day, week, or month? Is there always important information to tell the world? Or is he just making up information to fill his pages? Of course, he will do what he has to do to fill his pages. But it is up to us to decide whether all of this information is of any value – what to read and what to discard.
The same goes for the tasks that spring up every day from many different sources. Everyone is constantly vying for a little bit of our time. We need to know what is important to our goals, and leave everything else aside. The intelligence of simplicity is also involved here.
When you are in a leadership position, people will not only try to take your time directly, but also indirectly, by doing things that will eventually get your attention, whether you want them to or not. How you handle all of this depends on the intelligence of your prioritization skills. My staff or even my children got so upset with me a few months ago that they called me an idiot for something trivial. He is a good kid, but his behavior made no sense no matter how you looked at it. Also, a very good member of my staff just a few days ago said something completely inappropriate to me. What do I do? Do I handle these strange behaviors or do I just ignore them? In the above cases, I decided to just ignore them. Why? Here are my thoughts. People can be very quirky and sometimes it's like they are ruled by demons. Most people worship four gods: the god of greed, sex, fear, and ego, and sometimes they seem to worship them all at once. You have to constantly decipher how to deal with their daily madness. You have to decide what to deal with and what to ignore. Yes, you can choose to deal with all their little nuances, but that won’t get you anywhere. In fact, it will create more problems. There’s a book called “Don’t Worry About the Small Things.” That’s exactly what’s true here. You have to decide what’s small and what’s big, but there’s bound to be a lot of things coming your way, and you always need to look at the “big picture” in order to survive and succeed.
So the moral of this intelligence trait is this: Keep your eye on the "big picture" for yourself, your family, and your company at all times and use that as your guide. Anything that doesn't fit into the "big picture" gets rejected, disconnected, or ignored, and that's how you prioritize to achieve your goals.
There is no way to achieve a goal if this kind of intelligence is lacking, so learn to set priorities so you don't drown.
PM. Your book discusses the 65 characteristics of intelligence. How did you identify them and what makes them so crucial to a person's development?
Dr. A: It all started a few years ago, when I wrote a short essay about intelligence as part of a course for executives at my company, in which I explained that intelligence is made up of more than one or two characteristics.
When I first wrote this article, I had come up with 12 traits that make up intelligence. Then, my interest in the subject grew and I kept adding more traits. Along the way, I discovered other traits about intelligence, 65 in total, which I share with you in the book.
The whole thing was based on the original definition of intelligence, which is the ability to solve life's problems and capitalize on life's opportunities.
Using this definition as a guide, I was able to break down intelligence into 65 traits/parts, which I list and explain in the book. Why 65? Well, that's just what I discovered as I analyzed its meaning.
4. PM: A natural question that arises: No one has all 65 characteristics. What happens then? Can someone improve their score? And if so, where does one start?
Dr. A: The ideal would be to possess all the traits. But such a thing is only possible for the gods.
What if we had limited choices? Then it would depend on where and when we were born. In the distant past, physical intelligence was a crucial trait; the tall, strong man became king. Today, impression intelligence, or academic intelligence, seems to be the most important. Our society places great value on one’s ability to capture and relay information (at least in school and academia, areas that play the most important role in the average person’s success). As for me, if I had limited choices, I would choose the intelligences of leadership and application. The ability to apply what one knows and make it all work, including other people's resources, as well as being able to guide those involved towards achieving a result or a common goal, are essentially the factors that constitute the key to a brilliant success.
5. PM: Do you believe that intelligence, as you describe it, is a genetic talent or a skill that we can cultivate?
Dr. A: A crucial question regarding intelligence is: Is someone born intelligent or is it something that they develop as they grow up, go to school, and learn from their environment?
For example: A Rolls Royce or a Mercedes is “born” as it is from the factory where it was built, especially its engines, and is not made by its environment later. You can fuel another car with the type of fuel that Rolls Royces and Mercedes take as much as you want, but the car will not become a Rolls Royce or a Mercedes. It will remain the same car it was when it first came from “the factory,” at least its “engine.”
The environment (home, school, work, education, culture, etc.) will have a great influence on the condition of the “car” and how it functions, but it will not change its type. A Rolls-Royce is born a Rolls-Royce; a Volkswagen is born a Volkswagen. Both are useful cars, as they have different utilities. For example, I would drive a Rolls-Royce to drive in style, but I would need a tractor to move a tree trunk.
As I explain in my political economy books, the most important component for human well-being is the political system that prevails in a place. This affects the "maintenance" of cars and also the "types" of cars that come and stay in a place.
6. MP: We are addressing this interview and conversation to people who live or are thinking about living abroad. What characteristics are necessary for someone to endure and thrive in a new environment?
Dr. A: The biggest and most critical waste of time for people occurs when they are young. Young people think they have all the time in the world. This is mainly due to false information they receive from other people, who tell them things like: “Youth only comes once, enjoy it while you can.” “You have plenty of time to work, save money, or think about your career, so now just have fun and do the crazy things you want to do now that you are young to get them out of your system.” However, these “crazinesses”, for the most part, do not lead to real happiness. This advice, most of the time, is given by “wise”, mainly unsuccessful people, and usually during the age when a young person’s character and career are being formed, that is, between the ages of 15 and 25. These are the most confusing years in a person's life, as they mentally and/or physically leave their parents' nest and attempt to build their own. This is certainly not a time to engage in frivolous and foolish actions that will distract them from their goals, possibly costing them a life full of problems.
The most important thing for all people to do when they are young, or at any age for that matter, is to find the talents or unique skills they possess and thus discover their “pitch” in life. As mentioned earlier, I define talent as: A great ability that a person possesses in some field, such that they can do something better than 90% of their peers.
For example, when I was in college, I took a dexterity test, and they told me that my right-hand dexterity was superior to 96% of my classmates.
Once you discover your special abilities and interest in one or more subjects, you will have earned and created more time and money from that alone than anything you will learn in this or any other book on the subject.
In addition to creating time, you won't have to work for the rest of your life. Instead, you'll have a great time showcasing your talents and creating the life of your dreams, provided, of course, that you apply at least several of the characteristics of intelligence as presented in the book Intelligence - Its 65 Characteristics.
7. PM: As a family man, how do you balance your professional responsibilities with your personal life? What role does planning play in this?
Dr. A: I have built a chain of clinics with over 200 employees. But I also have a family with three children, and I also take care of my mother and my in-laws. There is no way I could have built all of this if my wife had not been able and willing to stay home to manage the most important job: raising the children, as well as handling all sorts of other household and family issues and tasks, thus freeing up time for me to devote to my profession.
For something to succeed, commitment is required. Then priorities. In my organizational chart there is room for family, quality time spent together, joint activities with all my children, and with each one individually. We share common principles and values, and I believe it is important that I am the first to set a good example. And yes, I plan my actions to create time for family. And it happens.
8. PM: What advice would you give to a young man or woman who is just starting his/her life in a foreign country and wants to succeed without getting lost in the demands of everyday life?
Dr. A: At the age of 16, I started out with the goal of becoming a dentist. My goal was clear and the decision was very strong in my mind. It was like a mountaintop. All my actions contributed to getting to that mountaintop, and anything that didn't help me get there I left aside.
At that time, I spoke no English and had almost no money. Five years later, at the age of 21, I was accepted into the best dental school in my state, and by the age of 26 I was a licensed dentist. If this process had taken another five years, no one would have blamed me; my friends and family would have said that it was normal for someone in my situation to take that long.
The fact that I had a clear goal and a clear plan was the primary factor in my being able to complete that goal without wasting any time, or, to put it another way, I was able to make my time count more effectively than other students. And this happened because I had to create time so that I could catch up with others who were more advanced than me, and I also had to create time so that I could work at the same time so that I could pay for my school fees.
The areas that help a person most in being competent and effective in life are:
a. Personal self-improvement, and in particular improvement of
communication and coping skills.
b. Professional improvement (when someone makes a pass-
(I am receiving training in his profession).
c. Training in guiding other people.
d. Improving one's ability to promote and
sells.
Here I will also touch on the issue of ambition.
Ambition is the desire to achieve a specific goal or reach a certain social status, level of wealth, etc. It is what drives you to do great things. It is a quality that is not easily understood or defined, as most people think. Ambition has many shades and degrees; one has the ambition to start his own business, while another wants to conquer the world.
If I were to give my children one wish, it would be that they have great ambitions. If someone has great ambitions, they will force themselves to improve in all the other traits of intelligence. They will find solutions to their problems and overcome whatever obstacles they encounter.
Ambition is the driving force of life. Anyone who seeks greatness must first be very ambitious himself.
Great ambition transcends the human dimension and approaches spirituality and the gods. All the great works and creations in our lives (Apple, Google, Microsoft, Alexander the Great's empire, the Great Wall of China) did not happen by chance. They were not just things that were made by coincidence or because circumstances helped, as some collectivists would have us believe. They were made by people who had the greatest possible ambition and yes, greed!
Their founders tried to reach God himself and believed they would find him in the creation of these works (more on that in another interview). Did they reach God? Who cares? The fact that they believed they could try, or rather gave it their all and reached so high, benefited us all.
Do we as a country desire greatness? If so, then we must encourage the ambitions of our citizens to realize them and allow them to reach as high as they can. Mediocrity does not enable us to transcend ourselves and explore the universe. The goal of mediocrity is to divide what we already have, not to create more.
So I say: reach for the heavens, since the whole of society will only benefit from this. Amen!
And one more thing, especially for Greeks: study our language, our philosophy, our history, constantly and uninterruptedly. It is a super weapon, it is a multi-tool, it is an investment in spirituality.
Does he want a job? Of course!
As Euripides said, "The lazy do not gain fame, but it is labor that gives birth to glory."
