Discover Your Multiple Intelligences
The idea that intelligence comes in more than one form has gained scientific backing lately, and for a lot of people that turns out to be welcome news. It can also feel like a lot to take in. We already face more choices than we know what to do with, and now there's another one: which kind of intelligence are you supposed to lean on? Part of why so many people end up anxious or depressed, I'd argue, is the sheer weight of questions like that. What follows is an attempt to simplify things, so you can get a clearer read on where your own strengths actually sit.
Finding your purpose tends to start with finding yourself, and that's precisely the part most people skip. Someone can be sharp in the classroom or sharp on the street and still have no real sense of who they are or what they want. That gap wears on a person. It shows up as depression, as anxiety, and sometimes as a bottle or a prescription. Plenty of people mistake the ones who seem lost for lazy, especially when government assistance enters the picture, but that label misses the mark for most of the working poor and the unemployed.
The United States runs on a market economy, and a lot of folks simply don't have the skills the market is paying for. How does someone get there? Usually by moving through childhood, through school, through a career or two without ever stopping to meet the person in the mirror. They reach adulthood without a sense of abundance or peace, and that absence feeds a long list of stress-related physical complaints along with the anger, worry, and low moods that follow.
So what are these separate forms of intelligence? I'll walk through eight. My own view is that nearly everyone is a quiet genius in at least one of them. Standard IQ tests only ever measured a narrow slice: spatial reasoning, how well you handle words, how well you handle numbers. That's an incomplete picture, and it's the reason people who don't ace those sections get stamped as average or below. Few things erode your sense of worth faster than carrying around the belief that you're not very bright, and that erosion is exactly what you find at the bottom of serious depression, where life starts to feel pointless.
1. Visual/Spatial. Highly visual thinkers who can build real careers as navigators, architects, or sculptors.
2. Naturalist. People wired toward the natural world, suited to farming, environmental work, or botany.
3. Logical/Mathematical. The ones who drift toward engineering, accounting, and programming.
4. Social. Interpersonal types are the people-people: negotiators and connectors who do well in sales, management, or politics. The intrapersonal side runs quieter and more attuned to feeling, which is where you find novelists, counselors, and case managers.
5. Bodily/Kinesthetic. Those who think through the body. Dancers, athletes, firefighters, police officers.
6. Verbal/Linguistic. A pull toward journalism, teaching, or the law.
7. Musical/Rhythmic. Careers as a music teacher, a DJ, a producer, a composer.
8. Existential. These are the heavy philosophizers, the ones who turn everything over and tend to land on the gloomy side. Often very bookish, not always the life of the party, and prone to overanalysis. Their darker read on the world leaves them more exposed to depression. A fire-and-brimstone preacher can land here too.
Eight is only the start, and hardly anyone fits a single box cleanly; most people carry two or three strengths at once. Not seeing yourself on the list doesn't shut any door either. Passion plus motivation will teach you almost any skill you decide to chase.
Worth being honest about the money, though. Linguistic and musical paths usually pay less than the analytical and spatial ones. That pay gap is part of why people who score low on cognitive tests talk themselves down as not very smart, which chips away at confidence and purpose and feeds the anxiety, depression, and anger that follow. Half of these intelligences don't point toward a fat paycheck at all.
There's something freeing in realizing the real task is just figuring out which form, or forms, you've got. Entrepreneurship fits any of them, since it comes down to spotting or making opportunities. You don't need a big income to be intelligent, though a big income often shows up anyway once you pour yourself into something you genuinely care about. Maybe learning who we actually are would do more for us than any antidepressant, if only because it hands us back a reason to go after what we love. Emotional intelligence belongs in this conversation too, but that one needs its own article.
- Erwin Bishop