You might have noticed that many deep thinkers and highly intelligent people fail to be happy. That person might have a successful career, a loving life partner, and family, but still feel sad, alone, or discouraged.
Even Hemingway knew this when he said: “Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” So, what stops intelligent people from being happy?
Here are 13 possible reasons that might give you the answer to this question.
1. Intelligent People Have High Standards
Even though having standards is a positive thing that can help you stay on the right track to success and happiness, too high standards can become a serious setback. People with high intelligence know what they want, so they won’t accept anything less.
They tend to have high standards for every aspect of their life, like their relationship, job, or other goals. But, this can also make their achievements seem insufficient. Consequently, they will have a hard time becoming satisfied in every aspect of their life.
2. Intelligent People See Things in Their True Light
Happy people have their mindset on the present moment. But, what happens when awareness supersedes one’s knowledge is they become ignorant of the things they know and don’t know.
In other words, they have their attention completely focused on the things that happen to them right now. That’s why intelligent people can’t truly enjoy the present moment.
3. Intelligent People Try to Find More Meaning in the Present Moment
Intelligent people are not satisfied with whatever is happening to them at the present. What they do is reframe, refine, add, subtract, abandon, or change it completely in order to find more meaning to it. Simply, the moment itself is not enough for them.
The desire to make the moment even better engages their mind to acquire all memories and information stored in their mind.
This makes their mind frantic, impatient or lost since their mind can’t collect all the information they wish they have. So, they move on to find out even more by reading, Googling, writing, and so on.
4. The Intelligent Mind Refuses to Settle
People who are happy are satisfied with what they know and have. They simply don’t have the need to change everything but just accept it as it is. On the other hand, intelligent people can’t be easily pleased, and they might even consider a happy mind lazy.
5. Intelligent People Over Think
These people like to analyze things until exhausted. They will list the advantages and disadvantages and judge them in a quiet mind. In most cases, this leads to depression. Even though they find the answers to most of their questions, the questions might prove to be unpleasant. This will further disappoint them.
6.Intelligent People Feel Let Down When the Conditions Are Not Optimal
These people understand things better so they give the best solutions to any situation and problem. However, not everything can have the desired outcome.
7. Unmistakable Self-Scrutiny
Intelligent people judge themselves harshly. As a result, they have a low self-image and can’t accept their bad qualities. They set high standards for themselves so they can gradually become gloomy.
8. Intelligent People Look for Higher Realms
Overall, intelligent people can make a good judgment of what’s good and what bad. Of course, they won’t accept the bad qualities, so once they realize the harsh truth they might become sad or frustrated. They have a questioning mind so they will constantly ask questions about everything.
9. Not Everyone Can Understand Them
People with high intelligence have a harder time finding someone with the same character or depth to understand their thoughts and worries. So, they did not always have the needed human contact to ease their burden, and as we know having a true friend is one of the greatest sources of happiness.
10. High IQ Can Lead to Psychological Problems
Too intelligent people have a psychological disorder that makes them analyze and judge everything by asking questions all the time. If you think in the long run, this is not exactly healthy. They tend to over-analyze things and become isolated.
11. You Need to Work on Happiness Every Day
Giving up on humanity so easily is a reason for unhappiness for many sensitive and intelligent people. As a matter of fact, most highly intelligent people have social quirks. On the other hand, the average person is not capable of understanding the extent of sensitivity in one with a high IQ.
12. They might Be Socially Awkward
Some people can take advantage of failures or loopholes in conversations with highly intelligent people. So, when others take control of a social situation, they might be criticized and become socially awkward.
13. They Fear They Can Lose Their Brainpower Easily
Intelligent people tend to be highly sensitive to humanity, so they usually miss the humor and subtle attacks made on their self-esteem. What they do is analyze and rationalize the situation later, which depresses them easily.
Even the ancient philosophers like Plato and Socrates had a melancholic habitus, some of them being even diagnosed with a melancholic disease.
Source Psychology Today | Learning Mind