The Genius in All of Us: Why Everything You've Been Told About Genetics, Talent, and IQ Is Wrong
Book by David Shenk
Article by Jim Stephens
Scientific research on DNA has now shed a lot of light on the idea of being "gifted" from birth as opposed to the value of hard work.
Genes pass intact from parents to children. However research has discovered a "wrapping" around the genes. This wrapping is also passed on to children. However, it can be changed by your lifestyle and experiences. It also greatly influences how the genes are "expressed" in the person's life.
Epigenetics is a new science studying the wrapping around genes and how it effects how genes are being expressed.
The wrapping is called the Epigenome. What you do in your life and decisions you make will effect the epigenomes around your genes and this will be passed on to your kids. Therefore your life can influence what your kids become. And they are not limited but they can also change the destiny inherited from their genes by their own actions.
The decisions and actions you make in your life that effect the epigenome around your genes before you conceive your children will then have an influence on the genes you pass to your kids and effectively how the genes manifest.
Scientists are discovering that in some ways, behaviors and experience that we have in our lives have an effect that is similar to actually changing our genes. What it changes is the epigenome.
For years people thought about nature versus nurture and tried to determine which was dominant. But it turns out that they go intimately hand in hand and actually influence each other.
It is not just the genes we are born with, but how we are raised and what opportunities are open to us that determine how smart we will become.
Nurture and experience reshape our genes, and thus our brain.
Shenk argues that the idea we are either born with genius or talent, or we aren't, is simply not true. The notion that relentless, deliberate practice changes the brain and thus our abilities has been undervalued over the past 30 years in favor of the concept of "innate giftedness."
Practice, practice, practice (some say 10,000 hours or more) is what it takes.
By the sweat of our brow we can train ourselves to be successful--even if we are born with only average genetic talent.
If you think you've reached your talent limit, you are wrong, Shenk says. It's not just in your genes, he says, but in the intensity of your motivation. Ambition, persistence, and self-discipline are not just products of genes, but can be shaped by nurture and environment.
Certainly it is important to have good genes, but that determines at most only 50 percent of your talent. He underscores the point that intelligence is made up of the skills that a person has developed--with an emphasis on "developed"--through hard work. Encouraging ourselves and our children to work hard requires being surrounded by others also wanting to achieve striving for excellence.
Shenk gives a hopeful message also for adults. The human brain remains plastic, changeable and trainable well into old age. So no matter how old you are, if you'd like to be smarter--get to work.
He says that the idea of smart people and dumb people is false. "The idea that there is a genetic super-class that has a corner on high-IQ genes is nonsense. This comes out of a profound misunderstanding of how genes work and how intelligence works, and also from a misreading of so-called 'heritability' studies. I am not saying that genes don't affect intelligence. Genes affect everything. But by and large I think the evidence shows that people with low intelligence are missing out on key developmental advantages."
Research has scientifically revived faith in not just practice and determination but also parenting and lifestyle as crucial factors, along with genes, in the realization of talents.
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