"The Role of Intelligence in Gallup interviews of thousands of men and women to determine the root causes of success in life and work, the importance of "intelligence" was mentioned again and again. But when the researchers pressed for a definition of "intelligence", they received an interesting answer. Intelligence was not defined as a high IQ or good grades in school. Rather, intelligence was most commonly defined as a "way of acting".
In other words, if you act intelligently, you are intelligent. If you act unintelligently, you are unintelligent, irrespective of the grades you may have received or the degrees you have earned.
And what then, by definition, is an intelligent way of acting? An intelligent way of acting is anything that you do that is consistent with achieving the goals that you set for yourself. Each time you do something that moves you closer toward something that you really want, you are acting intelligently. On the other hand, an unintelligent way of acting is doing things that are not moving you toward your goals, or even worse, are moving you away from your goals.
To put it bluntly, doing anything that does not help you achieve something that you have decided that you want for yourself is acting in a stupid manner. The world is full of people who are acting stupidly every day, and they are not even aware of what a negative effect this is having on their lives."