■ There is a message many of us absorb very early in life: if you are not “smart enough”, you probably will not succeed, writes Dr Jessica Sneha Gray, applied clinical sociologist, investigations.

You will not get the top marks, the top jobs, the prestigious professions or the opportunities reserved for people who seem naturally brilliant.

We rank children by scores, celebrate the highest grades and talk about intelligence as though it is a passport to success.

If you have never thought of yourself as especially clever, it can leave you wondering whether there is a ceiling on what you can achieve.

I am here, perhaps as someone with fairly normal smarts, to say there is much more to excellence than a high IQ. Sure, intelligence helps.

Being able to grasp complex ideas quickly, recognise patterns, solve problems and retain information can make some things easier. But being smart is not the same as being excellent. I may not be the “smartest cookie in the jar”, but I can choose to be persistent. I can be diligent. I can prepare. I can keep learning.

And I can keep going long after somebody with more natural ability has decided they cannot be bothered.

I have met very clever people who do not follow through. People with enormous potential who continually arrive unprepared.

People who can speak brilliantly about what they intend to do but cannot be relied upon to actually do it.

And I have met people who would never describe themselves as intellectual heavyweights but who have quietly become exceptional at what they do.

They turn up. They practise. They read. They ask questions. They make mistakes and return the next day willing to try again. They keep their promises. They finish what they start. They care about the quality of their work even when nobody is watching.

That, to me, is excellence.

Diligence rarely looks impressive in the moment. It is ordinary. It is doing the work when you would rather do something else. It is checking something one more time.

It is practising a skill for the hundredth time when someone else appeared to master it after 20. It is accepting that another person may begin 10 steps ahead of you and deciding to keep walking anyway.

Over time, those ordinary decisions accumulate. Practice accumulates. Knowledge accumulates. Experience accumulates. Trust accumulates.

And, one of the smartest things any of us can do is surround ourselves with people we can learn from.

I do not need to be the cleverest person in the room. In fact, I would rather be in rooms where other people know things I do not know.

I want people around me who challenge my thinking, teach me something, correct me when necessary and make me stretch.

There is no shame in saying, “I don’t know.” The real danger is deciding there is nothing left to learn.

Across the Eastern Bay, I sometimes see another response to feeling inadequate, uncertain or left behind.

It can be disguised as indifference: “I don’t f…ing care.” Sometimes that bravado is camouflage.

It is easier to pretend something does not matter than to risk trying and discovering you are not immediately good at it.

It is easier to mock achievement than to admit you would like to achieve something yourself.

But “I don’t care” is not a pathway to excellence. Eventually, not caring becomes a habit, and habits have consequences.

That does not mean everybody needs a degree, a title or a high-status career.

Excellence is not about prestige. A builder can be excellent. A parent can be excellent. A cleaner, nurse, teacher, farmer, counsellor, mechanic, artist, business owner or volunteer can be excellent.

Excellence is about how you approach what is in front of you.

Do you take pride in it? Do you keep learning? Can people depend on you? Do you honour your word?

When you get something wrong, do you make excuses or do you learn from it?

We also need to be careful about how we define potential.

Too often we notice the person who learns fastest and overlook the person who refuses to give up.

We admire talent but underestimate consistency. We celebrate the result while ignoring the hundreds of quiet, unglamorous decisions underneath it.

Sometimes the person who has had to work harder becomes better precisely because they learned patience, humility and perseverance along the way.

There is character in excellence too. You can be exceptionally intelligent and still be a terrible colleague.

You can have perfect academic scores and lack compassion. You can understand every theory in a textbook and still struggle to listen to another human being.

Intelligence does not automatically give us integrity, reliability, kindness or wisdom.

So, if you are sitting somewhere believing you are not clever enough for the life you want, perhaps ask different questions.

Am I willing to learn? Am I willing to practise? Can people rely on me? Will I keep my word? Can I take feedback without falling apart? Can I keep going when nobody is applauding?

IQ may tell us something about cognitive ability.

Scores may tell us how someone performed on a particular assessment at a particular moment. Neither tells us the whole story of who that person can become.

I may never be the smartest cookie in the jar. That is fine by me.

I can still be the one who keeps showing up.