Wisdom: Lessons Shared and Received
Applying learnings from our own and others' experiences to navigate decisions.
This newsletter is about using strategy to transform our lives and achieve our success, whatever that means for us in this moment. Lives that, at times, can feel jostled by the push and pull of forces outside of ourselves. I’ve been thinking about what helps us live our fullest, most successful lives (whatever that means to us) within our limited time on this planet. Reflecting on my own experiences, I consider the phrases, mantras and stories that I’ve collected through my life to be motivators and fortifiers as I steady myself in turbulent times and make decisions about the next right thing.
Lately, I’ve been fascinated by storytelling. Perhaps self-educating for my new identity as a writer. I’ve been studying How to Tell a Story: The Essential Guide to Memorable Storytelling from The Moth. I love reading tarot because it is ultimately storytelling through pictures. Tarot led me to digging into Joseph Campbell’s The Hero’s Journey (to understand the major arcana cards) and then to his PBS series with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth. In my professional life, I’ve always been pulled to tell stories and, in fact, had “become a better story teller” on my Personal Goals list for years (practice makes progress!).
Stories are the way humans communicate for posterity. First through oral tradition, then pictures, later written word, movies, and now Reels and TikTok. The stories I want to remember, the ones I want to bring with me, impart some wisdom. It’s wisdom that I seek at crossroads and in moments of uncertainty. I want to find confidence in knowing that these situations have been overcome before, hints on how to persevere from those who have lived these experiences .
What is Wisdom?
Wisdom is the learning we gain over the course of our lives. It comes from lived experience, in the sense that it is distinct from knowledge, which is a possession that can be obtained from books and rote facts. Data. Mechanics. Schematics.
Wisdom is rooted in emotion, feeling, intuition, judgement, common sense, risks, values. It is earned through encountering challenges, acting, and processing the outcomes and aftermath. What we learn from personal observation, or the observations of others that are shared with us. Most importantly, it is shared.
I consider two types of wisdom:
Internal Wisdom: The learnings we have gained through our own first hand experience
External Wisdom: The learnings that come from others’ experiences
Internal Wisdom | First-hand experience
When we go through a formative experience, there are lessons we take with us. These lessons inform our future decisions, such as:
how to act next time
how to feel about a situation
how to know what we can control
how to do our best given what we can control.
When a company announces a layoff, it can be a jolting and traumatic experience. However, seeing former colleagues thrive in their new environments, we gain wisdom that a sudden, unexpected ending can also lead to positive opportunities and growth. Experiencing a major change - moving, a new job, marriage, a breakup - can impart (among many, many learnings) the wisdom that while change can be hard, we acclimate.
Once the initial shock subsides, what at first felt new and different over time feels routine and typical. My philosophy is that all change takes 18 months to fully digest: a year of new firsts, two seasons of “oh, I’ve done this before”, then settle into the norm. Our experience and internal knowledge increases with each season and each change.
With each season and change, we grow wiser. Growing our wisdom is a quest of personal learning and self-actualization. We follow our curiosity and reflect on ourselves and our experience. It is often said that the way to truly understand a topic is to teach it. To truly grasp our wisdom, we must share what we have learned. This sharing is best done with a sense of humor and humility about our own experience.
External Wisdom | Those who walked before us
Consider the stories of your own family: the struggles of your grandmothers, the battles your mother fought, the mythology you heard over your lifetime. These stories serve to show us that challenges and obstacles can be overcome. Attitudes and outlooks help us to persevere. This external wisdom can be a preview to the journey ahead.
The wisdom of those who walked a path before us - often our elders - serves as a map of sorts. Skilled mentors are able to distill their experiences and knowledge into wisdom we can use when faced with a challenge. They teach us so we don’t have to learn the hard lessons ourselves each time. They share so we can save some time, energy, pain or grief. However, accepting external wisdom is not always easy.
The irony is, we need to grow our internal wisdom to be able to heed the wisdom of others. Our egos try to prevent us from hearing their words. We know better; we can figure it out ourselves. When we aren’t open to receiving wisdom, these may be the moments we need to learn the lessons ourselves. We need to experience first-hand so we can empathize with another’s lived experience and learn from their perspective.
Maybe the details aren’t exactly the same. The eras constrained their choices. It was a different time; the circumstances were different. They weren’t software engineers or marketing directors. They may have specialized in household operations, not corporate operations. They supported the lives of doctors or lawyers and didn’t themselves have the direction or opportunity to practice. But the struggles, the learnings, the fortitude they summoned - these teachings do apply.
Channeling Wisdom
What can you do to foster your own wisdom? Let’s start with the data. There is scientific research1 around the concept of wisdom and even an assessment to gauge your level of wisdom.
Researchers at the University of California San Diego have found that wisdom is “a potentially modifiable personality trait that has been shown to have a strong association to well-being”. They have devised an assessment, the SD-WISE scale, to determine a person’s level of wisdom. SD-WISE looks at the following elements:
Acceptance of Divergent Perspectives: Acceptance of other value systems and interest in learning others’ perspectives; openness to and comfort with values and perspectives that may be different from your own.
Decisiveness: Ability to make decisions in a timely manner; comfort with decision making.
Emotional Regulation: Ability to regulate negative emotions that interfere with decision making; sense of being able to effectively manage negative emotions and emotional stress.
Pro-Social Behaviors: Empathy, compassion, altruism, and sense of fairness; sense of the ability to maintain positive social connections, as well as compassion or conscientious behavior.
Self-Reflection: Desire and ability to understand yourself and your actions at a deeper level; preferences with regard to understanding your own thoughts, motivations, and behaviors.
Social Advising: Ability to give good advice to others; comfort in advising others.
Spirituality: Connectedness with oneself, with the nature, or with the transcendent like the soul; sense of spiritual connectedness with other people, the world itself and everything in it, as well as a sense of transcendent spiritual connectedness.
Growing your internal wisdom
These factors are an excellent way to conceptualize the components of our internal wisdom. Understanding these elements allows us to find concrete actions to practice and grow our wisdom:
Get grounded: Think back to the formative learning moments in your own life and reflect on your own lived and learned experiences. Connect with yourself and the world around you.
Accept differences: Connect with others and be open to their different views of the world.
Understand decisions: Practice making decisions and regulating your emotions in stressful moments. Identify your frameworks for making decisions.
Share outward: Get comfortable sharing your decision making process and consider mentoring others in their moments of inflection (when asked).
The more you share, the more you practice, the more you will be consulted, and the wiser you will become. It’s science!
Growing your external wisdom
When we are able to listen to and learn from others’ experience, we honor their wisdom.
Consider sources of wisdom: Take stock of the people in your life.
Whose life experiences do you respect?
Who are your family members, neighbors, friends, colleagues whose values align with yours?
Who has had life experiences that have challenged and taught them in ways you respect?
These are your mentors. You likely have more than one… you may have many! Lucky you!
Identify the crossroads and form your question: When facing a crossroads, a decision, or other inflection point, consider these questions. Journaling and quiet reflection can help here.
What information will help you determine your next move or inform your mindset as you face this moment? Is there some data or perspective that can help guide you?
How do you finish the prompt “How might I…?” I practice this when I read tarot cards for someone looking for direction. The card pulled to answer this question often leads to another… and another…
Could you ask your mentors for their perspective? Is there a similar experience they have faced?
Listen with intention: Ask a mentor for their take. Important cues to listen for are:
What did they face and what were their options?
What path did they choose? How did they make that decision?
How did they feel about that decision? What impacts did it have on others?
What was the ultimate outcome? Would they make that choice again?
What did they learn?
Recall the stories: If you can’t ask a mentor directly, can you reflect on similar crossroads or decision points they may have experienced and consider how they navigated?
For example, I often think about challenges my grandmother faced in her life and the confidence and grace with which she took them on and carried forward (in her colorful pantsuit, coiffed hair, and heels). Although she’s passed on, I think of her attitude toward adversity when I’m facing my own.
Connect the dots: How does their experience inform your pending decision? It may not be the exact same situation, so be open minded. Is there a moral or lesson you can apply to your own life?
Wisdom for Decisions Ahead
The next time you are facing a decision, consider what wisdom will guide your process. Yes, the data and facts should be consulted to help us form insight. We combine these facts with the wisdom within and around ourselves to empower us for the crossroads ahead. Once we make the decisions, we reflect on what we have learned, and grow our wisdom for the future: our own choices ahead and the next generations.
The University of Chicago Center for Practical Wisdom has many references, articles and tools for understanding wisdom.