Wisdom
There are three things I am afraid of:
Going fast downhill
Flying in an airplane
The dentist
The first two are probably some combination of temperament and evolutionary inheritance. Human beings were not exactly designed to hurtle down mountains or sit calmly inside a metal tube 30,000 feet in the air.
The third fear comes from my life experience.
When you have a history of bulimia, like I do, visiting the dentist is no fun. When a hygienist asks me to open my mouth, it’s akin to opening the door on a pile of shame.
I know this week’s word is wisdom, but I want to begin here because this is why we need wisdom.
When I sit in the dentist’s waiting room, as I did last week, being smart about it is not enough. I already know that dental care is important. I know that avoidance generally makes problems worse. I know that the sweet hygienist is there to help me.
But knowing these things does not necessarily get me out of the waiting room and into the chair.
In that moment, I need to draw upon something bigger. It’s my wise self that helps me stand up, walk into the room, and do what needs to be done.
So this week, the word is a big one:
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Wisdom
Wisdom is the capacity to see reality clearly, hold complexity and uncertainty, and choose in a way that is both skillful and aligned with your heart.
In Wise Effort, I describe wisdom as emerging at the intersection of our genius energy and our values.
Your genius energy includes your strengths, aptitudes, knowledge, creativity, and natural capacities. Your values orient those capacities toward what matters. Genius tells you what you can do. Values help you discern what is worth doing.
You can be intelligent without being wise. You don’t really get wiser if you grow older (unless you work on it), and you can have a big heart without taking effective action.
Wisdom brings the two together:
Wisdom is using what you know and what you do well in service of what matters.
What Does Psychology Say?
Beginning in the 1980s, psychologist Paul Baltes and his colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development began asking whether wisdom could be studied empirically.
The resulting Berlin Wisdom Paradigm, developed by Baltes, Ursula Staudinger, Jacqui Smith, and others, defined wisdom as exceptional knowledge and judgment concerning the “fundamental pragmatics of life”—the difficult realities involved in understanding and conducting a human life.
Instead of asking people, “How wise are you?” the researchers presented them with complex life dilemmas and evaluated the quality of their reasoning.
When you are deciding whether to put your dog down, what do you consider?
When you need to talk to your kid about the marijuana gummy you found in their room, what do you say?
When you need to fire two people on your team, how do you decide?
The Berlin researchers identified five components of wise reasoning.
1. Rich factual knowledge
What knowledge can you draw upon from your education, experience, and skill sets?
2. Rich procedural knowledge
What physical and procedural skills, supports, people, practices can you draw upon to move through this decision wisely?
3. Lifespan contextualism
How does your larger context: your age, history, current stage of life impact your view?
Why does this decision matter at this particular point in my life?
4. Value relativism
What values are operating here- yours and other peoples, and how to they differ? Can you see and honor both?
5. Recognition and management of uncertainty
What can you not know or control—and what can you choose despite that uncertainty?
Wisdom Is More Than The Thinking Mind
The Berlin Wisdom Paradigm offers a powerful framework, but it locates wisdom primarily in our capacity to reason about life. I take a more consilient view—one that draws from psychology, contemplative practice, intergenerational knowledge, ecological traditions, and my own experience as a therapist and a person in recovery.
Wisdom does not reside only in the individual mind. It can also be found in the body, in our relationships, in the knowledge passed down through generations, and in the more-than-human world.
I would add three more dimensions:
6. Listening to the wisdom of the body
The body often registers something before the analytical mind can explain it. Where do you sense a whole-body no, a cautious maybe, or a heck yes?
7. Drawing upon ancestral and collective wisdom
None of us arrives at a difficult decision alone..What can your elders, teachers, community, or ancestors see that you cannot see by yourself?
8. Learning from the natural world
The living world teaches us about seasons, limits, adaptation, reciprocity, and timing, look to the wisdom of nature to solve some of your most difficult problems.
Three Ways to Practice Wisdom This Week
1. Widen the field
Bring to mind a decision, conflict, or transition you are currently facing. Start with the Berlin wisdom questions:
What do I know to be true?
What knowledge, skills, or support can I draw upon?
How does the larger context of my life shape this decision?
What values and perspectives are involved—mine and other people’s?
What remains uncertain or beyond my control?
2. Consult something larger than yourself
Then step outside the limits of your analytical mind. Go for a walk without headphones. Ask your body what it is sensing. Speak with an elder, teacher, therapist, or trusted friend.
3. Take one wise action
Make the appointment. Have the conversation. Ask for help. Set the boundary. Walk into the room.
Wisdom is a practice.