Wisdom

You know the guy I'm talking about. He's the brainiac or the walking encyclopedia who recites arcane facts but has no idea what "man-splaining" means. He's the one who knows Albert Einstein's birthday but forgets his own wedding anniversary. He's the "knowledge worker" who desperately could use a "wisdom worker" by his side when it comes to understanding humans.

Leadership guru Warren Bennis said long ago that the best leaders are "first-class noticers," a term he borrowed from Saul Bellow's novel "The Actual." He was referring to the idea that a combination of fresh eyes and a wise soul can help a leader see things in people and an organization that aren't as noticeable to others.

Jane Goodall went to Tanzania to study chimps the year I was born, 1960. During her six decades of championing chimps, she showed the world how much we have in common with these beautiful primates. Her compassion toward wildlife and nature has led her to be considered one of the world's leading futurists.

"In old traditions, those who acted as elders were considered to have one foot in daily life and the other foot in the otherworld. Elders acted as a bridge between the visible world and the unseen realms of spirit and soul. A person in touch with the otherworld stands out because something normally invisible can be seen through them…"

As a follow-up to yesterday’s Wisdom Well blog post, here’s part 2:

My friend Kevin Kelly’s blog post on 103 Bits of Advice went viral, so I figured I’d do a deep dive into my own list—62 bits of advice I wish I’d learned earlier (Part 1). It also reminds me of Baz Lurhmann’s “Everybody’s free to wear sunscreen.” Here’s the first half:

These words tumbled out of the Stoic philosopher Seneca’s mouth more than 2,000 years ago. Today, they’re an important reminder that pursuing wisdom is a choice, and it’s often the result of a skinned knee or a bruised ego. In other words, our current difficulties create our future discernment.

Write a book on wisdom, and the number one question you hear at book signings is “How do you define wisdom?” I tried to answer this on stage at the Commonwealth Club with Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky a few years ago. You can see in this video that it took me more than three minutes to answer the question.

I’d never heard of the Harvard-founded concept of "Deep Smarts" until last month, or the book title by the same name.

Since returning from my MEA workshop in early December, I’ve focused on my daily journaling practice which begins with writing down The 8 Practices of Modern Elderhood: Noticing, Editing, Mastering, Purposing, Catalyzing, Connecting, Serving, and Presencing. I don’t journal about each practice each day, but I journal on one or more of them as they emerge in some important form during my day.