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What is Wisdom?

There is a difference between Wisdom and Knowledge.  They are not the same thing and it is important to know the difference. We could say that when you are learning and studying Principles and Axioms, you are studying knowledge.

Ideally, knowledge is passed on to you by someone who is already wise, meaning they have gone to the next step – experience. This tends to work  better because someone who has already applied the knowledge and gained wisdom is better equipped to share the knowledge in the appropriate context, informed by their experience. They are less likely to add in anything that is incorrect or leave out anything that is important. But regardless of who shares the knowledge with you, always use your own discernment and intend to validate the knowledge through your own application and experience. This is how you gain wisdom.

Thinking about and understanding knowledge, and remembering this knowledge, is an important first step, however, if you do not take action and apply that knowledge in the physical world, you will not have gained any wisdom at all. Wisdom is a function of action. Without action you cannot develop wisdom. Taking action on the insights you have, while studying these principles and axioms, is what will awaken and develop your innate wisdom.  Taking action is how you learn the whens and hows to appropriately use that knowledge in the real world. Then, you can look at the results you produced or failed to produce and clarify how to better use that knowledge in the future.  

Did you know that many people who buy a book for the purpose of improving their life don’t even read the book they bought? It just sits on their shelf. Others will start the book but not finish it, while others will read the book from start to finish but still never do anything with the information in the book. These people are caught in a constant and unending loop of acquiring knowledge, with no real application in their life. Information won’t do anything for you unless you act on your insights. Knowledge is only power if you use it.  You’ve got to participate. Otherwise you are just consuming endlessly.  You have to take the information and create with it.  If not, you are just another seminar junkie, pretending you are doing the work. So do the work. Take action on your insights and you will grow wiser.

As you grow wiser, you will gain more and more understanding about how to better participate in the process of life. Taking action on this information will reveal to you how to correctly apply these principles and axioms, and also, how not to apply them. A wise person is able to live in harmony with the natural laws of this universe instead of working against them. As they do this, they learn to be more successful in fulfilling their goals and manifesting what they desire in the physical world. They also get better at choosing goals that are in harmony with who they are and the deepest desires of their soul.  By choosing more of the right goals, they are more likely to be successful in fulfilling these goals.

Remember, wisdom comes from taking action on true knowledge.  You have the power to increase your wisdom if you choose by simply taking action. As you take more action and pay attention to what you learn from your experiences, wisdom increases.  As wisdom increases, you get better at relating to yourself, others and life in a powerful way. You will know better what you ought to do and you will also know better what you ought not to do. You will get better at telling the difference between what is true (reality) and what is false (illusion) and you will more easily be able to navigate the world and your relationships with other people. 

You will also get better at having your own thoughts, feelings and actions be in harmony with each other. You will understand what you have control over and what you do not have control over.  You will learn to accept that which is not yours to control and to take charge of what you can control. Said another way, wisdom does not seek to control the uncontrollable nor does it surrender that which belongs in the domain of one’s personal responsibility.

I would be remiss not to reference Reinhold Nibuhr’s original Serenity Prayer, as it speaks to wisdom in a profound way.  

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity 
the things that cannot be changed, 
Courage to change the things 
which should be changed, 
and the Wisdom to distinguish 
the one from the other.”

– Reinhold Niebuhr (from the Serenity Prayer)

In an upcoming post I will give you the information you need to know in order to understand what is in your control and what is not.  This will be very useful to you in understanding how to get yourself in balance with control and surrender. It will also make a significant difference in your relationships over time.  For now, I will continue to talk about wisdom in a general sense, but once we have a broad view and a strong foundation, we will be able to go into much more detail. Do your best to really take this conversation in right now because it will give greater life and meaning to the detailed nuances and subtleties I will endeavour to make clear for you later. Stick with it. 

So much more is going to be revealed in these posts but I need to make sure your mind is a fertile soil for the seeds that will be planted there.  Only with fertile soil, water and sunlight will the seeds grow into healthy plants that will continue to flower and produce fruit for you well into the future. 

Let’s continue to highlight some important characteristics of wisdom.

Wisdom is not a finite destination, rather, it is a journey to be embraced and enjoyed with ever increasing benefits along the way. No matter how wise you may already be, you are never done gaining more wisdom. We can always grow to be more wise. The great news is that the more we develop wisdom, the more we naturally and unconsciously continue to develop wisdom. The process of gaining wisdom becomes a habit much like the habit of not learning or not growing may already be a habit for many people. At first it takes conscious effort to develop new practices but eventually the practices become natural and automatic. The more we practice, the more we practice. the more we take action, the more action we will take. The wiser we become, the wiser we become.    

In order to acquire wisdom we must consider and think about the principles and axioms we are learning and begin to relate the information to our own life. As we listen to true knowledge we begin to have new insights and new ideas about how to apply this knowledge in our lives. When we have these insights, we must then take action on these insights so that we may have an experiential understanding of this knowledge. Only once we have a real life experience to which we can relate the knowledge will we have really gained anything of value. 

Whether the action we take produces a successful result or not, it is still valuable to us and helps us to increase our wisdom. If we produce the outcome we intended to produce with the knowledge, then we can continue to apply that knowledge again and again to produce more intended outcomes. If we do not produce our intended outcome, we can still take this experience as useful feedback and determine the source of our failure to produce the result. With this new awareness we now have a better understanding of what not to do. This helps us to make a more informed choice about what the next thing to do is, so that we may be more successful at creating what we are intending to create.

Regardless of whether we succeed or fail, if we are taking action on our insights and we are paying attention to what works and what doesn’t work, we are still becoming wiser. As we consciously apply the knowledge we are learning, we can better know what works and what doesn’t work because we have learned from our own personal experiences of success and failure. This increases our ability to discern true knowledge from false opinions.

Not only is it important to know which knowledge is correct and which is not, it is also important to know when it is appropriate to apply certain knowledge and when it is not appropriate to apply this knowledge. Even if the knowledge is correct, it will not work if it is applied incorrectly or at an inappropriate time. Over time, and with practice, we can continue to develop our awareness of the appropriate applications of knowledge… but only if we know to pursue it at all.

Trust that if you are willing to apply the knowledge you are learning, and willing to learn from your experience as well, that over time, you will become a much wiser person with a greater awareness of your ability to create the life you desire.

All successful people learn by doing. Knowing something without doing makes no difference in a person’s life. The Buddhists have a saying, To know and not to do, is not to know. If you say that you know something, but you aren’t applying it, then you don’t really know it.

Unfortunately, most of humanity has a phobia when it comes to taking the risk of doing something new because of a deeply embedded fear of failure. This is partially because we have been trained not to seek wisdom or even correct knowledge at all. Instead, we have been trained to seek good grades and, more specifically, to avoid getting an ‘F’. The ‘F’ stands for failure and we all know this. We have been systematically trained to believe that failure is bad and that it is one of the worst things we could ever become. 

A great mentor of mine once said to me many years ago that the reason he was more successful than I was at the time, was simply that he had failed more times than I had. After years and years of taking action and having my own failures and learning the lessons that came along with them, I understand what he meant now. Failing is a crucial part of learning. You may not want to hear this but I hope that one day you will hear this again and it will be music to your ears. Failure is an important and necessary part of learning and growing, provided we are correctly using the feedback we get from failing.

Think of the child who learns to walk. They take a few steps and fall down. They get right back up and try again, and again, and again. Soon enough, they figure it out. Every time the toddler falls, he is getting valuable feedback of what not to do that helps him to better know what to do. Allowing himself space to fail is an automatic part of the child’s learning process. He needs not be taught the importance of taking risks and being okay with failing.  He just knows it intuitively.  He also doesn’t decide that he is a failure after he falls down. He never thinks, “This whole walking thing must not be for me. I’m a failure at walking.” He simply takes the next step, joyfully learning to walk. He pays no attention to the falls at all and before you know it, the toddler can walk. It is a beautiful sight to see.

From my personal experience, I can tell you with absolute certainty that I would not be able to play the piano today if my primary objective had been to avoid making any mistakes. My goal was to learn to play the piano. Mistakes were, and still are, nothing but feedback. This is why I don’t think of mistakes as failures at all and I definitely don’t take them personally. They are simply a way of clarifying how not to play the piano. I have made countless mistakes over the last 25 plus years and not a single one of those mistakes matter even one little bit today. Because I was willing to make mistakes, I accomplished a dream of mine. I can play the piano and I keep getting better at it too. 

On top of this, most people, when they fail to produce an intended outcome, also make the critical error of thinking they are a failure as a person. They take the failure personally, and turn it into part of their own identity. However, it is not true. You are not a failure just because you failed to produce an intended outcome. You were meant to fail in this life many more times than you were meant to succeed. We must learn to see so-called “failure” as a positive thing if we want to become happier, healthier, wealthier, freer, more creative, etc… Then eventually, the word failure disappears as we begin to see all of our failures as a natural part of the process of success. 

Failure is a doorway into true wisdom and the great news is that while you can learn from your own failures, you can also learn from the failures of others. Our failures help those around us. Their failures help us too. When we work together and let go of the stigma of failure, we can go further because we are learning and clarifying what doesn’t work. As we clarify the ways in which something doesn’t work, we are eliminating those options and getting closer to the way that will work.   

Fear of Death

All our fears can be traced back to a fear of death. Whether we are afraid of falling, afraid of being exiled from our tribe, afraid of the dark, or afraid of losing love, all these fears come down to being afraid of death.  It is a deep fear of non-existence, the death of our own ego, and the loss of our identity along with all the unknowns that follow. 

During the covid pandemic, the entire world collectively agreed that we needed to lockdown, wear masks, get vaccinated, distance ourselves from each other and all of this was to avoid one thing…death. The motivation was not to make sure we are living life to the fullest. The motivation was (and still is) not dying, and keeping people safe from an early death.  The most successful people easily see through this kind of thinking because they understand that you never create a life worth living by avoiding death.  Avoiding death is not the way to live.   

You may be afraid to die but if you spend your life trying to avoid death, how can you ever really live? I’m not saying you should be reckless. I am simply asserting that we need to learn to accept death as a possibility. When I’ve got my guitar and I’m singing a song onstage, I can’t be trying to “not sound bad.” You can’t build a business by focusing on “not losing money” and you can’t make friends by worrying about people “not liking you.”  Every time I am on stage, I risk sounding bad.  New business ventures risk losing money and if you are really being yourself in life, you are risking people not liking you. This is just how it is.  Life has risks. The goal is to learn to take risks intelligently and learn from mistakes, not to avoid risk at all cost.  

The only way a society could be convinced to give up their rights and freedoms for the purpose of “staying safe” is if the people in that society have more fear of dying than fear of not living. If you spend your life afraid of death, then you are guaranteed not to live. This should scare you more than dying. Most people would rather live a long life just to die with regret than to take the risk of death now for a chance to truly live.  Read that again.

I’m not just talking about the covid pandemic of course. I’m talking about the person who wants to write that book, or learn to play an instrument, or be in a relationship, or start that business, who never tries because they are afraid they might fail. Again, people are afraid of the death of their own ego. Most people live in a delusion that if they never try, then they have never failed. The illusion that they hold onto is that since they have never really tried, they may still be a winner. This person imagines that one day, someday in the future, they may apply themselves… but someday never comes.

I hate to break your bubble, but if you never go for it and risk failure, you most certainly will fail to produce the result you want and you will certainly fail. One of the greatest hockey players of all time, Wayne Gretsky, said it best when he said:

“You miss 100% of the shots You don’t take”

You become what you avoid. If you spend your whole life avoiding failure you will always become a failure. If you spend your life avoiding death, you will never truly live. You will die at the end of your life, but you will have been dead for years because you never allowed yourself to live.

The secret is to look at your fear of failure. Imagine yourself at the end of your life, having not even attempted.  Think through what it will feel like.  Make it real in your mind so you can get the impact of continuing along the path you are currently on. You need to get to the point where you have more fear of not living than fear of dying.  You need to consider the impact of avoiding failure.  Confront it now so you can make some new choices in your life.  Don’t just read these words.  Apply this thought process and see what opens up for you mentally and emotionally.

NOTE: If you have any irritation, boredom, judgments, or complaints about the last section on failure (or any part of this blog for that matter), I suggest you read it again several times as you may be blocking yourself from an important realization. Consider that it can seem easier to complain, judge, criticize or check out mentally, than it is to confront the fear of failure. Relate this section to whatever you care about in your life.

I am aware of how much I repeat myself.  I do this for a reason. I have only the power of words to get you to see what your own mind doesn’t want you to see.  If I say something only once, your mind can easily pass over it.  If I say it again and again in different ways, it becomes harder to ignore.  Human beings tend to hide their fears from others, however, in order to hide our fears from others, we must first hide them from ourselves.  A good liar must first lie to themselves to be convincing for the simple reason that it is easier to lie to others when you think you are sincerely telling the truth.  If you feel like the last few sentences don’t apply to you, they probably do apply to you.  Whether you will admit it or not, is up to you. One of my favorite quotes sums up this idea quite eloquently:

“When an honest man discovers he is mistaken, he will either cease being mistaken or cease being honest.”

 – anonymous

If you do not generate the courage to tell the truth where you have been lying to yourself, you will forever live in the prison of your own illusion. You will continue to tell the stories that reinforce your own self-imposed limitations, believing they are real, and blaming someone or something outside of yourself for what you have not accomplished. Meanwhile, your freedom will continue to be, just one honest confession away.