Content

• To step
• Method 1 of 3: Gaining experience
• Method 2 of 3: Imitating wisdom
• Method 3 of 3: Reflect
• Tips

Confucius once said that there are three ways to learn wisdom: "First, through reflection, which is the noblest, second, through imitation, which is the easiest, and third, through experience, which is the bitterest." Obtaining wisdom, the most prized virtue in almost all cultures, is an exercise in learning to live, analyze carefully, and act thoughtfully.

To step

Method 1 of 3: Gaining experience

1. Develop a beginner's mind. Do you remember the first time you saw dinosaur bones in the museum? Or the first time you ate a really tasty peach? At that point your world expanded by a fraction and you became a little wiser. The Buddhist concept of one beginner's mind refers to the approach taken by a person who is just starting out, filled with the wonder of learning new things and being challenged by them again. This is the receptive state of mind embraced by the wise.
   • Rather than anticipating situations, learn to keep your mind open and say to yourself, "I don't know what to expect," which will allow you to learn and gain wisdom. When you stop having a fixed idea about people, things and situations around you, you grow in wisdom by absorbing changes and new ideas and not putting anyone above or below you.
2. Ask lots of questions. The learning process does not stop simply because you may have graduated from high school or college, or because you have children and have a lot of experience that you want to teach your children. Even if you are a top level teacher or an expert in your field, you are far from done learning. A wise person questions his motivations, questions generally accepted knowledge, and learns to love asking questions in moments of ignorance, because a wise person knows when it is time to learn.
   • Anais Nin has neatly summarized this need to keep learning: “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of phases that we have to go through. People fail because they want to choose a phase and stay in it. This is kind of death. ”
3. Slow down. Be still at least once a day to give yourself time to rest and stop talking in the hustle and bustle of the world. Being busy all the time and worrying incessantly about being perceived as inappropriate can make you a paragon of virtue at work, but it doesn't fool you. Stop. Stand still. Take in what the thoughtful perspective brings you.
   • Fill your time meditating on something. Fill your free time with learning rather than distraction. If you find yourself filling up your spare time with watching television or playing video games, try replacing an hour of television viewing with an hour of reading, or instead choose to watch a nature documentary that you intended to see anyway. Even better is to go out for a walk in the woods. Soon you will be.
     
     
4. Think first and then talk. It's not always important to voice your opinion or contribute in a group just because you can. Wise people don't always have to prove their knowledge. If your opinion is necessary, give it. An old saying goes, "The best samurai rests his sword in its scabbard."
   • This is not to say that you should withdraw socially or never speak. On the contrary, it means that you have to be respectful to others and a good listener. Don't just wait your turn to speak because you think you are wiser than everyone in the room. That's not wisdom, that's selfishness.

Method 2 of 3: Imitating wisdom

1. Learn from mentors. Find people you respect and who mimic the values ​​and ideas that represent wisdom. Look out for people doing things that you find interesting and important. Ask those people questions. Listen carefully to what they have to say, as you will learn a lot from their experience and reflection. When in doubt, ask mentors for advice and guidance. While you don't necessarily have to agree with what they have to say, it will certainly give you food to think about.
   • Mentors don't have to be successful people or people you would like to be. The most sensible person you know might be a bartender, not a math professor. Learn to recognize the wisdom in each person.
2. Read everything. Read the writings of philosophers and social commentators. Read comics. Read Lee Child's adventure novels. Read online or on mobile devices. Get a library card. Read contemporary Irish poetry. Read Melville. Read as if your life depended on it and form opinions about the things you read and talk to others about what you have read.
   • Be sure to read about the topic / area that interests you most, whether for your job or your hobby. Read about other people's experiences and learn how others dealt with situations before you that you probably still have to face.
3. Share with your mentors. It is a mistake to think that wise are above all else. Never bothered by their emotions, wise persons float above the rest of us in a numb bubble of their own making. Not true.
   • Whenever you feel frustrated or disappointed with something, it's natural to want to discuss it with someone who understands. Surround yourself with prepared and receptive wise people who give you a sounding board. Be open with them and they will be honest with you.
4. Practice humility. Is it wise to sell yourself? Business and the marketing world have convinced us that promoting ourselves is necessary because we have managed to turn ourselves into commodities in search of a good sales pitch, and business language often reflects this. However, there is a big difference between acknowledging to yourself and others that you are good at something and exaggerating a range of skills outside of your comfort zone just to keep you in the competition.
   • Being humble is not about relinquishing your self-esteem, but rather it is about being realistic and emphasizing only that which is good and within your capabilities. People, in turn, will be able to count on your reliability for those qualities.
   • Being humble is wise because it allows your true self to shine. Humility also makes you respect the abilities of others instead of fearing them. The wisdom of accepting your own limitations and connecting them with the strengths of others to strengthen yours is immense.
5. Be there for others. Wise people don't have to live in caves or grow wizard beards in their hermit shacks. Exchange wisdom with others to help guide them. Being a mentor and teacher yourself can help other people learn about critical thinking, embrace feelings, love lifelong learning, and rely on themselves.
   • Avoid the temptation to use learning as a barrier to others. Knowledge is not for sharing, and wisdom will only grow when exposed to the ideas of everyone else, no matter how confrontational they may be.

Method 3 of 3: Reflect

1. Learn to recognize your mistakes. The most difficult journey is often the one that requires you to look inside yourself and be honest about what you encounter. Try to work out what beliefs, opinions, and prejudices you hold. It's hard to be wise unless you're willing to know yourself well and learn to love both your strengths and weaknesses in yourself. Knowing yourself gives you the space to grow, and also forgive yourself as you travel through life.
   • Be wary of any self-improvement advice that claims secrets to have. The only secret on self improvement is that it requires hard work and steadfastness. Beyond that, you can experiment at the edges (shown to be striking by the enormous success of the self-help industry), but you cannot change the reality of having to work on your personal introspection and reflection on the world.
2. Accept that you cannot know everything. The wisest people have long been the ones who realize that they really know very little, often despite decades of learning and reflection. The more you think about people, things and events, the more it becomes clear that there is always more to know and that what you do know is but a pinhead in the midst of all knowledge. Accepting the limitations of your own knowledge is a key to wisdom.
   • Don't confuse expertise for wisdom. Expertise refers to a high level of knowledge in a particular area, while wisdom refers to a broader understanding that shows the big picture of that knowledge and a quiet life reassured from your decisions and actions in the light of your knowledge.
3. Be responsible for yourself. Only you can know who you are and only you can be responsible for your final choices. If you have done what was right by someone else's standards instead of your own for years, then you are not responsible for yourself. Change the job where no one recognizes your talents to a job where people discover the tiger in you. Move to a place where you feel comfortable. Find a way to make money that doesn't jeopardize your compassion, care, and interests. Self-responsibility, including learning to accept the consequences of your own decisions, increases wisdom.
4. Simplify your life. For many people there is a sense of meaning in life, made from being overly busy and by complicating everything from work to love. Complexity can make a person feel wanted and important, but that's not wisdom. On the contrary, it is rather a form of distracting oneself and not dealing with life problems that really matter, such as asking yourself what your life purpose is and what life is all about. Complicacy precludes reflection, leaves you vulnerable to the mystique of expertise, and can cause you to make things more difficult than they should be. Keep it simple and wisdom will flourish.

Tips

• You will doubt some decisions, because your decisions are only valid as your train of thought, where you may - sometimes - think that they are not entirely valid. But without decisions you cannot achieve the things you want. No article can advise you on how to balance these wishes, it depends on you.
• If you use logic to make decisions, consider this: When you have too many doubts in your mindset, it will be difficult to make those decisions.
• There are three methods by which we can learn wisdom: first, by reflection, which is the noblest, second, by imitation, which is the easiest, and third, by experience, which is the bitterest.