Being Wise

Being Wise

Have you started paying attention to your wisdom? Are you aware of how smart you are? Do you own your insight?

How do you know you are intelligent?

Sometimes, there are well-meaning people in our lives who ascribe to the notion that accusing someone of being stupid will improve that someone’s behavior. It doesn’t. Sometimes they are not so well-meaning, and are saying that as part of their legacy of childhood, that is, their adults shamed them.

Why am I smart? How am I wise? What makes me clever?

So, over the years, we get the idea that we aren’t brilliant, that we aren’t wise. We decide that since maybe we aren’t smart at X, we aren’t smart. We delude ourselves, and then we fix those delusions into our personal dogma. Dang.

Fixed delusions. Unsupportive beliefs. Wrong thinking.

How do I know I’ve got some of that going on?  I feel bad. It’s really that simple. If I feel bad, I have something off operating in my brain.

How can I choose? Why do I decide? What makes me positive?

We have all got smarts about something, even if we don’t all have smarts about everything. Smarts tends to be more about fact-type stuff. Like friends who can rattle off information about amazing topics. Sometimes, we have the kind of smarts that gets valued in school, and sometimes our smarts are barely recognized in school. Sometimes our smarts are mechanical, in that we can build or fix stuff like a whiz. Sometimes our smarts are musical or in the visual arts, or even culinary smarts.

Smarts tend to be something we learn, someone needs to teach us. We might be able to figure some stuff out in our smart places, but we will need to be taught, maybe by a live person in front of us, maybe by books or videos.

Wisdom isn’t taught. Wisdom bubbles up from inside. Wisdom is often about information from our belly-brain, information about the relationship between things, intuitive information, deep, non-verbal stuff. Wisdom produces insights into ourselves, our communities, our world. Wisdom can often produce life-changing ideas.

Wisdom cannot be taught.

We can nurture our wisdom. We can recognize it, and cultivate it, and listen to it. As we own our wisdom, we find ourselves coming to know who we are more profoundly. This, in turn, will often bring us more self-compassion, and more compassion for each other. As we practice cultivating our wisdom, we will also become more self-forgiving, better at letting go, slower to hold a grudge. Our wisdom lets us see the big picture and the little details.

How have I changed from doubting my wisdom to owning my own brilliant mind?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2014 all rights reserved 05122014

How do you feel when you are wise?

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