It’s truth time my people!
Next year, I will be 60 years old.
My somewhat youthful appearance, persistent and intentional immaturity, and portfolio of passions have been wonderful masks for the mathematical reality of my existence. The Big 6-0 is a natural pause point to think about the meandering pathway of my life, and consider who I will become in this next decade.
Will I still go to lots of gigs, even on a school night?
Will I still be relatable for the next generation?
Will my body be able to do what my mind and heart still want to do?
But in the context of work, this is the question I keep coming back to:
What wisdom do I possess?
It feels like now is an inflection point in which I should be assembling, sorting and curating my earned insights and learnings that have come from these 700+ months on the planet. The Rubbermaid containers of life I see in front of me look like:
What have I learned?
What can I share?
What do I see that others can’t or won’t?
I felt this compelling requirement and deadline to hustle it up and get wise!
Having thought about this for more than a few dog walks, I realized it’s all a lie. Age is not correlated to wisdom. The wrinkled and somewhat stiff generation has been falsely claiming this attribute as their own for far too long.
There is no Wisdom Membership Card you earn at some artificial milestone or number. Even when we are talking about a younger person who shows sageness in their actions and words, we couch it by saying, “they are wise beyond their years.” That’s unfair…straight up, they are wise.
In its simplest terms, wisdom is the ability to use your knowledge, understanding, and life experience to make sound decisions and good judgments. That sounds pretty agnostic of age, doesn’t it?
The way I’ve been thinking about it lately is this: wisdom is the engine of sense making. Your skill, credibility, and experience drives it. When things don’t make sense, we lean into our wisdom. We think about what we know to be true. We somatically connect with our gut and feelings to find our way. We process all the inputs and come up with a plan.
And within that, there are three essential components in the wisdom machine that each of us has:
Self-awareness - the ability to see yourself clearly as you are, not how you think you are. It’s knowing how you impact others. It’s the ultimate leadership attribute, at any stage of your career. Grounded in self-confidence and informed by feedback, self-awareness is elemental to wisdom.
Empathy - the innate and insatiable desire to understand, connect to, and hold space for other people. It’s about being curious, listening with your full presence, and never rushing to react…instead, you seek to understand, and then respond. That’s wisdom in action.
Choosing Well - the process of assembling options, discerning well, and making good decisions, with a deep understanding that you will not always get it right. Wise people make more good choices than bad, but they also don’t fret about keeping score.
In this shape-shifting world, I believe wisdom will be an increasingly important attribute. Wisdom will enable us to apply all the greatness and capability of AI and technology into a human framework. It is the source of the nuance, context, gradient, and taste that is increasingly important.
I also firmly believe that wisdom is part of what makes you interesting. Blair Enns, one of the wise thought leaders I follow, said the following in a recent post:
In all the human interaction jobs, the most interesting people will command a premium.
In an automated and agentic world, the interesting people will win…in business, in life, and in relationships. You will become a desirable premium product that others will want to associate with, learn from, and walk alongside. They will seek and find comfort and connection in your wisdom.
So you are wise. It’s within you. You can share it and use it.
Here are a few starter questions for you to get a little closer to the wisdom that lives within you:
What words describe your earned wisdom?
What cool learnings do you possess as a result of your hard-won victories and tough losses?
What words of wisdom and guidance you share with others have the most resonance?