Are You Wise? Would You Like To Be? What Is Wisdom Anyway? Cultivating Wisdom and Wise Mind - Especially in Nutty and Confusing Times

“True wisdom comes to each of us when we realize how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.” — Socrates

Not long ago, psychologists ran a simple test. Participants were told to imagine a friend calling to say he couldn’t go on living. What would they say?

It wasn’t a cruel exercise but a study in wisdom. Researchers weren’t measuring IQ or cleverness. They were looking for something deeper: the capacity to make sound judgments guided by empathy, perspective, and moral understanding.

Wisdom—once revered by the Greeks and woven into every great faith—feels rare today. We prize information, speed, and certainty, but wisdom asks for humility, patience, and reflection. It may be, as Socrates said, that the wisest thing we can do is admit how little we know.

There are many sides of wisdom. It is not intelligence or totally about the practical experience we get through ageing, though both can help. It’s the ability to see life in shades of gray and to hold competing truths without collapsing into cynicism.

Wise people can say, “I understand why she did that, even if I wouldn’t have.” They can laugh at their mistakes, grow from their losses, and remain curious about other viewpoints and faiths.

Psychologist Robert Sternberg, one of the foremost researchers on wisdom, believes we can teach it. His “Teaching for Wisdom” program at Yale exposes students to classic literature and philosophy, prompting them to wrestle with big questions of truth and value. Yet Sternberg also worries—as I do—that our educational systems push us to be technologically advanced but not necessarily humanly wise. (If you know anyone going to Yale, tell them to take this class and get back to us. Hint. Hint.)

Sternberg recommends that we learn other languages, read novels that challenge us, and study history through multiple perspectives. I once read American history from the viewpoint of Indigenous people and couldn’t do it without tears. That’s what wisdom does: it widens the heart as much as the mind.

Wisdom grows through dialogue and perspective. It begins when we look around our dinner tables and realize that everyone thinks a little differently—and that’s a gift. We ask questions to help reveal their thoughts.  It’s more about perspective getting than perspective taking. Because often we make wrong assumptions about others’ thoughts.

Of course, if all our close friends share our opinions, we are not going to pick up much new in the way of perspective. It’s could be time to invite someone who doesn’t see the world like our little group out to coffee. Neuroscientists remind us that the human brain jumps to conclusions with very little data, then spends its energy proving itself right. Wisdom interrupts that reflex. It listens. It pauses. It says, “Tell me more.”

Psychologist Igor Grossmann calls this “intellectual humility,” the recognition that our view is always partial (My favorite story is the one about the blind men arguing over what an elephant is - limited by what they have the opportunity to experience with their touch. That story has made it around the world and stayed relevant for thousands of years it seems). That humility, studies show, leads to better relationships, better decisions, and a more peaceful mind.

Blind men and elephant - a timeless story

Yet, we do have a gift right inside ourselves that we might not be tapping into. Psychologist Marsha Linehan, the founder of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (Linehan is not just a therapist. She considered the most eminent person in the world for treating borderline personality disorder which often makes people highly reactive and behaviorally impulsive. Though people with BPD long for good relationships, people usually get tired of walking on eggshells around them. It was long considered impossible to treat. Here's the kicker. Linehan herself had borderline personality disorder and freed herself! She knows of what she speaks.) coined a phrase and a concept I’ve come to love: Wise Mind. She taught that every person has three minds: Emotion Mind, Reason Mind, and Wise Mind.

• Emotion Mind runs on feelings—reactive, intense, and often urgent. It’s what makes us shout in anger or dissolve in worry.

• Reason Mind runs on logic—cool, detached, focused only on facts. It’s useful for balancing a checkbook but not for comforting a grieving friend.

• Wise Mind is where the two overlap. It’s the deep, centered knowing that arises when heart and head finally listen to each other.

  
  

Linehan discovered that when people learn to pause, breathe, and simply notice what’s happening—without immediately reacting—they can access this Wise Mind. The pause allows the amygdala, the brain’s emotional alarm bell, to quiet. Then the prefrontal cortex—the seat of reason, planning, and empathy—comes back online.

In that calm space, we can ask: What is the wisest thing to do right now?

If we don’t access this inner wisdom, we tend to swing between extremes—emotionally flooded or coldly detached. Too much Emotion Mind can make us lash out or despair. Too much Reason Mind can make us robotic, missing the humanity and meaning of the moment. Staying in either too long distances us from others and from our own integrity.

But when we inhabit Wise Mind, we are grounded and compassionate. We can hold conflicting truths—our pain and our hope, our fear and our courage—without being torn apart by them.

Linehan said that learning to listen to our Wise Mind feels “like coming home.”

When we live from that space, our choices shift. We pause before reacting and judging. We see human suffering instead of only mistakes. And life begins to feel more coherent.

Maybe you've had moments when you saw yourself act wisely. How do you access your “wise brain”? Your best judgment? Make the best choice? Did you do something similar to what Linehan suggests?

For me, it does often mean taking a breath. Imagine warming my heart.

It can help me to think of wise people. They can be real, dead or alive or even fictional. I often picture Armand Gamache, the fictional detective created by Louise Penny. Gamache listens more than he speaks. He looks at people with compassion before judgment. He laughs easily at his mistakes. Imagining or connecting with a spiritual entity beside us can be incredibly powerful. And I have several wise, ripened friends.

Still we may need to deepen our understanding and widen our perspective to cultivate more wisdom even if we are emotionally calm and centered and warm-hearted under pressure.

Want to grow a little wisdom with me?

• Invite someone with a different worldview to coffee.

• Read a book that challenges your thinking.

• Practice saying, “I don’t know—tell me more.”

• Be intellectually humble.

  
  

  And in the meantime, before reacting:

  Pause, take a breath, and ask, What would my Wise Mind do right now?

  
  

Blessing for the Journey

May we learn, with courage and humility, to hold life’s questions lightly and people tenderly. May we breathe before reacting, listen before judging, and act from that calm center where wisdom lives. May we grow together until wisdom ripens within us like fruit in the sun.

How might we journey together to The Good Life by accessing and nurturing wisdom and our wise mind?

sidebar:

Wisdom is typically assessed through a combination of open-ended dilemma responses, behavioral observations, and self-report or peer-report scales that evaluate qualities such as emotional regulation, empathy, humility, moral reasoning, and ability to see multiple perspectives.

The most well-known method, developed by the Berlin Wisdom Project, presents people with difficult life dilemmas and scores their responses across domains like factual knowledge about life, procedural knowledge, perspective-taking, value relativism, and recognition of uncertainty. Other validated tools measure cognitive, reflective, and compassionate dimensions of wisdom. A key feature of all assessments is that wisdom is judged not by “right answers,” but by depth of reflection, balance of heart and mind, and capacity to hold complexity.

Example Scenarios and Scoring

1. Scenario: A friend tells you they are considering ending their marriage because they feel “unhappy and bored.”

   • Low-wisdom response score: Gives quick advice (“Just leave if you’re unhappy; life’s short”) with little exploration of values, consequences, or multiple perspectives.

   • High-wisdom response score: Acknowledges emotional pain, encourages reflection on causes, considers multiple viewpoints (spouse, children, long-term effects), recognizes uncertainty, and suggests seeking deeper understanding before acting.

2. Scenario: A 17-year-old is torn between pursuing a high-paying career their parents want or a creative field they love.

   • Low-wisdom response score: Offers a simplistic rule (“Follow the money—security matters most”) without nuance.

   • High-wisdom response score: Helps the teen consider personal values, long-term meaning, practical realities, potential compromises, emotional impact on family relationships, and acknowledges there is no single “correct” path.