Rather than prejudging situations, learn to keep your mind open and tell yourself “I don’t know what to expect,” which will allow you to learn and gain wisdom. When you cease to have a fixed idea of people, things, and situations surrounding you, you grow in wisdom by soaking up changes, new ideas, and don’t set any person above or beneath you. [2] X Research source
Anais Nin neatly summed up this need to continue learning: “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. " When you share knowledge, you also learn better since you recognize your own understanding and how you may organize the information better. [4] X Research source
Fill your time with contemplation. Fill your free time with learning rather than distractions. If you find yourself filling downtime with television or video games, try to substitute an hour of television with 1 hour of reading or choose instead to watch a nature documentary you’ve been meaning to watch. Better yet, go outside and go for a hike in the woods.
This isn’t to say you should withdraw socially or never speak. Rather, be receptive to others and be a good listener. Don’t just wait for your turn to speak because you think you’re wiser than everyone else in the room. That’s not wisdom, that’s egotism.
Mentors don’t have to be successful people or people you want to “be like. " The wisest person you know might be a bartender, not a professor of mathematics. Learn to recognize the wisdom in everyone.
Read especially about your particular fields of interest, whether it be your job or your hobby. Read about other people’s experiences and learn how others before you have dealt with situations that you’re likely to face.
When you’re feeling frustrated or disappointed in something, it’s natural to want to discuss it with someone who will understand. Surround yourself with willing and receptive wise people who’ll give you a sounding board. Be open with them and they’ll be open with you.
Being humble is not about abdicating your self-worth; rather, it’s about being realistic and only emphasizing all that is good and capable within you. In turn, people will know that they can depend on your reliability for those traits. Being humble is wise because it allows the real you to shine through. Humility also ensures that you respect the abilities of others rather than fearing them; the wisdom of accepting your own limitations and connecting with other people’s strengths to bolster yours is infinite.
Avoid the temptation to use learning as a barrier against others. Knowledge is for sharing not hoarding, and wisdom will only grow when exposed to everyone else’s ideas no matter how confronting they may be.
Be wary of any self-improvement advice that claims to have “secrets”. The only “secret” to self-improvement is that it requires hard work and constancy. Beyond that, you can fiddle at the edges (attested to remarkably by the massive success of the self-help industry) but you cannot change the reality of having to do the work of personal introspection and reflection on the world yourself.
Don’t confuse expertise with wisdom. Expertise refers to a high level of knowledge in a distinct field, whereas wisdom refers to the broader notion seeing the big picture of that knowledge, and to live calmly reassured of your decisions and actions in light of your knowledge.
As you grow wiser in a topic, it should become more simple for you to understand. If something still seems complex to you, you may not understand the basic building blocks of the subject.
