What is the secret of a wise outlook on life and how to find it

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Try not only to get into the essence of things, but also to grasp their interconnection.

How simple knowledge differs from wisdom

Knowledge is primarily about facts. You have learned something and you know how to apply it in a specific context. But don't stop there, strive for the next stage - wisdom.

A wise person has learned something, but does not believe that it can be used in one single case. He sees how one phenomenon is related to all the others.

If knowledge provides practical value, then wisdom changes our interaction with the world. Entrepreneur and blogger Zat Rana shared how to shape a wiser outlook on life.

How to gain wisdom

Apply knowledge in a wider context

If you have not only memorized new information, but also assimilated it, your perception of the world changes slightly.

For example, imagine this situation: you are a student, take a difficult exam and decide to cheat. The instructor notices this, and as a result, you are not transferred to the next course. From this, you can conclude that cheating on exams is risky. And while the likelihood of getting caught is quite small, the consequences can make a big difference in your life for the worse. You decide not to do this anymore.

But this is not yet a wise approach. Transform the knowledge gained in a particular situation into a broadly applicable rule. Cheating isn't the only thing that has dire consequences. You need to be careful with all decisions that have a disproportionately high risk in the financial, career, personal spheres.

To master the basic life principle, you need to connect the essence of the experience gained with your previous knowledge.

Create your own information network

There is Metcalfe's Law in science. It was first used to describe the growth of telecommunications systems, but it is applicable in other areas as well. According to this law, the usefulness of the network increases with the number of connected users. Any system has nodes and links between them. Its value is determined not by the number of individual elements, but by the number of connections.

For example, ten separate phones are of little use. Interaction with other gadgets makes them useful. And the more devices are connected to each other, the higher the value of the network.

The same applies to the connections between different types of knowledge in our heads. The more there are, the more valuable our information network is.

Every time you learn something new, you either apply this knowledge in a narrow context, or relate it to previous experience. It is in the process of creating new connections that wisdom accumulates.

In such a network of knowledge, each node is a mental model that reflects some aspect of reality. But by itself it is of little use. It is necessary to disassemble it into parts and correlate with the information of neighboring mental models.

To develop wisdom in yourself, look at life through the prism of the entire information network, and not through its individual elements.