Too busy to read?

Spend more time learning from others - it might be your retired neighbour, your elderly grandparents, your children or an ex-boss. Your wisdom grows as you spend time discussing your dreams, challenges and concerns with a range of different people.

Each school has its own take on wisdom, but the same themes appear in all of them: The need to ask questions. The need to study and reflect. The importance of intellectual humility. The power of experiences--most of all failure and mistakes--to open our eyes to truth and understanding.

We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world.

'By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.' Confucius

To paraphrase the words of the mystic Rumi, yesterday you were clever, so you wanted to change the world; today you are wise, so you are changing yourself.