Introduction

Wisdom is positively correlated with age – as age increases, wisdom tends to increase. But age does not guarantee wisdom. It takes practice, active practice!  On the other hand, wisdom does not have to wait for age!

In this article, I’ll describe some of the dimensions of wisdom and what I’ve come to develop as Wisdom Therapy – ways we can practice and build our wisdom, and how we can apply it to reduce anger and anxiety and increase well being and positive social relationships.  You’ll recognize several of the concepts. The key is to practice them. I can drive by a gym and recognize it as a gym, but until I walk in and practice with the machines, I’m not going to be getting in shape.  Luckily, life presents countless daily opportunities to practice.

The Components of Wisdom

The components of wisdom are our cognitions or beliefs, perceptions, and assumptions about ourselves, others, and the world, our physiological/body activations and conditioned responses, our overt, observable behaviors, our emotions, our empathy, and compassion towards others, our practice of gratitude, our ability to be mindfully present, our humility and the extent to which we bring all of those to our interactions with others.

Skills can be practiced in all these areas daily. In this article, we’ll explore how these skills can be developed and the ways in which a byproduct of that development is dramatic reduc tions of anger and anxiety. Decades of research have demon strated these empirical outcomes. In the last few years this research has also been applied in Fortune 500 companies and has demon strated significant results in corporations by reducing anger, conflict, stress, and increasing loyalty, productivity, and well being.

The Anger Component

It is said that wisdom is what we get when we don’t get what we want. Anger seems to be an alternative reaction to not getting what we want. When our expectations are not met, we are disappointed and that disappointment often leads to anger. If you expected your children to visit you, but they did not, you may activate your anger response. That anger is stemming from both your general belief that children should visit their parents, which many people seem to share, and your specific belief regarding how frequently they should visit. For one parent, once a year is plenty, for another, twice a week is hardly ever. My mother leans towards the latter!   The well-known joke is the son calls the mother and asks how things are going, and the mother replies, “not so good, I’m really hungry because I haven’t eaten in a week.” The son reacts with concern and asks, “why haven’t you eaten?” The mother replies, “I didn’t want my mouth to be full in case you called.”

Emotions such as anger and anxiety, all have three components; cognitive, physiological, and behavioral.

The Cognitive Component

The Cognitive component includes the beliefs and perceptions of ourselves, others, and the world, such as how crowded the freeway should be in the morning, how we deserve more money, beliefs about how we should be more healthy, should have less pain, and yes, how often the kids should call. The cognitive components of anger and anxiety are based on these beliefs and perceptions.  So-called Cogni tive Distortions such as ‘shoulds,’ ‘musts’, ‘all-or-nothing thinking’, ‘catastrophizing,’ ‘mind-reading,’ ‘personaliza tion,’ and other beliefs and assumptions about the world. If we switch from ‘the world must be this way’ to ‘I would like the world to be more this way,’ we find that a great deal of anger and anxiety are reduced. If I indulge in the cognitive distor tion of all-or-nothing thinking, I may see people and the world as either ‘good’ or ‘bad.’ I say things like ‘that person is ALWAYS doing” so and so, and “I NEVER catch a break.” This behavior suffers from both the cognitive distortions of labeling AND all-or-nothing thinking. Practice in the cognitive area includes actively looking for and catching our cognitive distortions when they occur. Don’t be surprised when you catch dozens, if not hundreds, every day. You can see a full list of the Cognitive Distortions and their descriptions at www.wisdomtherapy.com.

Perceptions and Reactions

With each life challenge, we have choices. The first choice is whether to practice reminding ourselves that we can perceive it as a welcome challenge rather than as an insurmountable problem. A quote, which has helped me through countless challenges, is one by author David Morrell who said, “there is no such thing as a problem, only a pause between ideas.”  When a friend, colleague, or loved one calls me and says “I have a terrible prob lem,” I say, “tell me about your pause.”

Victor Frankl spent several years in a concentration camp under a Nazi regime. During and after that experience, he used the experience to pioneer a new, existential psychotherapy called “logotherapy.” This approach empha sizes that even under the worst of circumstances, although we may not have a great deal of control of our circumstances, we do have dramatic control over how we perceive and react to those circumstances. My son not calling could be interpreted as ungrateful and rude, or busy with his own children and working hard in his job to support them. The person driving on the freeway who enters our lane without warning can be interpreted as a jerk cutting us off maliciously or potentially being on the way to the hospital, or perhaps he did not see us – remember the last time you didn’t see someone and cut them off?  It happens.  We can remind ourselves that there are other ways of seeing situations: “my immediate interpretation is not the only one.”  If you’re wondering what a concrete example of this is in your own life, notice that everyone that drives slower than you on the freeway is a ‘slowpoke’ and everyone that drives faster than us is a ‘maniac’ : )

Humility

Part of humility is recognizing that our perceptions are subjective (others see things differently) and tentative (our perceptions, beliefs change over time). Think about some of your beliefs that have changed from what you believed 20 or 30 years ago. Now think about something that happened last week to which you responded with anger.  What expectation or belief was associated with that anger? Might that belief also change in a year or two?

The other component of the humility aspect of wisdom is appreciation and respect for the grand scale of events. The universe is a very big place! If the Earth is one grain of sand, the universe is much, much bigger than all the oceans and beaches in the world. The universe is also very old – several billion years old. If you contract the history of the universe into one cosmic year wherein the big bang happened on January 1, and we’re now at midnight on December 31, the dinosaurs only appeared on December 27,and went extinct on December 28. Our species didn’t appear until 10:30 p.m. on December 31 and all our recorded history took place between 11:59:50 and 11:59:59 – the last 10 seconds of the cosmic year. So perhaps we should not be too grandiose about the scratch on our car, or someone being late, or how much we have, or don’t have. That said, I’d still rather have an ice cream than a root canal at the dentist – so there’s local meaning as well.

Gratitude

Gratitude is what we already know is a good thing but we don’t practice this much. What can be a daily practice is usually only something practiced on Thanksgiving, Christmas, Chanukah, and on other rare occasions such as during an illness or a recovery. Imagine only going to the gym, or taking walks on Thanksgiving and Christmas? We wouldn’t get in very good shape. Similarly, gratitude can be practiced with every step we take–gratitude for being able to walk, many people have lost that ability due to an accident or illness. Gratitude can be practiced with everything we see–gratitude for being able to see, many people can’t see or hear or lost that ability recently. Gratitude for food on the table, many are going hungry today. When I look at my plate, I look at the vegetables and practice great appreciation for the many months it took to grow each vegetable on my plate, and the arduous work the farm workers had to do to pick the vegetables, and bring them to the markets. A long time ago when I ate meat I also pictured the animals that gave their lives to be on my plate. I’ve been vegetarian ever since. The alternative to gratitude is a sense of entitlement of what the world and people owe us. We can go through whatever time we have in life and keep demanding the world to be as it ‘should’ be.  We’re good at it. We’ve been doing it since we were infants. But as adults, we’re now able to actively reduce the frequency of that ‘should’ reaction and practice more gratitude. Try it and see what happens.

The Mindfulness Component

The last component I’m including in wisdom is that of mindfulness, which is being able to be present. Bringing our attention to the present is a skill that can be developed and has been shown to have dramatic influence in reducing anxiety and anger. Anxiety and fear love the future – ‘what if…’ Mindfulness brings the attention back to the present. The fun quote is that the here and now is a gift; that’s why we call it the present. One of the key methods for developing mindfulness that has been around for thousands of years and has received lots of scientific confirmation in the last 50 years is that of mindful­ness meditation. Practice focusing on something, a candle, a cup, a pen, anything visual. You can also close your eyes and visualize a quiet, beautiful, serene place, and focus on something in that visualization. Now place your hands on your belly, and as you breath in, extend your belly/diaphragm, and as you breath out, contract it. This is diaphragmatic breathing and produces a relaxation response in your body. Remember, anger has that third, physiological component. This is how you practice relaxing that component of anger. As you practice diaphragmatic breathing, slow down your breathing a bit. Takethree-four seconds to breath in and three-four seconds to breath out. As your skill develops in this kind of breathing during weeks or months of daily practice, you’ll be able to simultaneously visualize, or focus attention on something in front of you, and engage in slow, diaphragm-matic breathing.

Conclusion

Each component of wisdom can be practiced daily in just a few minutes or even seconds throughout the day. Hundreds of empirical, scientific outcome studies have demonstrated the effectiveness of each component, in, and of itself, dramatically reducing anger, anxiety, and depression. Wisdom Therapy is integrating these compo-nents together to produce, not just a reduction of anger, anxiety, and depression, but an increase in well being, mindfulness, empathy, compassion, and humility.

Shani Robins Ph.D.  pioneered the field of Wisdom Therapy^TM in 1998.  WT integrates the best practices of Western psychological science and Eastern religious traditions.  Shani completed his B.A. in Psychology and Philosophy with honors from UCLA his M.A. and Ph.D. in Cognitive Experimental Psychology from U.C. Santa Barbara.  He is an instructor at Stanford University and U.C. Berkeley, a licensed Clinical Psychologist (PSY18795), and the founder and director of the Wisdom Therapy Institute.  Dr. Robins applies Wisdom Therapy, Emotional Intelligence, Mindfulness Meditation, and the active cultivation of humility to organizational and corporate consulting.  He has published and has given numerous training workshops and scientific talks nationally and internationally in the field of Wisdom and its relationships to emotions, stress, coping, performance, and organizational consulting.  Among his publications is a chapter on Emotional Intelligence in the Handbook of Consulting Psychology, and a journal article on a systems conceptualization of anger and other emotions.  Dr. Robins is an avid racquetball player and also enjoys playing chess and GO. He rollerblades, salsa dances, runs the occasional marathon, and strives to appreciate the simple things.

There is a wonderful Zen story about a lion that has been chasing a mouse and is about to eat it. The focus of the story is on the mouse and how it responds to the likely end to its life.   With the lion ready to pounce and all roads to escape blocked the mouse is faced with a rather severe existential crisis.  It can be eaten by the lion or fall to a certain death by letting go of the vine it is holding at the edge of a cliff. What is the best course of action open to the mouse? Does the mouse have any responses that can contribute to its quality of life? What does this story have to do with our search for a good quality of life?

The story is a metaphor  in the broad sense in which we do not know which day will be our last. While few of us have lions chasing us none of us knows  for certain how long we will live and what our death will be like. Can any among us know that we will not be hit by a truck tonight or that we will die with dignity surrounded by loved ones?  Whether it be today or tomorrow or thirty years from now we are one day certain to be in the same position as that mouse.

The mouse also serves to illustrate the myriad of situations where life does not turn out the way we hoped it would.  Common situations abound where are children refuse to behave, our work does not go as we would have liked, our car breaks down or we have to pay more money for something than we thought. These situations occur regularly and many times a day we are in situations analogous to the mouse. Simply put,  our quality of life depends on how we deal with these situations. Do we complain of how difficult life is?  Do we act and feel like victims?  Do we blame other people for our troubles or is there another way to respond?

In the Zen story the mouse is hanging for dear life on the edge of a cliff and before it falls to its death spies a strawberry on the vine it is holding.  The mouse grabs the strawberry and eats it noticing how beautiful and delicious it is.  There is no mention of his future or the impending problems he will face. The mouse’s full attention is on the delicious sensation of eating a strawberry.  This ability to pay attention to simple beauty is the prime ingredient to having a good quality of life.

No matter what our situation is in life there is something beautiful to notice and appreciate.  The only thing that ever changes is how difficult it is for us to find it.  What actually changes minute to minute are two related aspects of experience. One is the relative difference between current reality and how we want life to be and the second is how  strongly we adhere to our preference rather than the reality.  In truth, beauty always exists and is there to be found if we wish to look for it. What stops us is how strongly we let our frustration with life as it is and not how we want it to be interfere with  finding something lovely to focus our attention on.

This article was written by Dr. Frederic Luskin, co-founder of MYT Group, LLC.  Dr. Luskin is the Director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Projects and a Senior Consultant in Health Promotion at Stanford University. For many years he was a Preventive Cardiologist at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Dr. Luskin’s extensive research demonstrates that learning forgiveness leads to increased physical vitality, hope, greater self-efficacy, enhanced optimism and conflict resolution skills. His research also shows that forgiveness lessons the physical and emotional toll of stress, and decreases hurt, anger depression and blood pressure.

Most of us spend a fair amount of time reveling in the past. We enjoy the memories of loved ones who have passed away, moments in time where we were thrilled with a wedding, observing the birth of a child, the honor of an athletic achievement or business success, or the joy of a meaningful friendship.

We also spend a fair amount of time in the future. We think about our retirement and imagine the freedom we will have to travel and see our children and our grand children. Or we imagine the big anniversary trip to Paris in three years or a big year for our fledgling firm or that awesome shopping trip with our college friends to San Diego.

Well this article is all about the power of the present, not the past or the future, and why we need to wisely spend more of our time here. Given the stress we have built into our daily lives via our every day family and work responsibilities, it would behoove us to have a system in place to minimize its negative impact. The need is more pronounced when we add a level of 2009 financial anxiety to the mix caused by the threat of a layoff, shrunken retirement & education funds, or the challenge of managing a reduced income with little opportunity to reduce expenses.

Because of extensive research, we now know for a fact that as stress levels increase, the chemical cortisol builds within us. A reasonable question one could ask is this. How much of this corrosive element can our bodies stand and is there a way to let us know if we are reaching a dangerous threshold. There is no easy answer to this two sided question but we feel that there is a remedy. Use the power of the present to neutralize this dilemma.

Before moving forward with this hypothesis, let’s discover a little more about how the brain works. In a low stress environment, the blood in our body flows evenly throughout the body, including the brain. When calm circumstances change and anxiety escalates, the blood supply at the front of the brain starts to flow to the back of the brain, home to the basal ganglia & the amygdale. The basal ganglia serves to minimize the energy drain our bodies constantly demand of us by allowing us to put the keys into the ignition without conscious focus. Sort of like an automatic pilot feature on an airplane. The amygdala is our fight or flight control center. When we are threatened, it is responsible for turning on the adrenalin we may need to address the challenge. When we used caves to shield our families from the elements, the saber tooth tiger thought of this situation as lunch time. So when it showed up at the cave mouth, we grabbed our spears to defend ourselves and the amygdala generated the necessary chemical boost to help us. After the battle was over, the body naturally excreted the adrenalin.

There are a few other ways the brain works that we should review. The frontal cortex, the part that resides just behind our forehead, is where we store recent memory. It’s the place where reasoning takes place. It’s where we “out think” problems. So if the blood is drawn away from this part of the brain our ability to do that thinking declines as our emotional state rises. In essence the brain can do just one of these two things at a time. Think or emote. The more we emote, the less we think. The more we think, the less we emote. At the close of this article we will bring you back to the power of the present to show you how to stay in the frontal cortex longer and the positive impact it will have on you.

We have one last point to make as to how the brain works that will be helpful. Think about the brain & body as interdependent speaking entities. The brain has to do a ton of work on any particular day. It has to regulate our heart rate, our blood pressure, our temperature, our digestive system, our endocrine system, all of our vital organs, all of our muscles, and much more. Imagine that it must be aware of the amount of energy that is needed to do all of this work and that it has to pace the energy out though the day so there is enough to allow us to thrive. In essence the brain doles out the energy economically making sure there is enough to go around. The body is in good shape because here is equilibrium. Just enough energy balanced by the need for that energy. There is calm.

Now add a sudden rush of cortisol because we choose to get irritated or frustrated by the idiot driver and the system gets a jolt of cortisol. Not angry. Just irritated or frustrated. The brain checks the need for the blood to start rushing to the back of the brain and we are off to the races. The heart rate goes up. The blood pressure goes up. The respiratory system demands more and the equilibrium is broken. Add insult to injury, 5 minutes later when it has dawned on us that we should not have taken the incident personally we start to return to calm but we have a dose of that cortisol swashing around inside of us and no way to eliminate it. An hour later, at work, an angry client has misread their monthly statement and has raised your cortisol level by insulting your intelligence. Then there is a policy change that wipes out a potential bonus and to top it all off, your tried, proven, and trusted administrative assistant announces he is moving to another state as his wife just received a terrific promotion. The cortisol just keeps piling up and the stress is building with it. The day finally ends and as you head home just to annoy you one last time, the idiot driver’s brother cuts you off and you get one last jolt before you pull into the driveway. Given all of this, you walk into the house and discover that the folks there are in your judgment inappropriately happy. What a dichotomy of human emotions, anxiety & happiness melding together at the same time.

There are two ways to minimize this dilemma. Every time we get a jolt of cortisol, take a few days vacation. That will work as you all know how invigorated we are after a nice vacation. Yep, the vacation process gets rid of cortisol. It’s not a practical remedy however and so we move to choice two, exercise. It does not have to be rigorous but it should be consistent. 20 to 30 minutes of walking up and down stairwells in your office building or a stroll outdoors when weather permits 2 or 3 times a week will help. Of course a more rigorous combination of aerobic and strength exercises will build a solid firewall and serve you better.

In combination with exercise, there are other ways. A reliable process is the time honored practice of meditation. In India to do some mountain climbing in 2007, I had the opportunity to visit with a Tibetan Monk in Kalimpong. I asked him what advice he could offer to folks who easily get irritated or frustrated. He responds by saying we should empty the tank. For a few moments I slightly nod in agreement but finally, despite my embarrassment, I tell my interpreter that the wisdom I was trying to display has failed me and I do not understand. The Monk wisely proceeds to explain that westerners fill the tank (with gas) and then we run around wildly all day long. To help offset this we should empty the tank. What he suggested we do is empty the mind of any left-over junk from the night’s sleep by starting the day with 10 to 15 minutes of meditation. This way we start the day at zero irritation or frustration and when the idiot driver cuts us off we are better prepared to manage our fight or flight process.

Finally, to help pace us through the day we suggest returning to where we started, The Power of the Present. This is a simple Mind Skill™ that will help you routinely manage the energy flow between the brain and the body. My colleague, Dr. Fred Luskin suggests that what works wonders is the simple act of appreciation. At mid morning, take 2 or 3 minutes to sit back in your chair. Allow your hands to hang down towards the floor and close your eyes. Reflect on the goodness in your life. You are warm. You are neither hungry nor are you thirsty. You are safe. You are healthy, enough so you could comfortably go to work. The odds are that all of your immediate family members are healthy as well. This process gives the body a chance to send a message up to the brain saying thanks for the break, it is greatly appreciated. In fact when the body has to get back to its tasks at hand, it is so energized by the break it promises to be more efficient. Repeat the process at lunch time after your 20 to 30 minute walk but now take 5 or 6 minutes. At mid-afternoon, go back to the 2 or 3 minute time frame and when the day ends, you will have a much higher probability of returning home in the same condition you will find your loves ones, happy. You will have routinely emptied the tank throughout the day and ready for the most important roles you will ever play in life, being a loving mate and parent.

Should you choose not to make these changes in your life style, there is a good chance you will get to have the rest your body regularly screams for. It’s called a heart attack. If you smoke you may not survive it. If you do not smoke there is a good chance you will survive and surely, for a good number of months you will rest. You see, your body was asking for a rest but you drove the brain to do otherwise and because it worked you kept doing it despite all of the literature that you were aware of to the contrary. So now you will rest and if you are lucky and can return to work, you will be adding new chemicals to the ones your body naturally produces and we call them medications. In addition, you will now have the negative side effects of these medications sloshing around inside of you gumming up your body’s vital organs. Not a pretty picture by anyone’s imagination.It’s a better value proposition to learn the Power of the Present and live a longer life.

This synopsis was crafted by Art DeLorenzo, CFP, ChFC, CLU, MSFS, retired Group Vice President at a Fortune Magazine top 100 firm and edited by Frederic Luskin, Ph.D. a psychologist at Stanford University. Mr. DeLorenzo, Dr. Luskin and Dr. Rick Aberman are co- owners of MYT Group, LLC. MYT is an emotional competence development program designed to help participants lower their stress and improve productivity. Details about this program via its Executive Summary can be found at www.maximizeyourtalent.com. Rick Aberman is a principle at the consulting firm Lennick/Aberman Group, LLC. www.lennick/aberman.com.

This article was written by Rick Aberman, Ph.D. of the Lennick Aberman Group and MYT™ Group, LLC. Dr. Aberman, Art DeLorenzo, and Frederic Luskin, Ph.D. are co-owners and co-founders of MYT™ Group, LLC.

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