Life is like an everflowing river. You can’t stop it. You can only direct it towards your dreams. And I believe that your dreams will be accomplished as you grow your wisdom.
In fact I believe that wisdom always leads to freedom.
Just like a boat on a river must stay within the channel marked by buoys. Sound principles are guides that keep you safe, and keep you advancing towards making wise decisions about your life.
As you adopt these principles, your life will pivot to wisdom.
I have not discovered these principles. I learned them from a variety of better thinkers. I simply put them in my own words. Once I chose these principles for my life I did my best to stay true to them. And I let them pivot my thinking, my habits, and my decisions toward wisdom.
What is wisdom?
For me wisdom is a “state of thinking”. It means that a high level of discernment has been achieved. You no longer “react”, you “respond” to the various situations life presents you.
I have made many stupid decisions in my life. Many times they were emotional reactions. Other times they were made in the absence of crucial information that was easy to find out. I was simply lazy. Or I let myself be fooled by one of the cognitive biases and prejudices that cloud our judgment.
From a physiology point of view I imagine that wisdom tames the amygdala, the almond shaped part of our brain that receives sensory inputs (sights, sounds, touch, odors, and taste) and immediately decides if we should fight or run away from what is being perceived. Wisdom calms the amygdala and allows information to get to the rational part of our brain, the frontal cortex, so that we can make more judicious choices.
What’s a principle?
There are many excellent books and blog posts written to help us with our personal growth, that state “Laws” or “Rules” for specific skills or areas of our lives. I prefer the word “principle” because the definition implies improving our behaviour. The Oxford dictionary explains:
prin·ci·ple
/ˈprinsəp(ə)l/
noun
- a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behaviour or for a chain of reasoning.
I adopted over the years Life Pivoting Principles because they guided my behaviour. The word principle triggers in my mind a more proactive approach to choices. For example, you can say “Don’t do to others what you don’t want done to you” which is omitting bad actions, or you can choose to “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” which I interpret as a call to action. You will recognize these words from Christ as reported by Apostles Luke and Matthew. There’s an amazing clarity in this famous “golden rule”. In fact Christ completed the thought with “and this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” This fundamental principle makes life’s choices clear.
Learning discernment as a foundation of wisdom
The Proverbs of King Solomon describe wisdom as a person, and folly, the opposite of wisdom, also as a person. This sets the stage to describe behaviours as personal choices a person makes. Wisdom perceives situations correctly, while Folly is misguided and suffers all kinds of unintended negative consequences. The difference is discernment.
I believe that discernment, the ability to judge situations well, is a learned skill. You have to see situations without emotional fog or personal biases. These are called Cognitive biases by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Khaneman in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow.
There are many cognitive biases that affect your perception and that may lead you to make poor choices. In a nutshell, Khaneman teaches us to slow down and watch our thinking to make sure it’s rational and based on correct perceptions. It takes discipline to do so. I work at it daily.
But it helps a lot to rely on principles like the Proverbs of King Solomon, and on mentorship. In my chapter on mentorship, I will describe how bringing in a “second brain” into our decisions helps build our discernment.
Why use the word pivot?
I first encountered the word “pivot” being used in a business context in Eric Ries’ book The Lean Startup. He used it to describe a shift in strategic direction. And that’s probably how you understand it. But looking deeper in the meaning the Canbridge dictionary offers this definition “a fixed point supporting something which turns”.
The fixed point is where we are today, where we start when we begin to think about a serious topic like wisdom. I have made some foolish decisions in my life. When the consequences were painful, I realized that I needed to pivot 180 degrees and move in the opposite direction.
But my pivots are never perfect. While I promise myself that a turning point defines a new principle that I would live by, my alignment to this principle wavered at times. I need constant re-alignment. I need to pivot more precisely toward wisdom. It’s very much like a plane or a boat on automatic pilot. The direction is never perfect as the plane encounters winds and the boat encounters currents. The plane and the boat are constantly pivoting to a more accurate direction. This is why I chose a compass image for the cover of this book.
The “fixed point supporting my turns” is the accumulated wisdom that I express in these life-pivoting-principles. I do my best to stay true to these principles to reduce the amplitude of the corrections I need to do in my life. But I know that I’ll be pivoting toward wisdom for the rest of my life.
Reaching your True North
My fellow Canadians will recognize the words from our national anthem “The True North Strong and Free.” We are a northern country. Living in our climate requires strength. Outside of our cities, the low population density does create a great sense of space and freedom.
I am using a compass as an image because the True North is a chosen direction. We have a fixed point on the globe. On the other hand compasses will actually aim for the magnetic north which shifts and changes over time. I believe all of us have to choose our “true north”, the direction best aligned with our purpose and our values. When your decisions are in line with your purpose and values, you live in the “flow” to use the athletic expression. Life becomes easier and more fulfilling. These principles are our life tool kit.
Wisdom leads to freedom
One of my beliefs is that thinking right in all situations inevitably leads to a high quality life, no matter your starting circumstances. Yes, you may face health challenges or financial difficulties, but wisdom will give you a more complete perspective of such problems. It’ll give you a better focus on effective solutions, and help you reframe every experience with a grateful outlook. I’m not saying that this is easy. But history is full of examples of people who blossomed in the most difficult circumstances. Wisdom gave them mind freedom.
Principles as boundaries for decisions
I don’t know if my little graph will help you. My business degree specialty was called Operations Research. We researched the application of business models to business decisions. It probably damaged my brain forever. Those of you, the weird ones, who enjoy this stuff will recognize a simplex graph.
You have two resources available X1 and X2 and you need to combine them in a way that maximizes your manufacturing output.
However you have constraints (people or machines etc) that are in limited supplies and reduce the options you have to what we call a feasibility region.
I see my Life Pivoting Principles as boundaries on my choices. They define a “wise decisions region”. My choices within that region are correct, but if I cross the boundaries of my principles, I will make bad decisions with bad consequences.
The boundaries may be what keeps me within my budget. It may be simple choices like not having a second bowl of ice cream that would take me outside my calorie count. Or on a more serious note my principles are the boundaries that protect my marriage.
My Life Pivoting Principles form a system. They form a chain. One weak link can undermine the whole system. But this “thinking system” needs to be an open system, not a closed one. There’s always new learning to do. There’s always improvements to be made in how we live.
Adopting and implementing principles
I invite you to read what I wrote about each of these life-pivoting-principles, and to reflect on what you read. I hope your reflection will add value to your life. Maybe you’ll adopt the idea of pivoting to wisdom in general. Or maybe you’ll pick and choose the principles that are relevant to you and that you want to adopt. I sincerely hope that such reflection and adoption of principles will add value to your life.
Until you implement life pivoting principles, they remain simply an interesting idea. Implementing them means creating accountability to yourself. You will have to fight old thinking habits that will tempt you to revert to a previous course of action.
Your willpower and desire to stick to the principles you adopt may need to be encouraged and energized by reminders on your phone, your mirror, by better self-talk. And I certainly recommend that you add to my ideas with some of the books I recommend in each chapter. I am indebted to their authors for the wisdom they shared.
In closing this introduction, I want to express my thanks to my spouse Bonnie who has been my muse, my inspiration, and my first editor. She keeps me aligned with wisdom.
I also want to thank our business colleagues who have helped me with comments and editing suggestions.
And I thank you, dear reader, for being interested in wisdom. I hope my life pivoting principles will help you create a better life for yourself, for your loved ones, and for our society.