Wisdom isn’t something that appears. It’s something that grows and happens over time. Each moment spent after a mistake, each comment during a meeting, and each simple task done repeatedly help to build wisdom. These moments help to gather the insight needed for more experience.
These stories are more than just tips and tricks. They are the rough gems that help to build understanding and offer the lessons that a formal education ignores. Here are 15 of these gems, stories of experience that I’ve collected over the years. These stories help you find your own nuggets of wisdom and enrich your life.
Table of Contents
1. The Unseen Foundation: Mundane Mastery
Most of us are excited for the result, the accomplishment. But there is a lot of wisdom to be found in the preparation, the behind-the-scenes work, and the foundation. The way you clean up your email, the way you structure your reports, the way you prepare for your meetings, the way you wash the dishes.
These systems create space to think. Mental space converts into focus. There is a lot of value in being good at the things people do not want to do. Automate, systemise, and appreciate the boring. It is an invaluable partner in every success story.
2. The Strength of “I Don’t Know”
In a world that rewards confidence, admitting that you don’t know something seems weak. But it’s not. A powerful piece of advice is, “I don’t know, but I’ll find out.” There are multiple benefits to this approach, including earning trust, gaining new partners, and being willing to learn. It means that your foundation is not built on a bluff.
This small piece of advice has been helpful to me on many occasions. It turns what could have been an embarrassing moment into an opportunity for growth and new connections. It shows confidence, not weakness.
3. The Ability to Listen to the Silence
The majority of people don’t listen. It is not common to find someone who will hear the fear, emotion, and hesitance that hides behind the words. There is a message in the pause, the speed of words, and the choice of words. People are taking in a thousand different sounds. These varying sounds capture a moment of fear. The pause in the middle of a message communicates out of silence. It is often in the discontinuity of words that the real message lies. People are better leaders and partners when they listen to the pauses as well as the words. And people deserve to be understood, not just heard.
4. Big Feelings Call For A 24-Hour Cooling Off Period
Anger, excitement, and being offended are all tricky feelings that can lead you to make bad decisions. One of the most critical lessons in dealing with strong emotions is to wait 24 hours before deciding to do anything that could have consequences. Avoid sending that email, making that call, signing that document, or making a public announcement.
Just sleep on it. Wait until the strong emotions go away before saying or doing anything. Most of the time (90%, to be exact), the way you want to respond will improve. This rule has saved countless relationships, coworkers, and more.
5. Your Network is Your Net Worth
It may be a saying, but it is also true. This isn’t about having half a dozen get-rich-quick schemes connected on LinkedIn. This is about taking the time to cultivate and build genuine relationships with individuals or small groups of people, both in and outside of your niche, people with whom you share the same work admiration, and people with whom you share starkly different or opposing viewpoints.
Long before you need anything, invest time to build a good relationship with them. Aid them in their work, support them, and stay in touch. Your most valuable career opportunities will not come from sending a cold email to a company. Your opportunities will arise from relationships you have gradually cultivated.
6. The Power of Compound Interest
We tend to misunderstand time. A day is much longer than we think, but a year can provide an opportunity for considerable growth. Spending 15 minutes each day exercising can change your life. Writing one page every day can result in a completed book. Saving any bit of money can lead to an enormous profit down the road. The magic is not in the one-time, spur-of-the-moment acts of greatness. The magic is in focusing on the small, monotonous actions that can be repeated over and over again. The process is more critical than an isolated effort. Sustained change over time can result from small actions repeated repeatedly.
7. Failures are Data, not Identity
Setbacks and failures are obstacles that we all face. To create a more sustainable system of learning, we need to make a significant shift in how we view failure. We need to look at the perpetrator of the failure in the face and ask ourselves, “Did that attempt fail?” Step back from the situation and view failures from a scientific perspective. What was the hypothesis? What was the answer to the hypothesis? How should the results be adjusted?
Avoid looking at these experiences as setbacks. Viewing mistakes in this manner can provide the expertise needed for the next, more calculated approach.
8. The Art of Strategic Quitting
Most people see quitting as an ominoussign of weakness or failure. The truth is, knowing when to stop is a superpower. Consider dead-end jobs… or a partner… or a relationship… or anything,g really… and ask yourself, “If I weren’t involved in this, would I do it today?” If your answer is a firm “no”, then it is time to make a quitting plan.
Toughing it out is actually wrong. Putting your time, energy, and money to use better is more critical than futilely sticking with a losing cause.
9. Energy Management Trumps Time Management
Time is immutable… it cannot be changed, created or added to. What can be changed is the way you manage your energy. This is how you reclaim time.
The most challenging work should always be scheduled for the time of day when you have the most energy. Hard cognitive work should be at the start of your day. Administrative work can be moved to times when you have less energy.
Make sure to protect your emotional energy, too. A fully energised and focused hour is worth three regular hours.
10. The Ritual Over the Goal
Rituals are the journeys we take, while goals are the destinations. When we focus too much on the goal itself, it can be discouraging. Fixing on the goal can turn the journey’s excitement into disappointment. Visibly losing 20 pounds or writing a whole novel can be very tedious. The better option is to gain excitement from the journey itself. Enjoy the morning walks, writing hours, and meal prepping.
Outcome is a product of the journey. The result is the goal, but the progress is the ritual. With this, we can appreciate the process. This way, the focus is on the process and not the goal.
11. Context is Everything
A business strategy, a piece of advice, or a life decision can be copied and pasted a thousand times, but won’t succeed if the context is overlooked. Any instance of blind, repetitive copying and pasting can be avoided by recognising this principle. A plan that works for your tech startup in 2024 can be detrimental to your family-run manufacturing business.
What worked or didn’t work in a given situation can be a helpful answer for your life’s context. Still, it can also be a trap of repetitive copying and pasting that avoids the contextual principles of your life.
12. Kindness Refinement
We unconsciously assume that people either have or don’t have the skill of being kind. I learned that it is, in fact, a skill that takes conscious effort, much like practising a musical instrument. This humanising little nugget of experience means being patient when frustrated, providing praise, and sending a note that says ‘hi’ for no particular reason.
It is goodwill for no reason, and like any skill, it needs to be honed. You will earn trust, goodwill and self-satisfaction.
13. Life’s Simple MVP
The MVP, or Minimum Viable Product, is a tech term for the most basic, functional version of a service. Use it to take a step and think. Is it time to get healthy? Your MVP is a 10-minute workout. Is it time to start that blog? Your MVP is a 500-word post on a free blog.
Get your MVP going. Action will give you momentum and direction in ways planning never will, and from that point on, you can improve your MVP. You can’t do that from an ideal concept in your mind.
14. You Are the Average of Your Five Daily Inputs
Jim Rohn said that you are the average of the five people you associate with the most. Let’s expand on that. You are also the average of the five things you take in every day: the news that you read, the social media that you like, the tunes you listen to, the conversations that you have, the food you eat, etc.
You must curate your input stream. This specific, controlling piece of your environment is about architecture. Fill it with high-quality, inspiring, positive, and educational content. Your mind and your output will reflect it.
15. The Permission Slip You Write Yourself
Last, and most personally relevant piece of these experiences. We spend so much time waiting for permission—a boss, a parent, society, a credential. The most liberating experience is realising that you can permit yourself.
Permission to change your mind. Permission to take a break. Permission to take the road less travelled. Permission to say no to something. Permission to start from the bottom. There are no outside approvals for this. It is the most liberating experience to give yourself. You write it, you sign it, you enforce it.
Be sure to understand that these fifteen snippets of knowledge should not be perceived as a binding guidebook; instead, consider them a starting point to fuel inspiration and a reflection of your own individual path. The scattered pieces of wisdom are personal to each individual. When you read a piece of wisdom and think to yourself, “Yes, but in my case…,” that is your opportunity to differentiate yourself from the rest and add your personal wisdom to it. Gather your snippets of knowledge and be sure to acknowledge them. Write them down, and express them to others. A life of value is made up of these snippets, experiences, and lessons shared.
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