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Welcome to episode 177 of the Non-Anxious Leader Podcast. I'm Jack Shitama. The idea for today's podcast comes from the article The World Needs Wisdom. Here's how to activate yours by Barbara Waxman. Waxman offers four things you can do to cultivate your wisdom through your life experience, and I agree wholeheartedly with three of them.

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One of them I have my own take on, especially based on what I know from family systems theory. Nonetheless, I think her article is helpful in helping us to understand what wisdom is, how we can cultivate it, and from my perspective, how that is related to self-differentiation. I believe that regardless of age, wisdom is something that requires self awareness and intentionality, but it's worth it. As Waxman writes, "The Harvard Review of Psychiatry recently reviewed a series of studies linking wisdom to better overall health, happiness, life satisfaction, and resilience. Insights that can come with wisdom bring greater individual wellbeing through increased acceptance, gratitude, and calmness, which means less anxiety and depression."

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In short, greater wisdom helps us to be more of a nonanxious presence. Waxman uses the generally accepted definition of wisdom, which is the soundness of an action or decision with regard to the application of experience, knowledge, and good judgment. She also notes that cultivating wisdom is like gardening. It takes nurture and time. She offers a formula for wisdom, which is Wisdom equals heart plus head plus gut plus intuition.

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Let's take a look at how these relate to self-differentiation, the first component of wisdom. Heart is also a main component of self-differentiation, and that is self definition. Self differentiation is knowing your goals and values and being able to express them in healthy ways and work towards them, even in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure. Then heart is what helps us to understand what those goals and values are. It helps us to self define our heart is where we find our purpose, direction, and meaning, and this comes from our goals and values.

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According to Waxman, tuning into your heart requires being able to slow down and pay attention and be present with your environment and yourself. I would call this mindfulness and self awareness. Mindfulness is accepting the present without judgment. It is the ability to know what is going on in your environment, and self awareness is understanding what is going on inside of you, what really matters to you? Why are you reacting to things?

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How can you look at things differently? Listening to your heart requires this ability to be mindful and self aware as you process life's ups and downs without blaming and while taking responsibility for self. This is what makes selfdefinition possible. The next component of wisdom is the head, and Waxman distinguishes between two kinds of intelligence, fluid intelligence and crystallized intelligence. Fluid intelligence is the ability to think quickly and to recall information, and we are definitely sharper in this area when we are younger.

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On the other hand, crystallized intelligence is the accumulation of knowledge, facts and skills. It is the foundation of wisdom because through this accumulation we have a better understanding because of our experiences over time. And of course, you can have crystallized intelligence when you're younger, but the more experiences you have, the greater the potential for crystallized intelligence. Waxman quotes David Brooks, who says, as young adults, you can solve problems quickly, but you know which problems are worth solving as you get older. When you are using your head, you're able to think clearly.

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You're able to capitalize on the understandings and learnings that you've gained throughout life, but you can't live completely in your head. You need your heart, which has processed your experiences so you know what matters. So you're able to take your experiences, your learnings, your crystallized intelligence, and combine it with your goals and values. You also need to be able to self regulate your reactivity so you can think clearly. And this is where I have somewhat of a disagreement with Waxman.

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The third component of wisdom, according to Waxman, is your gut, and she makes the connection between the brain and the digestive system that literally the gut actually is connected to the brain. In episode 108, I go through self regulation and how the vagus nerve connects the brain and the digestive system and helps us to access the parasympathetic nervous system that is the rest and digest system so that when we are in fight or flight mode, we can use that to help us to calm down. Waxman says that we need to follow our gut, that sometimes we are going to feel things in our body that are telling us something is wrong or telling us that we need to go with something. But I believe we have to be careful with that. To go with our gut, we need to be able to distinguish between emotions that are buried in the primitive part of our brain and ones that represent our heart and our head, our purpose and values, and the knowledge we've gained over time.

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One way, I think, is helpful to distinguish this is something a coaching client told me this week that her therapist told her, and this is that if you are feeling it in your body, it is not happening right now. What's meant by that is many of our emotional reactions. Much of our reactivity is built into our primitive brain through habit formation, and these mostly came from how we responded to anxious situations or even trauma. So when somebody speaks to you in a tone of voice that is similar to a critical relative you had growing up and your body tenses up, you start breathing very rapid and shallow breaths. You're feeling very anxious, you're losing focus.

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You are experiencing feelings in your body. And those feelings are not rooted in the present. They are rooted in the past. So when Waxman says we need to listen to our gut, I think we need to be careful about the feelings that we might experience, especially when there are physical ones. Because she mentions butterflies.

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Butterflies can be good. Sometimes they can signal excitement, but they may not be representing what is happening in the present. So I believe when we talk about our gut, we need to be careful. We need to make sure that when our emotions have physical feelings attached to them that we have to be careful and learn to self-regulate first so that we can bring that down and listen to what is next in Waxman's formula. And that is intuition.

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Waxman's definition of intuition is your innermost voice. And I actually think of this as your gut. So I kind of think of your gut and intuition as the same thing that you're listening to that voice that maybe doesn't really explain things rationally to you, but somehow you know the truth. It's beyond logic or learned responses and it's steeped and lived and embodied knowledge that you have gained and inherited. I believe your intuition works best when your head and your heart work together and you are able to self regulate your reactivity.

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Self-differentiation is the ability to follow that intuition because it is hard to trust the intuition when you are in the midst surrounding togetherness pressure. This is where both self-awareness and intentionality make a difference. Self-awareness enables you to acknowledge that intuition and consider that it might be important and intentionality enables you to make a decision and go with it based on what you believe is the best choice in the moment. That is intentionality and that is self-differentiation.

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Waxman cites research that shows the importance of intuition. One survey found that most top leaders turn to experiences and feelings when making important decisions, and another found that of CEOs who exhibited high levels of intuition, actually doubled their business within five years. If you as a self differentiated leader can combine the best of your heart and head and intuition, and then share it with others in a humble way to say, this is what I believe God is leading us to do, I may be wrong. As well as create space for others to express their own heart, head and intuition combined, then you have the best chance of building an effective and resilient team. To me, that is one of the biggest reasons to cultivate wisdom.

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That's it for episode 177. You can connect with me at thenonanxiousleader.com or send me an email at jack@christian-leaders.com. Until next time, thanks and goodbye.