How Overcoming Obstacles Makes You Wiser
What is wisdom? Can it be scientifically defined? For millennia, people defined wisdom in a variety of ways, yet all seemed to rely on an idea that could be phrased as “I know it when I see it.” Can something so important be left to intuition, or can wisdom actually be quantified?
Answering this question became the basis for a research study called The Wisdom Research Project, and the results of this study became the basis of the book Common Wisdom: 8 Scientific Elements of a Meaningful Life by Laura Gabayan, a world-renowned physician-researcher. The goal of this study was to scientifically determine if wisdom is what in Latin would be called sui generis (“of its own kind” or “in a class by itself”) or if wisdom was a combination of different elements. In other words, is the purpose of life to attain wisdom, or do we use wisdom for the purpose of attempting to understand the meaning of life? Or both?
Common Wisdom scientifically determined the 8 most common elements of wisdom, and discusses what they are and how to better attain them.
Of the 8 elements, the most common was resilience. Here is a brief, edited excerpt of the discussion about resilience found in Common Wisdom:
Resilience was the most common element associated with wisdom. It makes sense. When we think about people who have encountered a difficult life challenge and resolved it with grace, we tend to regard them with special admiration. We become intrigued by how that person managed to not only survive the obstacle but thrive. They have turned a potentially negative experience into a positive learning opportunity, making them wiser. The more of these life challenges they overcome, the wiser they seem to be. As Oprah Winfrey once noted, they turned their “wounds into wisdom.”
Although we mentally compare the types of obstacles and their gravity, all obstacles are difficult, regardless of how we quantify them. What may seem like a minor challenge to us may be a major life-altering event to someone else. Whether it be a strained relationship, health crisis, or loss of a loved one, wise people view life’s challenges as lessons. They don’t view themselves as victims but rather as students—here to learn lessons that would have otherwise never been learned. In essence, they believe they needed that obstacle. It helped further shape who they are and built their character. The bigger the obstacle, the bigger the lesson, and as is often said, “The harder you fall, the higher you bounce.”
Resilience is a way of being. It is a mindset that you are not a victim but a warrior. Life is not always fair and is full of obstacles that have to be overcome. Helen Keller said, “Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.” In many ways, it is accepting that notion that puts us at peace and lets us be prepared to fight. It’s not that we are on high alert every moment of our lives; it is that we know life will throw us obstacles, but we are prepared to take them head-on and are confident we will overcome them.
Inner resilience first starts with how you feel about yourself. It’s the knowledge that you are strong and you are capable of overcoming anything that comes your way. It’s a sense of self-confidence and integrity. It is knowing that what you stand for matters for yourself and others. By having self-respect, you ensure that others have respect for you as well. All these things combined contribute to an inner strength that’s necessary for resilience. At the end of the day, we all want to be loved and respected. Being respected by others will lead to more feelings of self-confidence, and this, in turn, will lead to a greater sense of self-worth. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle.
Remember the famous saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? An obstacle serves as a lesson, resulting in a more resilient and wiser you. In fact, after each obstacle, you become more and more equipped to say, “I can do it,” to the next obstacle. This inner confidence feeds how you interact with the outside world. Resilience also instills in you a sense of gratitude for the challenge. You welcome the obstacle and think, Bring it on. Over time, you view every obstacle as a challenge to be overcome, secure in the knowledge that you will come out the other end with even more knowledge, experience, and confidence in yourself.
An obstacle can also serve as an awakening or major life-changing experience. Maybe you or someone you know has gone through a horrible life event and completely changed their perspective and life as a result. This is often referred to as a “spiritual awakening.” Deepak Chopra said, “Awakening is not changing who you are, but discarding who you are not.”
In spiritual terms, a way to view an obstacle is that it is there to develop your soul. In many ways, the fact that it is there is a sign that the divine feels you can master it, and it won’t break you but will make you stronger. In a surprising way, the obstacle is a gift.
Another way to attain resilience is to believe that things do not happen to you but for you. When things seem to be going wrong, and your life seems to be encountering great turbulence, think of the bigger picture. Realizing that these experiences help us become stronger, smarter, more resilient, and thus wiser changes these experiences into something much more powerful and transformative. It’s easy to ask Why? or Why me? Instead, try asking Why not me? That question, along with the confidence that you can handle it, will lead to greater resilience.
You can learn more about resilience and the other 7 elements of wisdom, in Common Wisdom: 8 Scientific Elements of a Meaningful Life, available, on Amazon.
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