[Neurons] Latest book from Neuro-Semantics --- EXECUTIVE WISDOM

Wed Jan 5 14:55:48 EST 2022

From: L. Michael Hall

meta at acsol.net 

If the most fundamental think you do in your life is think, then learning
how to really think, to think clearly, precisely, and creatively ought to be
on your list of New Year’s Resolutions!  To that end I wrote a series of
books:

·        Executive Thinking

·        Executive Learning

·        Executive Decision Making

·        Metaphorical Thinking

·        Hypnotic Thinking 

·        Thinking as a Modeler

Now to finish out that series--- Executive Wisdom.  After all, isn’t that
what we all want?  To make wise decisions rather than foolish, to think in
wise ways so we can live a life well-lived. 

Below is the cover, contents, and preface.

To order at the special price of $20 ---   

Use  www.neurosemantics.com/pay-a-statement/ 

Add $8 à $28 for inside the US.

Add $38 à $58 for outside the US.    

If you want to order several books at the same time and save on the postage
cost, write to me at meta at acsol.net 

Back Page

Executive Wisdom

To achieve your full potential as a human being, you will want to activate
all of your executive powers— for thinking, learning, choosing, and being
wise.  The quality of your life depends on it.  It begins with clear and
independent thinking and culminates in developing penetrating insights about
how to live and relate wisely.

Wisdom is the ultimate executive function.  Beyond your intelligence, by
which you build up knowledge and understanding, there is the mystery and the
power of wisdom.  Paradoxically wisdom is practical, yet heavenly.  It
speaks about how you treat yourself and others, yet it deals with timeless
truths.  In moments of creative insights you have an Aha! which you can
develop into lifestyle wisdom.  Instead of foolish words and actions, you
wisely know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.  In this, wisdom is
the magic that deeply transforms the heart.

Wisdom transcends intelligence and knowledge empowering you to avoid both
the foolishness of rash responses and forgetting to contextualize an insight
as you speak, make decisions, and respond.  Wisdom is also disconcerting
because it has no content—there’s no curriculum for wisdom.  And even though
wisdom emerges in a context of uncertainty and you know it is extremely
important, it does not feel urgently important.  Yet given the omni-presence
of human folly, we desperately need wisdom.

Having modeled wisdom as a highly desired experience, Dr. Hall in Executive
Wisdom presents the “aspects of wisdom” required for wisdom which are not,
in themselves, wisdom.  He presents the three dimensions of wisdom and then
the wisdom skills which arise as your executive functions from your
prefrontal cortex.  With wisdom you can live with more grace, more
compassion, more insight, more creativity, and more elegance.

NSP: Neuro-Semantic Publications —  <http://www.neurosemantics.com/>
www.neurosemantics.com 

Executive Wisdom\

Becoming One of the Wise Ones

Preface

Part I: Wisdom’s Mystery 

1) The Mystery of Defining

    Wisdom
8

2) Closing in on Wisdom’s

    Mystery
18

3) De-Mystifying Wisdom
30

4) Why is Wisdom important?
48

5) Why are we so foolish?
54

6) What Wisdom Could Do 

     for You
63

Part II: Aspects of Wisdom

70

7) Clear Thinking

     Truth Seeking
71

8) Calm Thinking

      Reflective Thinking
80

9) Relevant Thinking

     Process, Dynamic, Holistic
90

     Collaborative Thinking

10) Discernment

      Comprehensive Thinking
104

11) Character Development

      Heartful Thinking
113

Part III: Wisdom Skills
125

13) Wisdom Skills
127

14) Restraining Yourself
133

15) Framing / Reframing
144

16) Discerning Decisions
152

17) Resiliently Adapting
162

18) Courageously Challenging
170

Part IV: Wisdom as       Lifestyle
175

19) Making Wisdom Lifestyle
176

20) The Beginning of 

       Lifestyle Wisdom
185

21. Living Being-values Wisdom 

192

Appendices

Appendix A
206

         The Executive Series

Bibliography
208

Author
210

PREFACE

                            “Be as wise as serpents, and as harmless as
doves.”

Matthew 10:16

W

isdom is not only a grand and glorious theme, it is an essential experience.
You can’t live the good life without it.  Wisdom touches on the moral and
the spiritual, it reaches for timeless truths and the ultimate questions, it
also plants its feet solidly on earth as it addresses the practical—loving,
earning a living, eating moderately, exercising regularly, and so on.
Because wisdom is critical for survival— for wise decisions, it is urgent.
We need it now.  Robert Sternberg wrote a stunning statement about the
urgency of wisdom.

“Wisdom is the only thing that will save us, it’s all about doing the right
thing.”

“Save us!?”  Save us from what?  Because wisdom is both about ultimate
truths (Socrates), and about doing the right thing in living a good
meaningful life (Aristotle), wisdom describes high quality living.  So
wisdom, first of all, saves us from low quality living— materialistic
consumerism living, racing between the latest name-brand item, striving for
more “likes” on Facebook to feel important, struggling with depression,
anxiety, loneliness, etc.  Wisdom saves a person from the lack of vitality,
energy, and motivation that comes from the lack of a value-based sense of
purpose and meaning.

The saving grace of wisdom also rescues us from our own stupidities, from
our intelligent foolishness, and from our sophisticated self-destructive
lifestyles.  Wisdom saves because life’s choices and quality depend on more
than just what we do, it depends on how we live.  But mostly, wisdom saves
us from ourselves!  Wisdom saves us from our over-confidence, our self-will
stubbornness, and our harsh self-judgments.  I know; I speak from
experience.

Wisdom transcends the higher levels of human intelligence and understanding
to discernment about what’s truly important.  In this way, wisdom saves us
from the overwhelming glut of information in which we are drowning.  Wisdom
saves us from the ever-accelerating innovations of technology which make
life more impersonal.  Wisdom goes far beyond the mere knowledge of
intelligence.  Without wisdom we would only be intelligent fools.  Many
brilliant people, in spite of their intelligence, have lived foolish and
even destructive lives.

I write about wisdom, not because I have attained wisdom, but because I have
not.  That’s where wisdom starts—from a realization of how little we know,
how poor our judgments, how inadequate our knowledge, and how fragile our
lives.  It’s limitations that teach us about wisdom and it’s limitations
that enable us to appreciate wisdom.

I have spent nearly all of my life going after knowledge, first biblical
knowledge, then psychological knowledge, and after that knowledge about “the
further reaches of human nature” (Maslow)—self-actualization.  I have
studied and modeled knowledge about wealth, politics, leadership, business,
self-actualization, health and fitness, relationships, communication,
language, resilience, and more.1  But knowledge is not wisdom.  Whatever
wisdom is, it is beyond and above and after knowledge.

With all of that search for knowledge, while it has provided a modicum of
understanding about a great many processes, it mostly has given me a deeper
appreciation of how little I know.  It has deepened my appreciation of my
ignorance, and to quote Socrates, that not-knowing has paradoxically  made
me a bit wiser.

While studying and writing for this book, I simultaneously began writing an
autobiography, not to publish, but to know myself a little bit better.
After all, wisdom depends on the ability to “Know Thyself.”  Many have
suggested that it is only in looking back with hindsight that we begin to
understand our life.  As I have done that, I have only begun to comprehend
the degree and amount of foolishness in my own journey through life.  It has
been immense. I told Geraldine that I should title the autobiography, “A
Journey in and through Foolishness.”

If wisdom is seeing the whole picture, seeing behind appearances to reality,
and seeing life with a gentle heart and compassionate eyes, then writing the
autobiography has helped me to develop a reflective wisdom about the many
foolish thoughts, decisions, and actions of my life— my journey in
anti-wisdom.

Actually, we need wisdom far more than information or knowledge or
intelligence.  To find and live the good life, merely following great
procedure or rules will not do.  Life is far too variable, change is too
constant, and each day is too unpredictable.  We need the wisdom of nuance
thinking for the complex situations we face.  We need wisdom as a systemic
perspective of the dynamic flux and flow of life with all of its turns and
twists, all of its surprises.  We need the wisdom of holding multiple
perspectives simultaneously without getting overwhelmed. 

Will you become wise by reading this book?  While it is possible, it is not
probable.  That’s because wisdom does not work that way.  First, wisdom is
not a content subject that you study, research, take tests in, and then get
a degree.  Instead wisdom arises in contexts of uncertainty when you bring
about an integration of knowledge and understanding from multiple areas so
you experience a moment of creative insight.  And for that to occur, you
will have not only read but experientially integrated many of the aspects of
wisdom.  Then, if you do that repeatedly, you will begin to learn how to
turn the wisdom moments on at your command.  Then you will become more ready
to live wisely as a lifestyle.  And that will change you—your very character
will become more and more wise.

Wise Distinctions

All wisdom is not the same.  In this book, I have distinguished three
dimensions of wisdom.  First, there is the wise moment as the experience of
wisdom.  It typically occurs in a context of uncertainty and ambiguity— a
context that requires something more than knowledge.  In that moment, what
is said, done, or chosen is imminently relevant and appropriate.  It is
“just the right thing” for those involved as it cuts through appearance and
goes to what’s real.

With repeated moments, moments that you replicate, you speech, actions, and
choices reflect a wise lifestyle.  While some wise moments do arise
accidently, it is when you consciously and intentionally use your higher
executive functions in your prefrontal cortex for a multitude of wise
moments that you begin to live wisdom as a lifestyle.

Together the momentary wise insights and the habituation of the higher
processes bring about a wisdom, not only about what you do, but who you are.
Now your very character becomes wise and increasingly characterized by the
insight, compassion, humility, curiosity, and serenity of a wise person.

These dimensions of wisdom do not operate in a linear way; they are circular
in nature.  Each feeds into the other.  And they work against the forces of
foolishness.  These forces are those that make up the non-thinking patterns
by which we default to all kinds of cognitive distortions, biases, and
fallacies.  As wisdom stands against foolishness and given that there are so
many ways to be foolish, wisdom is an incredibly rich and complex state as
you will soon discover.

In one study of wisdom, Sternberg and others concluded that wisdom is
relatively rare.  How rare I don’t know.  Here’s to the possibility that we
and our children, and the generations which will follow, will grow up to be
wise.  Wouldn’t that be a great legacy? 

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

Executive Director, Neuro-Semantics

P.O. Box 8

Clifton CO. 81520 USA

www.neurosemantics.com 

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134324 NeuroSemantics Inside Out Front Cover

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