Can your wake improve your wisdom?

Can our wake improve your wisdom? 

When we ask ourselves how to react to events that happened in the past, we often seem to look for two options:  

1. What can we learn from what just happened?
2. What do we need to do based on what just happened, either to avoid it or to profit from it.

Dr. Henry Cloud, in his book Integrity (2006) teaches us about the values of trust, leadership, character, and self-development. He looks at aspects of wisdom and knowledge in the context of issues and problem solving. 

Neil Fleming came up with a nice way to describe in his model, how wisdom actually develops from Data. With that in mind, when we look at the question of how to react to events in the past, Cloud offers a nice metaphor that I like to encourage my readers to follow why they continue forward on their path to wisdom. 

This metaphor compares the events that happen to us in life to a ride on a nice powerboat in the Caribbean. You should imagine yourself standing on the boat, close to the steering wheel looking back towards the wake. We will see more or less white water and foam, depending on the speed of the boat as it drives us through life. Typically we will not see a straight line and there are waves of different height. We remember how the boat jumped when it took these waves and how it leaned into the turns that we can now see in the wake. 

Yes, we learned from it and over time we became wise to the point to find a balance and alignment between the speed and the radius of the turn our boat in its current configuration, taking wind, waves, and weather into account. 

Most importantly, what this story tells us is that we can’t really change the past. We can look at and admire our wake or the one of others boats around us. We can recognize the bumps and turns, but all we can really do is turn around and look forward into the future, making sure that the turns, the speed and the way we take the waves is in line with what we are trying to achieve for us and everything around us. 

If you like to learn more about your wake and how you can shape the future based on the wisdom derived from the past, then go and discover your Performance IQ. Just put in AMC LLC as your point of contact and I will be in touch with you, offering you the keys to success based on your assessment results. 

Axel Meierhoefer, President, AMC LLC