I wise person once said

How wise are you?

I was listening to a speaker the other day talking about the difference between being wise and being smart. Firstly it must be noted that being educated does not mean that you are wise.

Being smart allows you a freedom of knowing the best course of action through a specific situation. Being wise is the understanding of the fact that you do not know everything and that there are people who are smarter and wiser then yourself. Knowing this, allows you to put pride aside and ask questions and receive guidance.

Recently the Idea of mentors has become very popular, although this idea has been implanted by very successful professionals for years. Some of the smartest most successful people I know have mentors, someone to guide your ideas and set you on the right path.
Being wise allows you to understand that no matter how much you know you can still learn something from someone else.

Will smith said something at the Nickelodeon kids choice awards about three years ago which caught my attention. He said “you are like your friends, if your friends are a bunch of thugs you are a thug.”

This is relevant because it important to note that you should model yourself after someone wise. It would be foolish to model yourself after someone who does not understand that they don’t know everything.

When we are growing up a lot of us want to be just like our mom or our dad because to us they are the wisest people we know. We understand that they know far more than us and we seek advice. People often note how fast children learn, although this has no scientific justification, but could the reason for this not be because as we become older we start to believe we already know everything and choose to stop learning.

When I heard this speaker talk about how we need to accept our faults and seek the advice of others it hit a nerve. I am very proud at times and tend to ignore the advice of others because I often feel I know more than them. This speaker made me realise how foolish I had been. When I arrived in Joburg I understood that the only way I was going to survive was if I stole as much information from the people around me as possible and used it to work for me. I modelled myself after the members of my staff who achieved the most, I used the procedure implanted by my company because it has been tried and tested, and subsequently I am now the top money earner in my department.

The foolish man believes he knows everything, the wise man learns from those around him. “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.” William Shakespeare
Surround yourself by people smarter and wiser then yourself and you will become wise.

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