With Purpose Success, part 48

You have perspective and technical skills. You have learned some things about patience and compassion. Your experiences make you the way you are and shape what you can yet be-namely, an influential force of one with the opportunity to make a difference by keying on what's important to you and doing something about it. 

When you bloom as a young adult there's a beauty and innocence to it-but you are just beginning to discover who you are. When you bloom or go through a metamorphosis in middlescence there's an authority to it; you have knowledge and roots and perspective. Such wisdom is no small thing. Socrates found the notion of wisdom so perplexing that when asked to define it he simply shrugged and said he had never seen it-in himself or anyone else. Wisdom has been thought to be so rare that it typically is ascribed only to heroes in folklore like King Arthur or biblical figures like King Solomon or spiritual visionaries like Confucius, 

Buddha, Abraham, Mohammed, and Jesus Christ.

Yet scientific research over the last thirty years shows us that the wisdom we need to keep growing and making good decisions is within almost everyone's grasp, and that it is closely associated with the aging process. Indeed, German researchers in the mid-1980s working on something called the Berlin Wisdom Paradigm concluded that you are most likely to experience peak wisdom at age sixty, though it is possible to peak at almost any age up to year seventy-five. The Berlin Paradigm defined wisdom as "an expert knowledge system concerning the fundamental pragmatics of life." Wisdom in action, the Berlin group concluded, amounts to good judgment, shrewd advice, insight, keeping one's emotions in check and empathizing. 

This research has had practical effects: leading companies like Boeing, Volkswagen, John Deere, Stanley Consultants, S.C. Johnson, L.L. Bean, 

CVS, and Home Depot now actively recruit and seek to retain a fifty-plus workforce. Older workers cost about 1 percent more to employ mainly because of the greater cost of their benefits, according to an AARP study. 

But employers have come to assign an even greater value to the knowledge, experience, perspective, and ability to mentor young workers that a seasoned employee may offer. 

What does this mean for you? Well, for one thing your odds of finding a welcoming employer later in life are better than ever. Forward- thinking companies are beginning to understand the value of experience in a knowledge-based economy. But the main point is that your middles- cent years are your wisest to date; right now is when you have the most to offer in any endeavor you tackle. 

Monika Ardelt, a German sociologist, concluded that wisdom is built around the ability to understand human nature, perceive a situation clearly, and make good decisions despite competing interests and conflicting information. Wisdom also incorporates the ability to step out of oneself and understand multiple perspectives. All of these traits, re searchers agree, become more prevalent as you progress up the age spectrum. 

Wise people learn and gain perspective from setbacks; they are able to view problems as puzzles to be solved-not as fate or punishment. 

Wisdom can arise in people of ordinary backgrounds, Ardelt found, as readily as it arises in those who have been highly educated. 

Are you wise? Try this short quiz: