With Age Comes Wisdom

The concept of “With Age Comes Wisdom” is naturally insulted into individuals’ minds when it comes to dealing with problems in life. However, have you ever wondered and looked for the implicit constructs of the saying?

What is the correlation between Getting Older and Wisdom? Do they have any positive or negative relationship with each other? What else exists as latent variables that you have never noticed?

What I am writing below is not about scientific findings, it is just what I personally learned and derived from my life experiences. Please take it as a reference story to entertain you after a hard day of work.

“Youth is the gift of nature, but Age is a work of art (Stanishlaw Jerzy Lec); and Wisdom comes with Age and Experience (Mathew Skelton).”

(Image Source: Freepik)

Many friends of mine often ask me why I continue to write blogs instead of investing time and effort into journals. Actually, I already have the intention to write journals parallel to blogs since I recognize the missions I need to fulfill in this life: 1) Writing to Position Myself in the Academic World, 2) Writing to Inspire and Share Experiences with Others nationwide, or worldwide. During the training time, I need to upgrade myself by completing my MBA program this year and joining the upcoming PhD program next year. I believe that good preparation can help me go further in the Academic World even though I join it late. B

Back to the story of my blog site, I want to keep writing with two purposes: 1) to keep and make my experiences long-lasting on a social network site, 2) to share thoughts and experiences with the ones in need.

At the beginning moment of starting writing blogs, I asked myself how to nourish ideas and collect materials to keep writing and writing. I did not intend to start writing as an impulsive decision. I want to make my blog site meaningful and helpful to the community and to other individuals.

24 months or 2 years is not too long, but too short to recognize that a writing job is not an easy one. It requires self-discipline, creativity, and dedication. Also, it has trained me to sharpen my viewpoints, enrich my arguments, and upgrade my observation and analytical skills. With the “fruits” I bore after 2 years, I can say that the Wisdom for my blogs comes from Age, Experiences, and Experience. In other words, Age, Experiences, and Experience might positively relate to one’s wisdom over time. Why? and How? Let’s explore together.

In fact, as an ordinary person, a typical person has to earn his living; he needs to get a job, and earn money to pay his monthly bills, food, accommodation, and other necessities; he also needs to take care of others as responsibilities; he even needs to satisfy others to gain benefits from them to survive and thrive. To sum up, that person needs to deal with both what he is expected to do and what comes to him unexpectedly.

Clearly, life is not as easy as our childhood expectations. How can a person get over the hecticness of life and get balance to develop? The answer I’m going to reveal is just my personal opinion, it might be right and wrong for you. Just take it as a piece of information you acquire on your life journey.

My answer revolves around the concept of “Mechanism”. According to its definition in the Oxford Dictionary, it indicates a way of achieving something. To make it clearer, let’s analyze a commonly seen case study about People’s Intention.

In a conversation with one of my students this afternoon, we discussed the reason why the 150 masterpiece apartments of a real estate project in Ho Chi Minh City were sold out at the opening day sale. In this case study, the phenomenon of the 150 high-end apartments sold out at the opening day sale is the outcome of our analysis. Our job in the discussion is to collect information or data, use our observations, and then analyze and find out the latent variables contributing to the Buyers’ Intention in this case. The entire process of finding out the factors influencing the intention to buy the luxury apartments is named “Research Process“. Actually, people are supposed to deal with the process every single at work and even at home to solve their problems or explain their concerns. In other words, the process is like the journey of exploring the mechanism of the interested outcomes.

Not only researchers but also ordinary people have to do research every day. The big difference is that researchers are supposed to prove the findings work in broader scopes, ordinary people just focus on their contexts and situations only. Basically, we can learn from the way that researchers are doing to help us effectively solve problems and explain concerns in our lives.

To simplify the process of doing research, the diagram below will generally explain what to do in the order:

Following the diagram, the first thing to do is to define the outcomes, which can be interpreted as current problems or concerns. Based on the concerns/problems, the person-in-charge (PIC) will use his observations, interview results, and collected data to explore the possible factors. Bear in mind that factors comprise easily observed factors and unobserved factors in some complicated cases. When having the factors laid on the table, PIC continues to explore their relationship based on proven principles or theories. At the end of the stage, PIC will have some hypotheses in his hand. The next part requires much effort because he has to survey or at least read more documents to find relevant cases to validate his hypotheses. This stage consumes much time. If a person can maintain the habit of analyzing things surrounding him over time, he must be a great source of social information. His development and thriving are quite obvious.

Now getting back to the case aforementioned, after discussion, we had quite many possible variables like Unique and Strategic Locations, Product Dimensions (Tangible – Facilities, Designs, Furniture, and Intangible – Story ), Marketing Activities, Purchasing Policy and Social Influences. Then we asked ourselves what stands behind the constructs. Any proven principles or theories can define the relationships among the variables.

The theory of planned behavior developed by Ajzen and Fishben in 1975 is likely to explain the relationship among the mentioned factors.

THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR 

Source: the Internet

According to Ajzen and Fishen, the attitudes toward behaviors, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control can cause the intention and then intention leads to behavior. Based on the theory, the project manager did something to touch customers’ attitudes and made them consider whether to buy the apartments; at the same time, social influences like opinions and stress imposed by relevant important individuals can force the rich to consider the project; furthermore, they also proved easy means to possess the apartments. What we were thinking might be right or wrong, we were supposed to sit down and carefully think about that case before jumping to any conclusions.

What I mentioned above demonstrates how to link theories and principles to real cases in life. It’s the application of theories as you might hear daily.  The task of finding the proven principle beyond the factors is definitely important because it helps strengthen your arguments or conclusions then. If you are in a higher social position, you are highly recommended to clarify and validate your sayings.

That Wisdom comes from Age, Experiences, and Experience might be right. It reminds us of getting older with intangible properties constructed by experiences and experience. To turn experiences into real experience, you should start training yourself how to explore the mechanism of your interests in life. Try it and you will see the differences!

Be a researcher of your life to eliminate your stupidity and gradually become more mindful!

Reference: Ajzen, I. (1985). From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior. In Action control: From cognition to behavior (pp. 11-39). Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.