I'm aware I have a low-wisdom mind, but don't know how to change it

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Kind of a self-Pitting, but not in the Pit.

So - the past few years, age 31-34, I’ve finally pinpointed the problem that’s been plaguing me my whole life - namely that I am high-IQ but low-wisdom, and my decisions are often befuddled or bereft of common sense. Unfortunately, identifying the problem hasn’t fixed it; even as of a few weeks ago I was still making face-palmingly bad decisions. Things that are common sense to others are not common to me at all. My family has commented that I may be on the asperger’s spectrum.

Is there a way to…raise one’s WQ, so to speak? I have been seeking advice about decisions but the fundamental problem is that my mind lacks sound judgment. Unless I were to have some sort of all-wise companion accompanying me everywhere I go, telling me “Velocity, do this, don’t do that, say this, don’t say that,” I’m on pace to spend the next 40-50 years of my life just stepping on land mines repeatedly. And then any time someone tells me not to do XYZ, I tend to over-correct and then go to the opposite and equally unhealthy extreme of not-XYZ. I’ve felt, not for the first time, that my brain sometimes is just fundamentally incompatible with human society, it’s just not wired right. It’s cost me my finances, job, multiple relationships, friends, etc.

2

It’s not easy to find one, but do you think a plain old talk therapist you trust would be helpful? If it truly is a question of thinking through decisions and coming to the wrong conclusions, they should be well-positioned to help you see what you’re missing. They aren’t going to be following you around 24/7, but hopefully most life-changing decisions are things you’re thinking about for a little bit. Best case scenario you learn some things about what instincts you’re following down the wrong path and are able to coach yourself through them, and worst case scenario you only screw up those decisions that can’t wait 1-6 days until your next session.

3

I believe you can pick up a lot of wisdom through reading, as long as you read the “right” things and are open to what they have to teach you.

Read “self-help”-style books that explain how the world works and how best to meet the challenges it presents you with.

Read great literature, or at least good fiction, that gives you a look at different aspects of the world from different people’s points of view.

Read history and biography, that explains what happened and why.

Read autobiographies and memoirs written by self-aware people who have picked up a lot of wisom along the way.

Read and meditate on the world’s philosophical and religious classics.

Read a good advice columnist, and try to guess the answers they will give to people’s questions before you read their answers.

4

If not a therapist then perhaps a clinical psychologist could help. When you’re faced with a decision, for some reason you can’t see the best way to react. You come up with some other choice which often turns out to be wrong or self-destructive. If you discuss this with someone who understands why we do the things we do, they can help guide you to make better decisions in the future, starting with small decisions without any huge consequences. Ultimately this is a skill you’ll need to acquire to successfully get through life.

5

I’ve tried various therapists before but they all sounded like they were 1) reading from a textbook or pamphlet, like very scripted answers or 2) would “tell you what needs to be done but not how to do it.”

The second one is the one I struggle with because I’m still at Square One. Like, if I were to say that I keep making mistakes, they would be like, “Well, you need to have clearer judgment.” Well, of course…that’s why I’m there. It’s kind of like a depression patient being told that the trick is to stop being depressed.

6

Yup, that’s it. Using a football analogy, I’m like a quarterback that has no clue how to handle a blitz. When the blitz comes, I either get sacked, do intentional grounding, fumble or something similar.

7

Using your analogy maybe it has to do with having to make a decision under pressure versus not under pressure? I suffer from that sometimes too. Even if the pressure is self-imposed.

8

Isn’t this what a mate is for, to follow you around and point out the correct way to do things.

9

To take your analogy and run with it (heh), once a quarterback gets experience they learn how to handle pressure situations better. It’s said that ‘the game slows down for them’ so when the blitz comes they don’t panic and make the wrong decision.

To apply that to your situation, you didn’t specify any examples of your areas of weakness, but I’d say, whatever it is, real-world practice makes perfect (or at least, better). You mentioned your family bringing up the possibility of Asperger’s. Do you have a hard time reading non-verbal communication cues? Get out there and put yourself in low-pressure situations where you will mingle with people to practice. Join a book club, or a fantasy football club that meets in person, or something.

10

First off, if a therapist tells you what to do, they’re not doing their job. The whole idea is to ask you questions, not provide answers. By answering the questions yourself, you gain insight, which - hopefully - will help.

Second, I am not a therapist, nor do I have any form of training in psychology. As a teacher, I do have some experience dealing with students in their late teens struggling within the autism spectrum (Asperger vanished with DSM-V, IIRC). I’ll give you examples to see if you can relate:
I arrange to meet a student outside the library at 10:30. Having finished my coffee break a little early, I arrive at 10:28. Student shows up at exactly 10:30 and gets upset at me for waiting there. In their thinking, us meeting at 10:30 means we should arrive at the exact same time.
Another student comes into my office, sits down, stars at their shoes and says: “I think I need to train on eye contact.”

Without exceptions, I’ve found that the students with this diagnosis are emotionally immature, as compared to their peers at the same age. They also seem to have a problem with empathy, as in when they show empathy, it seems like something they have learned to do, not something they feel.

If you think you’re on the autism spectrum, there are a gazillion sites that will tell you more. So called self-help books tend to be as effective as books on a new diet fad, i.e. small to nil. When you feel you have a fair, if not good, handle on what might be the problem, seek help from a proper psychologist.

BTW, the fact that you’re willing to share and ask for help is sign of maturity. Wisdom is over rated. It certainly doesn’t come automatically with age. If anything, I think we get less certain the more we know and the older we get. This might be mistaken for ‘wisdom.’

11

This all too rare bit of self-awareness and humility suggests that you have a lot more wisdom than you give yourself credit for.

12

The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.

13

I’m going to venture that it’s not something you can overcome overnight.

If I look back at how I’ve coped (I’m an extroverted scientist*) I’d make a coupled set of recommendations:

When you have a decision to make on an action or reaction, don’t go with your first impulse. Ask yourself “what would an adult do?” and consider doing that. By adult, I don’t mean yourself, but some idealized construct of what an adult should be (rather than what we really are as adults).

Spend a larger proportion of your time listening (receiving) and observing as opposed to talking (transmitting) and acting. I think that’s how I came up with the data set for my “what an adult would do”.

*You can tell you are talking to an extroverted scientist because during the conversation, they are looking at your shoes.

14

Let’s say that Jane is shy. Jane is told that she needs to meet people so she should go to the party that’s happening, walk up to the first person she sees and introduce herself.

She thinks to herself, “I should try to be cheerful and likable”. So she puts on very bright clothing and thick, colorful makeup. At the party, she goes to each person with the biggest smile and the largest eyes she can manage and makes sure - not letting anyone else talk - to tell them about herself, about how she was forced to come to the party, how people are always afraid of her, and so on. She’s trying to make friends and the important part of friends is that you know and understand each other.

And to the people that meet her, she’s a crazy looking girl who walks around like a robot, shouting at each person she meets, the entire tale of her life of craziness. They’re obviously disconcerted, and she can tell that.

Jane goes back to being shy. No progress.

Except, let’s say that instead of going back to being shy and avoiding parties, Jane says, “Okay, clearly I did it wrong. I’m shy, that’s too extreme a version of sociability. Tonight, I wasn’t shy and people acted like I was jumping on their feet. Maybe that was too much? Next time, I should try to find something between those two or ask someone to go with me, who knows how to socialize, to tell me when I’m going too far or not far enough.”

Maybe it’s not aspergers or whatever all else, maybe it’s a matter that hitting the right balance is a skill and, like any skill, it can help to receive instruction and for you to calmly review the output, hypothesize, and go out to test your theories.

But, likewise, if Jane was to ask someone to help her and, rather than treating it like a class, she simply, blindly does what the instructor tells her to do - telling herself the whole time that she’s unable to learn this skill and unfit for the purpose. She’s not going to try learning the skill. She’ll do good while the instructor is puppeting her actions. And when the instructor leaves, she’ll go back to being horrible.

Even with a teacher, you have to be actively learning; trying to figure out what the rules are that make you decide one thing in a situation and another thing in a similar situation; trying to figure out the underlying logic so you can apply it to other situations; asking questions to narrow in on answers; and continuing to think about it even after the class is finished and following up with more questions.

If you believe that you can learn, you have good nutrition and sleep, put yourself into learning scenarios, take time to calmly reflect and hypothesize, perform peer reviews, and keep repeating the process, then you can get there.

15

I could have, but it’s literally almost everything, it would have been a long list. To give a few:

Money - donated large sums of money before that I shouldn’t have (including one particularly bad decision to donate a thousand dollars to an organization run by a televangelist scammer, and also other bad religious-motivated money decisions), wasted about $40,000 in the last decade in bad spending. About the only good financial decision I ever made was that I started putting money in my 401k at age 23, from the very beginning of my first full-time job.

Relationships - every relationship I’ve been in has crashed and burned.

Job - foolishly signed a severance agreement in haste that now prevents me from suing or filing complaints (when I may have had a legit cause to sue for FMLA or discrimination related cause for wrongful termination.)

Social life - have said more face-palm things than I can count, although they all seemed (to me) like perfectly sensible things to say at the time

Free tuition - my employer offered to pay for free master’s degrees but I didn’t take advantage of it for 8 years, when in fact I could have made great use of it

Driving - let’s just say that I am not a good counter-example to the stereotype of Asians being bad drivers, I’ve gotten in multiple collisions (thankfully none were truly serious)

Etc. etc.

16

I hate that song so much.

I think if you suspect you are on the spectrum perhaps you should be tested for it. Heads up: I haven’t read the whole thread yet so there’s that.
If you are diagnosed I bet there are resources specifically intended for people with your issues. I feel pretty empathetic here. I make some bad decisions, mostly monetary. It sucks.

17

One thing that may help is when you have to make any decision that may have consequences, don’t follow through with the decision, until you rationally weigh the consequences thoroughly and intelligently. IOW, substitute I.Q (your forte) for common sense (your weakness). It will take more time, but worth the effort. I’ve done this myself, and glad I did on many occasions.

18

I like the approach you’re taking, and think it has to help at least somewhat.

I guess making good decisions is a hallmark of wisdom, but there are other skills involved too. Some of your decision examples didn’t involve urgency. It might be that the simple skill of listing the advantages and disadvantages of each option would help. You can sometimes even reduce this to a mechanical process, such as estimating all the economic consequences and adding them up, or recognizing the possible emotional ups and downs for each of the people the decision can impact.

This is not to say that it isn’t wisdom you’re after. I’m just speculating about one of the skills that could possibly improve things a bit.

Full disclosure: I’ve often thought to myself that all the major decisions I’ve made were bad ones, or (more often) all the major relationship decisions were bad ones. But I’m happy with my relationship status now. There are some aspects of retrospection itself that we might question.

19

None of that really sounds all that bad. We all make mistakes in life. Is it possible you’re being too hard on yourself?

To take one example:

I used to have severe social anxiety. I’d be terrified of saying something stupid or embarrassing in a group of people, so I’d often not say anything at all. My painful shyness was sometimes perceived as aloofness-- people thought I thought I was better than them (or conversely, just think I was a quiet weirdo). I’d obsess over what I perceived to be embarrassing things I said or did years ago.

Then, I realized, popular, likeable people say dumb, embarrassing things too-- but they just move on and don’t obsess over it. People forget the dumb stuff and remember the good stuff. Then I opened up more and found I could be a witty, likeable conversationalist. I still say dumb stuff at times, but I move on.

I know you said you’ve tried therapists and they didn’t work for you, but therapy is NOT an exact science- maybe keep trying to find one you like who works for you. Also, it’s not a magic solution- you need to do the work. My son, who has OCD and associated anger issues stemming from his frustration from the OCD, has gone to multiple therapists. But he fought all their recommendations- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for the OCD and coping skill stategies for the anger. You gotta do the homework.

In short, I think you need to be less hard on yourself. Focus on the things you DO do well. Try to learn from the mistakes you do make. Put yourself out there when it comes to relationships and social situations and don’t stress about saying embarrassing things, move on. And don’t give up on therapy.

20

Everyone who is currently single can say the same thing. I didn’t meet my wife until I was 31, didn’t get married until I was 35, and we’ll celebrate out 17th anniversary soon. My uncle didn’t get married until he was 55; he and his wife will soon celebrate their 30th anniversary.

IIWY, I’d cross this particular “weakness” off of your list; being in your thirties and still single doesn’t make you a major outlier.