"We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us." ~ Proust
We have all of the information that has ever existed in all of the libraries in the world at our fingertips twenty-fours hours a day. In my workshops I often say, "With my three graduate degrees and a token I can ride the bus all day. All of the information in the world is useless if it doesn't lead to transformation."
A few months ago I met Dr. John Drimmer and he told me that he is leading a team that is building "the internet's first database of wisdom." Dr. Drimmer is a former 60 Minutes producer and now a psychologist. His website is called Wisdomify.com and it is a carefully curated library of powerful, short videos in which people talk about the most transformational moments of their lives.
One of the things that impressed me most about Wisdomify is the universality of the stories. Each person telling his or her story may be talking about an experience unlike any that you have had, but the lessons learned are lessons that everyone can relate to.
Wisdomify has 6 broad categories - Love, Work, Family, Courage, Change, and Spirit - and the videos deal with a wide range of topics from breaking up to coming out.
For example, have you ever wished that you could overcome your fears, or at least change your relationship to them? Vickie, who was one of the country's most successful software executives, tells how she learned to turn fear into her friend.
Ray was an evangelical minster in a small town in Kansas and was forced to hide his sexual orientation. His lesson is about how to become the hero of your own life.
I also really liked Madison's four point battleplan for anyone who finds him or herself falling in love with the same inappropriate person again and again.
Some of the stories have startling twists and turns: as a little girl Alicia helped her parents peddle vegetables in Singapore. By the time she was a teenager her parents had parlayed their vegetable stand into an international corporate empire. She tells a courageous tale of how she escaped from her parents' penthouse where she was abused and conveys a lesson about how she found love after a childhood where there was very little.
Dr. Drimmer told me that the people coming into his psychotherapy practice are all successful and super-smart, but they are hungering for the guidance that life wisdom provides. "You can have all the therapy in the world," he told me, "but without wisdom transmitted by someone who has already walked through the fire, life is way too hard. With that wisdom, you are graced."
After watching the above videos I asked Dr. Drimmer if he would be interested in hearing my story and here it is.
So check out Wisdomify.com and if you have a bit of wisdom to share, the site has information about how you can submit your own video.