Why are we spending precious time on this?

For that matter, why would a high-powered neuropsychiatrist like Dr. Dilip Jeste dedicate an entire book just a year or so ago to defining wisdom? Shouldn’t this issue have been settled by now?

I begin with some thoughts about geniuses and then will explain how one modern-day genius offers unique practical advice on improving relationships, specifically the technique of “active constructive responding” (ACR). Ever heard of it?

Major change in the Texas version of the Rule Against Perpetuities, allowing grantors to stretch the duration of trusts for 300 years for trusts formed after 9/1/21.

Clients is family law cases are typically concerned about whether their lawyers are really trying to settle their cases or just keeping the clock running.

They do not tell you this in law school, but for many of us, practicing law is a miserable way to make a living, and it is not getting any better.

According to a recent post on American Lawyer, “Lawyers are feeling more isolated, burnt out, and depressed than ever, even as law firms rolled out new programs and made efforts to over-communicate throughout the year.”

In his excellent book on hostage negotiation, “Never Split the Difference,” Chris Voss describes a method of negotiation, which he attributes to Mike Ackerman, “an ex-CIA type.” I have been using variations of it effectively for years. It’s simple and applicable in many negotiations, especially those that tend to be zero-sum games. I’ll describe it for you and then give Chris’ explanation of why it works so well.

What is a “wisdom coach”?

If you are new to the universe of coaching, you will discover that, these days, every coach has a “niche,” which is fancy name for specialty. Plain old “life coach” isn’t good enough anymore.

This has evolved into some predictable categories, such as time-management coach, happiness coach (I confess. I am one), career coach, executive coach, wellness coach, relationship coach, spiritual coach of dominations that I did not know existed

I will have a lot to say about wise decision making in future blogs, but today I want to focus on one aspect: the consideration of worst-case scenarios.

Coaching is a unique process developed in 1982 by Thomas J. Leonard, a financial planner who was looking for a more holistic and effective methodology for helping his clients reach their goals and live more fulfilled lives.

Six years later, Leonard founded Coach University.

I grew up in a dysfunctional family. I will spare my deceased parents the embarrassment of sharing details. The result was that I never learned how a healthy, functional family behaved.

I started therapy in my 20s (it was the 70’s) and began gaining insight on why I was taking Valium on a daily basis and suffering with the aftermath of a divorce involving a 6-month old child after a 3-4 year marriage. I later became a divorce lawyer and a mediator.

Much conflict in life can be avoided if we would just practice the following rules for civil communication:

There are eight branches of yoga.

The second branch is Niyama, or the five rules of personal behavior: (1) purity, (2) contentment, (3) discipline, (4) spiritual exploration, and (5) surrender to the divine.

We can divide our species into three categories: (1) sleepwalkers, (2) dreamers, and (3) those who are waking up.

Sleepwalkers: These folks are relatively harmless but can still a pain for the rest of us.

They block the aisles at the grocery store, unaware that you are a foot from them waiting for them to let you pass.

They sit at green lights in front of you staring at their phones.

They myopically ignore and avoid politics, suffering, poverty, violations of civil rights, not to mention the late fees that their credit card companies charge.

“The foremost reason that happiness is so hard to achieve is that the universe was not designed with the comfort of human beings in mind. It is almost immeasurably huge, and most of it is hostilely empty and cold.”

Some experiences elevate mood and soul. Music, art, comes to mind. I keep having experiences and thinking, “This is medicine for me.” Those are the good days.

An old Chinese farmer took his granddaughter for a walk one day. Sunshine shadowed them along an ancient path, full of potholes, ruts, loose stones, along the side of steep cliff.

According to Virginia Satir, an icon among family therapists and author of The New Peoplemaking (1988), the recipe for a healthy family consists of four ingredients:

Every age has had its sages. What is a sage? A sage is a person who practices wisdom and has reached a certain level of competency. The wisdom tradition in the West tracks its lineage back to Moses, Solomon, Socrates. The East gave us Lao Tzu, Confucius, and Buddha.

John Gottman is the predominant guru on the subject of why marriages survive or fail (see, e.g., The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work).

He defines the primary causes of discord between couples as:

I’m a professional coach, and I have prostate cancer.

I became a coach because coaching makes sense to me.

Some of us have problems that do not require a mental health professional; we want help with goal-setting, mission statements, and life strategies.