“Well-being” is a buzz word applied to everything from kale smoothies to lifestyle holidays. But what does it really mean? Long before it was fashionable, Professor Carol Ryff, Hillsdale Professor of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created one of the first systematic models of Psychological Well-Being.

Langata Women’s Prison is the largest female prison in Nairobi, Kenya. It is situated south-west of the city centre, just off the Ngong Forest Road which divides the now fashionable suburb of Langata from Kibera Town, the largest slum in Sub-Saharan Africa. The metal front gate is painted British racing green, a relic of colonial rule in the 1960s.

What does the map of your life look like? If you were to take an A2 sheet of paper and some coloured crayons, how would you draw a picture which represents how your life feels to you at this time? What are the mountains in your drawing? where is the river? How would you represent the swamp in your life? Do you know what you are hunting, growing and protecting? Where is the camp fire which protects you, and who is sitting around the fire with you?

The discovery of the neurocircuitry of wisdom dates back to a pioneering study in 2009 by Dr. Dilip Jeste, an esteemed American geriatric neuropsychiatrist and Director of the Stein Institute for Research in Aging at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine. This study shed light on how certain brain regions can influence emotional processing and responses, paving the way for a deeper understanding of wisdom.

The map is not the territory. Long before language, humans navigated the world by mapping it internally. These maps are not only spatial but mnemonic and conceptual, revealing that the brain evolved less to think in the abstract than to survive through orientation.

Have you ever found yourself doing exactly the opposite of what you promised yourself you’d do? Or sabotaging your own chances of success in a job or in a relationship? Or noticing patterns of behaviour which move you further away from your goals? It might seem that it’s someone else’s fault, but more likely it’s to do with your own self-defeating behaviours.

The Athenian philosopher Plato (427–347 BCE) famously characterised the process of decision-making as being like a charioteer in charge of two horses. One is steady and true and the other is unruly and impulsive. To effectively steer your mind, he wrote, you need to focus on reason and avoid the unruliness of emotion.

Sitting in peak hour traffic on the Monash Freeway this morning I noticed something that had been obvious all along, and yet no less impressive. All the trucks and vans and utes and cars streaming towards the city reminded me of blood platelets in an artery. Each one signifying a business with customers, capital, people, innovation, and productive energy. Far from being frustrated in traffic I found myself marvelling at the lifeblood of a nation flowing all around me.

I am sitting on a massive shard of limestone rock jutting out over the valley 300 metres below. It is 12 February 2012, and we have walked the pilgrim’s trail to the top of Vulture’s Peak near the city of Rajgir in North East India.

In this era of stupidity and ignorance how do we know what wisdom is? I've spent quite a bit of time researching (and experiencing) this question, and I see wisdom as a way of understanding the world.

Andy was a vagrant. He would sit on a park bench right on the waterfront of our Sydney harbourside suburb from sunrise to sunset, gazing out across White Bay towards Balmain. He wore the same clothes every day. He never showered, and he reeked as he passed by, tottering unevenly. He must have been aged only in his mid to late 30s.

All civilisations rise and fall. Yet, at any point in time the fabric of daily life appears stable and unchanging. The human mind is not equipped to perceive incremental change. I believe there is a change of empire going on at this present stage of our history.

How do you make a decision when you can't get enough information and the issues are outside your experience? System 3 Thinking is a distinct level beyond Daniel Kahnemanʼs System 1 (fast, intuitive) and System 2 (slow, rational), designed for navigating situations of doubt, dilemma, or disruption.

My father had an expression: "if you can stand tippy-toe longer than anyone else you'll be successful!" What did he mean? He was talking about self-discipline and perseverance in an imagined competition where the one who stands tippy-toe the longest wins. This advice seems a bit out of date (my father is 97).

Wisdom has been my theme for over 20 years, but I've been losing my mind over American politics lately and the profound impacts on the rest of the world. It's like watching the 2006 film "Idiocracy" in real time!

Everything I know at the peak of my career I learned at the bottom! I had made a mistake, a big, huge mistake. It was the early hours of Valentine’s Day, 14th February 2014. I was sitting up with my wife, and tearfully admitting that the 2-year consulting partnership with my colleague had been a failure. It was probably an unwise decision to go into the partnership in the first place.

Mindset isn’t just in your head — it’s in your biology! At the Integria Flourishing Symposium in Brisbane 16-17 August, I was reminded of Alia Crum’s fascinating research at Stanford.

Change is hard. What makes it harder? Trying to suppress emotions instead of working with them

In December 2017, I was in Khartoum delivering a leadership program for senior directors of the Central Bank of Sudan. My session was on coaching for wise decision-making. Early in the workshop, the group challenged me: “We expect the Qur’an to teach us what wisdom is. We don’t need this.” I explained how wisdom is central to all faiths, and they could not deny the complex problems of the 21st century often require a third system of thinking.

Some years ago when I experienced the pain of grief I thought it would be better to die. I felt so utterly alone and abandoned, drowning in shame and self-loathing. Yet, in that moment of desperation I reached out for a higher perspective on my suffering. Not a spiritual perspective exactly. More a way of seeing and understanding the context of what I was enduring.