Oct. 27, 2024

Unlocking Wisdom 8 Elements to Master Life's Journey

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Join us on this enlightening episode of Living the Dream with Curveball as we explore the fascinating world of wisdom with acclaimed author and physician researcher Laura Gabayan. Discover the eight key elements of wisdom outlined in her book, "Common Wisdom," and learn how these elements can transform your life. Laura shares her journey from emergency physician to wisdom researcher, revealing insights from her interviews with 60 wise individuals. Don't miss this chance to gain a deeper understanding of resilience, kindness, spirituality, and more.

https://lauragabayan.com

Want to be a guest on Living the Dream with Curveball? Send Curtis Jackson a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/1628631536976x919760049303001600

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00:00:00.719 --> 00:00:09.205
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. Uh, if you believe you can achieve, cheat.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I and a few guests that teach, motivate, and inspire. Today, we're going to be talking about wisdom, as I am joined by author and highly renowned physician researcher Laura Gabion. Laura is an author. She released a book called, uh, Common Wisdom, where she scientifically defines wisdom. So we're going to be talking to her about how she came up with that and the steps that she took. She did a lot of interviews to put in this book. So, Laura, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Speaker B>Thank you for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Speaker B>So, I am a physician, I'm a researcher, and those are different things. You can see patients as a physician, but you can. You do research on the side. And I was busy publishing in academia and then realized. And then my body started to fall apart. As you can tell, my speech is not great, so I have weakness. And I realized the medical establishment was really quick to put me in a box to say that you have, uh, this and that and just label me. And the only people I thought that did not do that were the wise.

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> Speaker B>And so I decided to start to study wisdom. Um, I was really taken back initially that we really did not know much about it, so that's why I studied it.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well, what kind of physician are you?

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> Speaker B>I. It's on emergency physician. And so you go to medical school for four years, and then you apply to something called residency. And in residency is when you kind of become that doctor.

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> Speaker B>So pediatricians or surgeons or emergency physicians, whatever it is you become, you do in residency. But in addition to residency, I did three more years of, uh, training to learn about research.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well, coming up to your book, as we were talking about in the green room, you interviewed a lot of people, so kind of tell us what you did to put your book together.

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> Speaker B>Well, it's funny because first of all, I've had different reactions. First of all, I don't like the idea of a book being one person's idea. And this has 60.

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> Speaker B>And I've had people say, well, 60 is not a lot. And I'm like, you have no idea how hard it was to find those 60. And so we posted. So. And what happened was I looked into wisdom. Um, I noticed that all we knew about it was anecdotal or subjective.

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> Speaker B>And so I decided to study it.

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> Speaker B>And then I realized that the only people who can identify the what are other people, not tests or. Or questionnaires. And then I realized that wisdom has an inverse you relationship with the age, and that it peaks when you're 56 and 70s. And that's why the people I interviewed were 50 to 79 years old. And it's not different based on gender or race or, uh, political affiliation. It is different based on region. So if you have someone from Asia, for example, or the Middle east, is different than the wisdom in North America. And that's what I looked at. I looked at the wisdom in the US And Canada.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well, doing the research of your book, you found eight primary elements of wisdom. Can you explain what those eight elements are? And.

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> Speaker B>Yeah. So it's funny because the reason the book is called Common Wisdom, um, is because I found the eight most common elements between the people. And the first one, um, is the most common, and I'll name all of them.

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> Speaker B>And the last one is less common. So the first one. So in order, resilience, kindness, positivity, spirituality, humility, tolerance, creativity, and curiosity.

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> Speaker B>And it's funny because curiosity is the final one, but I feel like to have a lot of all the others, you need curiosity.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, out of those eight elements, which one surprised you the most and why?

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> Speaker B>It's funny because I'm a Lisa, and I was born there, and I always learned that kindness is a sign of weakness. And so the second element being kindness was surprising to me because that's not something I learned about or I knew about or, uh, I thought was strong. And so these people they interviewed were not only kind to the people around them, they were kind in what they did. They were kind to themselves. They were kind and like, you know, in whatever they. Whether they volunteered or they had nonprofits, um, or whatever it was they were. That was just such an important part of their life. And they surrounded themselves with people that were kind, too.

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> Speaker B>And just to find those 60, I did ask all 60 the same 10 questions. And kindness is something that was very important to them.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, out of the elements, which one was the most difficult to put into context and why or describe?

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> Speaker B>You know, it's funny because I'm a physician, I'm a researcher, and I always learned that spirituality was not something to think about. So that chapter was really hard for me. When I first wrote the spirituality chapter, I was working with an editor, and he got back to me.

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> Speaker B>He's like, nah, that does not work.

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> Speaker B>And I. He's like, let's put on hold. And so it Ended up being the last chapter I wrote because I didn't really have it in me. And I always felt like if you can't see it, or I was learned if you can't see it, you can't measure it, then it doesn't exist. So spirituality was definitely something that was hard for me to wrap my head around.

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> Speaker B>But the people I spoke with definitely believe that there is something bigger than them.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Um, what, based on your work, what is the actual definition of wisdom?

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> Speaker B>No, based on. Right. So first of all, when I thought about it initially, it was always, you know, I'll see it.

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> Speaker B>When I see it, I know that they have it. And so it was kind of like, oh, not really descriptive. But I define wisdom now as my eight elements that I talk about in my book, common wisdom. And, you know, I'll say again. Resilience, kindness, positivity, spirituality, humility, tolerance, creativity and curiosity. And what I found increasingly is that these eight elements are really like a secret sauce to mastering life, to living a life of joy and peace. And while wisdom is not really something people may think about, and that's not. It's something kind of like a byproduct that we found that these eight elements are that.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, I know I was looking through your bio and you were saying that you feel like people should revisit the book at a different time.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Tell us what you mean by that, and why should they revisit the book at a different time?

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> Speaker B>So it's funny because at the end of each chapter we have questions for people saying that are things to ask yourself and they're different dates for the answers. Because who you are 10 years ago is different than who you are now. And so the same I think about myself, I'm like, who I was 10, 20 years ago is very different than who I am now. And so I feel like it changes as you get older, as life progresses, your priority change and also your perspective changes. So for example, kindness. I did not think of that as something important before, even though my husband is very kind, but now I pay attention to it or spirituality. If you asked me 10 years ago, I didn't had zero idea what it was about. And now I think about it more.

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> Speaker B>So everyone's going to change. And so I feel like you will change with time. You will change with just who you are with live experiences.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, well, let the listeners know where they can get your book.

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> Speaker B>So initially when I found 60 and I did not know these 60 people, um, we posted on next door on Reddit, with social media with many different ways. And it all linked back to wisdom research project.com and that website still up. It was before meant to serve as a way to recruit the 6Z. And now it links to my website, which is lauragobuyan.com and they both kind of link to the Amazon site of, um, um, um, what the book is sold. So Common Wisdom is the name of the book and it's sold on Amazon. And, and it's just fascinating. It's a quick read.

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> Speaker B>I mean, there's many people that, oh, well, you're. You have all these letters behind your name. And I'm like, you know what?

00:11:11.894 --> 00:11:23.855
> Speaker B>I'm tired. I'm over writing really complicated, boring manuscripts. I publish those things and no one really understands them.

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> Speaker B>So I. With the book, my goal was to make it easy to read, easy to follow, and to the point, and I don't want to waste anyone's time.

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> Speaker B>And that's what it was, was really to the point. And as I said, those eight elements really have a, uh, magic about them and that they will improve one's life.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, tell us about any upcoming projects that you're working on that the listeners need to be aware of.

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> Speaker B>So it's funny because I've done enough podcasts to know and have interviews to know that people really enjoy the ending part, the part that you think about or, uh, questions make people think about whatever issue is at hand.

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> Speaker B>And so I just finished a journal, and it's all, you know, summarizes each of the themes, but it has more of those questions.

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> Speaker B>So the journal, I will probably come out in the next few months. But, uh, it's. That's what I'm working on now, or I worked on.

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> Speaker B>It's over with.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, so you threw at your website, lauragabayan.com so close us out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or just any final thoughts you have for the listeners.

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> Speaker B>I just believe that, you know, as your webs, as your podcast suggests, I think mindset is really important.

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> Speaker B>And after speaking with the people, resilience was number one, right?

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> Speaker B>And these people had to overcome horrible obstacles. So I say to, uh, myself on a regular basis, and this is something I would say tell your listeners as well, is that as you go through life, always live in faith, don't live in fear, and know that things are happening for you and not to you.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Ah, ladies and gentlemen, there it is. That's wisdom right there. Visit lauragabayan.com check out her book. Follow Rate Review Share this episode to as many people as possible.

00:13:50.404 --> 00:14:13.034
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Jump on your favorite podcast app, check out the show. Follow Us Leave us a Review if you have any guests suggestions or any topic suggestions, Curtis Jackson 1978 at att.net is the place to send them. Thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Laura, thank you for all that you do and thank you for joining us.

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> Speaker B>Thank you for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on the Living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurveball.com.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>until next time, stay focused on Living the Dream.

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> Speaker B>Dream.