Practical Wisdom

Having a strength is not enough

In the previous piece, we saw how strengths like hope, gratitude, and curiosity are tied to well-being. But a question arises at once: it is good to have a strength — yet isn't knowing how to use it something else? Courage is fine — but in every situation, in any measure? Curiosity is valuable — but when it knows no limit?

It is precisely here that positive psychotherapy speaks of a strength standing above the others: practical wisdom.

"The master of strengths"

In Tayyab Rashid and Martin Seligman's Positive Psychotherapy manual, practical wisdom is described as a master strength that governs the others — the "know-how of strengths," so to speak. Not which strength you hold, but knowing in which situation, how much, and how to use it.

It is the ability to adapt to shifting circumstances: to reconfigure your strengths according to the situation, to shift perspective, to balance competing desires and areas of life. Choosing between a risky new step and the tried-and-tested path; attending to fairness and kindness at once; approaching a friend warmly while remaining objective — these are the tests of practical wisdom.

Neither too much nor too little

At the heart of it lies this: every strength can be overused as well as underused. Take curiosity. Its lack is indifference, apathy; its excess turns into an intrusive, unsettling urge. Too little courage is timidity; too much is recklessness. In other words, a virtue ceases to be a virtue once it slides toward either extreme. Wisdom is the ability to find the right measure between those two ends.

Twenty-three centuries ago, Aristotle had already given this a name: mesotes — virtue standing on the middle path between two excesses.

Generosity lies between stinginess and wastefulness; courage between cowardice and recklessness. Modern psychology now restates this old intuition of philosophy in the language of the laboratory.

Seeing the context

Practical wisdom thinks of strengths in context. Sometimes even a feeling deemed "negative" can be wise when it fits the moment: anger in a close relationship may signal a wrong; a measure of anxiety may keep us from putting off something important; grieving a loss is more healing than ignoring it and retreating into unhealthy escapes. The point is not to sort feelings into good and bad, but to see what is fitting in each situation.

Not a prescription, but seeing

The conclusion that follows is also the core of my own approach: there is no ready-made prescription for living well. No rule tells you in advance which strength to show, when, toward whom, and how much — because every situation is its own, and asks to be thought through anew each time. What philosophy calls phronesis and positive psychology calls practical wisdom is exactly this: not memorizing a rule, but the art of seeing what the right measure is, in this moment.

An invitation

Which of your own strengths might you be overusing — and which underusing? In what situations do you find it hard to strike the "right measure"? These are questions worth thinking through together.

Source: Rashid, T., & Seligman, M. E. P. (2018). Positive Psychotherapy: Clinician Manual. New York: Oxford University Press.

← Journal