Insight for Decision Makers: Truth, Wisdom, and the Myth of Permanence

Most people judge a decision by whether it lasted. A business that survives ten years must have been “right.” A career path that stayed stable must have been “correct.” But permanence is only the world’s verdict on how well a decision fit its environment over time — not whether it was sound at the moment it was made.

If we want better lives and better businesses, we must put truth and wisdom back in the correct order.

1. Truth Comes First

Every decision rests on the truth available at the time — our knowledge, constraints, resources, timing, and emotional state. Perfect clarity is impossible. If we knew the truth 100%, every business would be a guaranteed win.

But we can still get close by understanding two fundamentals:

Ourselves — our real capabilities, limits, patterns, energy.

The environment — market conditions, timing, constraints, risks.

As we grow older, our judgment of truth usually improves. Parents have more common sense than children not because they’re smarter, but because they’ve lived more cycles and recognise patterns faster. With maturity, we avoid many bad decisions simply because we see reality more clearly.

2. Wisdom Comes Next

Wisdom is the capacity to act appropriately inside the truth of the moment — without importing hindsight from our future selves.

A decision is only wise if it fits:

the information we had

the constraints we faced

the person we were

the environment that existed

Age does not guarantee wisdom. Ten years from now, you may be wiser — but you also know things today that your younger self simply could not. To judge past decisions with today’s vantage point is unfair and unhelpful.

Wisdom is optional. It grows only when we choose to learn, reflect, and update our internal models.

3. Permanence Comes Last

What survives tells us something, but not everything.

A long-lasting business may signal strong fundamentals — or it may simply have enjoyed a favourable environment. And a business that dies may have been a perfectly sound decision when it was started.

Permanence reveals environmental fit, not moment-based correctness.

The truth changes with time. Market dynamics shift, customer values drift, and our own capabilities evolve. What was true a decade ago may not be true today. That’s why businesses fail when founders stop checking fundamentals. The world moves; they don’t.

To sustain anything over time — a business, a career, a relationship — we must continually refresh two elements:

1. Updated truth: market fundamentals, personal limits, real constraints.

2. Upgraded wisdom: the ability to interpret those truths with maturity.

Older does not automatically mean wiser. And long-lasting does not automatically mean correct.

The Principle

True longevity comes from repeatedly returning to the truth and choosing to become wiser because of it.

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