Hope for Wisdom

I've been using the book Hope for Everyday Living by Criswell Freeman as a nightly devotional. Last night I was reading and a couple of statements struck me.
"To become wise, we must seek God's wisdom- the wisdom of hope- and we must live according to God's Word. To become wise, we must seek God's guidance with consistency and purpose. To become wise, we must no only learn the lessons of life, we must live by them."
It seems that part of being wise is having hope. Earlier the reading read: "Wisdom and hope are traveling companions. Wise men and women learn to think optimistically about their lives, their futures, and their faith. The pessimists, however, are not so fortunate; the choose instead to focus their thoughts and energies on faultfinding, criticizing and complaining, with precious little to show for their efforts."
This brings me back to yesterday's thoughts on hope and knowing that I tend to lean more toward the pessimistic side. I really don't want to be a critical and complaining person. Maybe one of my resolutions for this year needs to be to work on being more positive. I need to work on thinking more positively (hope) and being mindful to speak more positively.
In searching for wisdom, I have to remember that the best place to go is the Bible, not to any other source or person. It is the best teacher on how to handle every situation.
I really like the sentence above: "To become wise, we must not only learn the lessons of life, we must live by them."
I've learned some really hard lessons in life, some more difficult than others. It would do me no good to have lived through those experiences and to have learned nothing from them. Stupider still, would be to live through those experiences, learn from the, but to not apply the lessons learned to my life. To not apply the lessons learned would mean I would most likely keep repeating the same mistakes. Therefore, would I really have previously learned the lesson or not? I guess that is where wisdom comes in. A wise person learns the lesson and lives by it.