Bestselling Thames Ditton author says wisdom is a muscle most of us have stopped using

Gary Coulton, whose memoir Demons to Champions became a global Amazon bestseller, launches Wisdomize: See Clearly. Decide Wisely. Live Fully. on 15 October 2026

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM, October 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Gary Coulton spent more than 30 years as an academic and eight years coaching business leaders before he discovered, aged 65, that he was neurodivergent. His memoir of that discovery, Demons to Champions: How I fell in love with my neurodivergent maverick mind, became a global Amazon bestseller and a finalist in the Wishing Shelf Book Awards.

On 15 October 2026, the Thames Ditton author publishes his second book, Wisdomize: See Clearly. Decide Wisely. Live Fully., built on a deliberately unfashionable idea: wisdom is not reserved for gurus, elders or the specially gifted. Everyone has it. Most of us have been trained out of using it.

"We are all born with the capacity for wisdom," says Coulton, now 70. "School teaches us to learn the rules and repeat them. Work tells us to do our job and stay in our lane. Society suggests wisdom belongs to special people. I think that's nonsense."

The verdict that changed his life trajectory

Wisdomize began life as a leadership book drawn from Coulton's executive coaching practice, Adaptive Intelligence Consulting Ltd. When he gave the near-finished manuscript to a trusted friend, David, the response was kind but brutal: the book was good, but no one would buy it.

"They buy the writer," David told him, "and you are hiding."

Coulton set out to write a short introduction explaining who he was. It grew into a 170,000-word manuscript that became Demons to Champions. During the pandemic he closed his coaching business, came to understand his neurodivergence, and returned to the original material with a new question: what would this look like if it were written for everyone, not only executives?

Wisdom as a muscle, not a trait

Wisdomize treats wisdom as a muscle that weakens through disuse and strengthens with practice. It draws on Coulton's model of Adaptive Intelligence: the idea that we each have three interconnected minds, heart, head and gut, and that wiser decisions come from consciously consulting all three rather than defaulting to one.

The book is organised into 28 themes, moving through awareness, thinking, learning, relationships, decision-making, purpose and legacy. Readers work through one theme a week, observing what Coulton calls their "Life Seminar", the ordinary events of daily life, and keeping brief notes. Over time those notes build into a personal Wisdomize Portfolio: a unique record of the reader's own thinking that no one else could have written.

Early reader Chon Azzopardi-Brown described it as "a refreshing take on the self-help genre", singling out how practical the weekly exercises are.

A self-help book with no sales funnel

Unusually for the genre, Coulton has no course, coaching programme or membership waiting at the end of the book.

"My intention is to help readers draw back the curtains on the wisdom they already have, and then step away," he says. "Once you've experienced your own wisdom in action, you'll have no further need of me."

Availability
Wisdomize: See Clearly. Decide Wisely. Live Fully. is published on 15 October 2026 in paperback and ebook, available from Amazon and other major retailers. The ebook will be available at a special launch price of 79p for a limited time.

Wisdomize book
Demons to Champions book

About Gary Coulton

Gary Coulton PhD was born in Derby in 1956 and lives in Thames Ditton, Surrey. After more than three decades in academia as a researcher, teacher and inventor, he founded Adaptive Intelligence Consulting Ltd, coaching executives from 2014 to 2022, before closing the business to write full time. His debut, Demons to Champions, is an Amazon bestseller and a Wishing Shelf Book Awards finalist. He writes The Positive Echo on Substack, co-hosts a podcast of the same name, and is an obsessive marathon kayaker.

Gary is available for interviews, podcasts and features on wisdom, decision-making, late-identified neurodivergence and reinvention in later life.
Review copies are available on request.

Media contact
Fleur Hull
Stacks Publishing
hello@stackspublishing.com

Fleur Hull
Stacks Publishing
hello@stackspublishing.com