Drawing From Your Experiences

What does it mean when somebody says ‘learn from experience’ or ‘sharing your experience’?

Learning from your experience builds awareness, introspection, and wisdom. If we make an active and concerted effort to reflect on what when right or wrong, we may benefit when something similar occurs in our future. Otherwise, we haven’t really learnt the lessons from our failures or non-starters.

You can extract the abstracts (i.e. lessons) by constructing a framework of success. Find out what works, and test it out in your existing model of effectiveness. Even in intangible things, we can mine them for their relevance. Our abstracts can matter more than pure wealth. That is why many of us pursue our sporting passions and enjoy our sense of achievement and fulfillment. Each celebration, achieved goal, milestone, and award received raises our sense of personal importance, confidence and self-esteem. These abstractions do matter or else they become pointless.

Leadership Lessons: How can you share somebody’s experiences? Unless you were involved in a similar or the same experience, it is still subjective. If we are not careful, we may end up speaking in clichés – like spouting out-dated idioms and proverbs. When adopting best-in-class practices, do that which has worked and continues to work well. As long as you continue to benefit from a process, keep doing more of it until diminishing returns set in.