The value of experience

“One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune” William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Many a time, we tend to focus more on those events that have left a scar on our psyche, have given us a bitter pill to swallow or that which has hurt us immensely. Often our immediate reaction to this is to be fearful, become risk averse and make efforts to avoid the path that lead to the unfortunate experience. While the protective mechanism that we have honed comes in handy and saves us from catastrophes, far too often we miss out on grasping opportunities for we let our bitter experiences overwhelm our pragmatism and passion. Our experiences should not deter us from pursuing a path that we have chalked out for ourselves merely because we stumbled and grazed ourselves or in extreme cases it badly scarred us.

Experiences both good and bad are the pivots around which the future is built. The good experiences reinforce our beliefs and light up our path, where as the bad experiences alert us to the pitfalls ahead, allowing us time to relook, reassess and reorganize ourselves. The important learning got from our experiences is that our attitude and reactions at every stage determine how we will traverse the journey and attain success. In effect experiences are a test of our character and our ability to deal with the situations as they unfold.

Our character evolves through our formative years and continues to transform, albeit slowly, with every passing year. It is made of a combination of factors including our hereditary traits, the childhood scripting, the experiences and interactions that have percolated deep into our psyche and our own independent thinking and attitude. A happy and disciplined upbringing often has a deep and lasting influence on character building. The role of parents, teachers, classmates and neighbors is very critical in influencing the character that a person develops. Motivation, encouragement, appreciation, acceptance, laugher, kindness, positive reinforcements are inputs that ensure a fragrance that remains always in a person’s character. On the other hand a gentle rebuke when needed, reasonable punishment if required, firm ground rules to enforce discipline and impeccable grooming and manners , ensure that there is a sparkling diamond like luster in a person’s character.

Apart from analyzing our experiences ourselves, it also helps if we find the right mentor to guide, have a healthy dose of self confidence, develop our ability to be hardworking, look forward with optimism, hone our analytical and creative skills, work around our core competence and develop the art of learning something new and invaluable from every experience. We should also be able to develop the fine art of discernment to appreciate the learning from our experiences. Then every experience will become a successful test of character that becomes a new step in the ladder of success.

Remember: “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.” Tom Krause

Try this

Read the well-known poem IF by Rudyard Kipling by clicking on this link http://tinyurl.com/ne7rbv. This poem in many ways tells us how to manage our good and bad experiences and become a success.
Try to list out at least one personal experience each under each of the following categories. If possible also elaborate the learning got from that experience.