People say that experience is the best teacher but they’re wrong. Experience, in and of itself, does very little to help us get better. The truth is that anybody can go through an experience and most people learn little from the process. In fact, people tend to repeat experiences (even painful ones) over and over again without learning much. The problem is that they aren’t evaluating their experiences.
While unevaluated experiences yield little, experiences that are evaluated helps us to grow and provide powerful insights that can improve almost anything. For an experience to actually grow us and change us, we must invest the time and energy necessary to really think through the whole thing and document what we can learn from it or how we can handle it better in the future. If we don’t, we are doomed to repeat those experiences over and over again.
The question isn’t whether or not you’re experienced. The questions is really more about if you’re learning from those experiences.
Very Good Tony! This is especially true when it comes to experiencing failure. Most people right it off, but failure can often times be an experience that is as valuable as success if we document what we learn from our failing. Thanks for sharing this practical insight!
Chad, you’re right. The only thing worse than a failure is a failure where nothing is learned. What a waste.
Of course, Scripture is the best teacher. But evaluated experience is often a very powerful teacher, especially if evaluated through the lens of Scripture.