Lunar Letter
eppa²
Experience: Go for it!
What is the
value of experience? Experience can be a double edged sword. When we
don’t have any experience, we may think it prudent to wait until we have
experience to pursue that which we most desire. On the other hand, if we
already have experience, we may think that we already “know it all” and
feel that there is no need to continue to learn and take risks to achieve
personal and professional excellence. Either of these ways of thinking
can be dangerous to our well being!
The amount
of experience that we have or don’t have isn’t nearly as important as our
ability to take action. We will fail from time to time but it is a fact
that the more we try and fail, the more successful we will become. Many
of us know the story of Thomas
Edison and all of us
benefit from his inventions. After more than 2,000 attempts at making a
light bulb, he finally succeeded. A reporter asked him, “How does it feel
to have failed over 2,000 times?” Edison
replied that he had simply learned 2,000 ways how Not to make a light
bulb. Experience is important but not nearly as important as what we
learn from our mistakes that we often make in gaining experience.
Think for a
moment of the first time that we are attracted to someone who rocks our
world and
makes our
knees weak. The question arises, “How can I approach the person to find
out if they
 will
go out with me?” We tell our friends of our new found love and they tell
us, “Go ahead, what are you waiting for?” In some cases, despite the
suggestions and ribbing that we get from our friends, we do nothing. We
think of the possible rejection and “chicken out.” In other cases we take
action and put our best foot forward. Sometimes we are successful and
sometimes we crash and burn. Nevertheless, by taking chances and taking
action, we gain experience and confidence. The result is of this
experience is quite evident. The successes far out weigh the failures and
as a result there has been a population explosion on planet earth!
From the
time that we are born, we are taught that “no” is bad. A scientific study
concludes that by the time children reach the age of eight, they have been
told “no” over 100,000 times! We rapidly learn that we should try to
avoid “no” at all costs and try to get to “yes”. While this seems to make
sense, the real world functions quite differently. We must be willing to
fail and to learn from those failures in order to achieve that which we
most desire.
Let’s
remember the following:
1) Failure
is an event; it is not a person. When we fail to achieve the results we
desire, we should ask ourselves, “What can I learn from what has just
happened and what can I do differently next time?”
2) People
who achieve outstanding success in this world are not the people who never
fail but rather those who fail time and again but who learn from those
mistakes to make tremendous contributions to society.
Experience
has a tremendous impact on our confidence both on the upside and the
downside. The more we learn from our experiences, the more confident we
will be in facing life’s challenges. As we face challenges and look for
solutions to the difficulties we encounter, we will obtain positive
experience which will lead us down a road of personal and professional
excellence.
Copyright © 2003
Rob McBride ~
Inspire C.A.
All rights reserved
August
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