Experience Is The Best Teacher

A book I was reading recently had this little nugget inside - " Wisdom and learning come not from experience, but from our reactions to it".  "Wow", I thought.  "That's a great quote!"  I'm a quote person, so naturally, I was a fan.  There's a funny thing about quotes, though.  Sometimes we repeat so many witty lines that we lose the brilliance of the quote in the first place.  (Anyone who has had to live through my "bad joke of week" knows this is entirely possible.)  In this case, quality, not quantity, makes a big difference.  This is one of those quotes I actually read and then thought about.  

As we get older, we tend to "treasure" our experiences more.  Whether they were pleasant to live through or not, experience can be our best teacher.  Key words?  Can be.  Do you know what the most amazing part of this is?  We have a choice.  A choice. To learn from the experience, or to merely survive it.  To apply it to future circumstance, or to lose the lesson entirely.  The pure elements of the experience become irrelevant in time.  It is actually the attitude of our hearts that determines how our lives are impacted by our experiences.  Are we too proud to admit we were wrong?  Ashamed of how we handled our situation?  Or do we chalk it up to experience and find a way to implement differently and do it better?  Much better.  

So, the next time after life throws you for a loop, remember the experience.  Remember how you reacted, how you felt and more importantly, how you made others feel.  Then decide if you handled it well and how you would like to handle it in the future.  If you are not sure of the answers to these questions, ask someone who shared the experience with you.  They are usually more than happy to share.  

But the most important part?  Live.  Live your life.  Gain experiences.  Learn from them.  You will screw up sometimes.  Newsflash - that's part of life.  But kick life in the pants by taking what she throws at you and hit that curve ball out of the park next time.  How?  Because you saw that pitch before.  You experienced it.