'Experience is a very good school but the fee's are terribly high'We tend to remember best what we have learnt from experience but, as my Grandad was suggesting, there are a few problems with it. I think that he was referring to the pain of learning from mistakes and also the time it takes to learn by trial and error.
I also want to suggest that what we learn from experience can be flawed. When we learn from the events in our own lives we are dealing with a very small sample, of one. There isn't a control group for us to compare with. The information we take in and remember about the circumstances is incomplete and distorted by our own expectations. So we often come to flawed conclusions, which we then convert into rules for living:
'All men are *#@*!'
'If I don't allow myself to love completely then I will avoid being hurt"
'Rich people are selfish'
'All women are ^#*!'
I suggest 2 approaches to improving what we learn from experience.
Firstly, get information from other peoples experience. My preference is for information from careful research studies. Then try it out in your own life and see if it works for you.
Secondly, keep a double entry journal. When you make a decision write down:
- what you are going to do
- what you are hoping to achieve
- the factors that shaped your decision.
- what outcome you did achieve
- new information about the situation that you now know
- what you have learnt
