Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.

OSCAR WILDE

Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.

What would you consider is the most valuable lesson you have learned directly from experience?

When experience is your teacher and you are forced to learn under stressful circumstances, what is your cumulative takeaway from having undergone such a difficult combination of variables?

We are so quick to try and learn from others and their collected experiences, but there are so many times when there is no alternative, and all that we are able to do is weather a set of circumstances, and do our very best to prevail, regardless of any possible potential ramifications.

Our continued ability to understand, and thereby succeed, as a direct result of our ability to study whatever variables are within our disposal, and thereby leverage that knowledge to our greatest potential use, could not be more important to the overall necessity we have to succeed in life, however, and wherever we made best apply that knowledge.

When we are at the conclusion of such, we are left with the opportunity to potentially assimilate what we have learned, and to best leverage that knowledge to our greatest potential going forward.

Presumably, in the course of our having leveraged these skills, we are stronger for having understood what they represent, and we work to ensure that all that we have processed is considered in each subsequent experience going forward.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of moments in life, where that does not play out as efficiently, or as opportune, as we might wish, leaving us in a tenuous position of history repeating itself for our not having learned the first time.

When we are judicious in our exploration of that which we believe we have learned, and contemplative of how and why those circumstances would be likely to repeat themselves, we are that much more in position to ultimately succeed in life.

Experience truly is the hardest of teachers and the necessity to “test before we learn the lesson” can be one of the most excruciating variables we might ever encounter, as our world ultimately matures and expands.

Happy Friday!