Tuesday, November 1, 2011

If you learned it the hard way...

How many times have you heard someone say, "That was a really tough experience! I guess I learned it the hard way."

We can guarantee you've said it at least once in your life. Maybe it was said after a complicated project was completed. After a difficult conversation with your boss. After a thorny relationship had ended.

You might say that the most important thing is that you learned something. However, we believe you should go one step further: You need to share that new knowledge with others.

Sharing your experiences allows other people to learn. It's also how you fortify your knowledge. Life is like a great learning laboratory filled with beakers and vials of ongoing experiments to test your knowledge and to improve your acumen.

Sometimes your experiments produce incredible new results (hooray!). Sometimes they end in a fiery blaze (hooray!). In either case, you've learned something new and that is how you grow. But it's up to you to help others by sharing your results.

We're reminded of the story of Elizabeth Smart and her father, Ed. Elizabeth was kidnapped at age 14 while sleeping in her home and over the following nine months her father kept looking for her. He organized searches. He worked with detectives. He learned everything he could about her disappearance.

Elizabeth was eventually found and the story ended happily. Additionally, Ed continues to share his knowledge with other parents of kidnapped children. He could have retracted into his former life, never speaking of this experience again. Rather, he has become a major national spokesperson for child protection, sharing the knowledge he gained during this terrible ordeal.

So after your next hard experience (troubleshooting your home theater, interviewing for a job, battling illness or disease, etc.) don't keep the lessons learned to yourself. If you learned it the hard way... share it!


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