How do you best learn? Positive reinforcement? Admonishment for mistakes made? Writing and re-writing the lessons learned? Something else?
And when you learn something, how do you internalize that lesson?
For Blain Stumpf, his lesson came “after a solo cross country.” His instructor “had some scolding for me,” Blain wrote to me in an email.
So, Blain’s lesson came from admonishment of a mistake.
“I won’t go into details,” wrote Blain. “But I wrote the attached to show my instructor I did learn something.”
And there it is. Putting thoughts and feedback on paper is how Blain internalized the lesson.
Is it enough to say I will never do that — whatever that is — again? Or do you take it further? Like Blain.
Don’t let the lessons of experience go to waste. Internalize them.
A few broadly related/philosophical thoughts on this subject… how to learn life’s harder lessons…Fud-4-Thot…
———–
o The greatest value of education is learning-how-to-learn.” -me
o Experience is a hard teacher, because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward.” –Vern Law, baseball player
o Experience is never limited, and it is never complete.” –Henry James, writer
o Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.” — Oscar Wilde, writer
o Experience is not what happens to You; it is what you do with what happens to You.” — Aldous Huxley
o Experience is what you get when you didn’t get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer.” -Randy Pausch
o Deep experience is never peaceful.” –Henry James
o Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.” –Oscar Wilde
o Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.” –Anthony Burgess
o Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don’t.” –Pete Seeger, singer-songwriter
o It is necessary for us to learn from others’ mistakes. You will not live long enough to make them all yourself.” — Hyman Rickover, American admiral
o Over the years, many people have asked me how I run the Naval Reactors Program, so that they might find some benefit for their own work. I am always chagrined at the tendency of people to expect that I have a simple, easy gimmick that makes my program function. Any successful program functions as an integrated whole of many factors. Trying to select one aspect as the key one will not work. Each element depends on all the others.” — Hyman Rickover, Admiral, USN
AND for grins…
o No one warned me [us] it would be this hard.” –unknown
o After flying for a few years… learning HOW to fly… I found myself alone over the mountains on a CAVU day. With an electric shock, I suddenly understood what my dad knew all along: ‘High Flight’ was not a poem… it was a love song.” -me