“No Experience is Wasted”
My friend Peggy from Hawaii reminded me to pick up Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Meaning,” at exactly the right time. We all have times of regret in our lives. Times where we wonder why we went somewhere, made that choice, got involved with someone.
As I re-read the amazing story of Viktor Frankl’s experiences in four concentration camps, and his road back to sanity, I was reminded of his philosophy that “No experience is wasted.” Each event leads you somewhere. Each thought and each action become pieces of that puzzle uniquely known as YOU.
Even if we could create an exact replica of ourselves, eventually our clone would develop different characteristics and personality tics because of its individual experiences. Inevitably, what and who we experience impacts our thinking and our behavior.
In college I came across a wonderful little book of poetry by Laurence Craig-Green. Decades later, my favorite still lives on my office wall:
“They come,
They go,
They never know
What
they do
But
they do
Change
you.”
Nothing is wasted because we always have the opportunity to learn from everything and add it to our body of knowledge about ourselves and how the world works. Frankl’s ability to find nuggets of truth in the camps helped him survive. He knew he had to remember everything; he knew he had to tell the outside world so it would never be repeated. That goal of storing every piece of information kept him grounded while some camp mates slowly went insane.
Regret and anger over our past choices erode our confidence today. If we feel we’ve made huge mistakes, we will find ourselves incapable of taking risks and making new efforts towards our goals. Life becomes meaningless in the face of despair and self-recrimination.
The solution? Sit with the “mistake.” Ask what went right. Ask what you could have done differently. Ask,”What’s the lesson?” Ask what you can do next time to have a better outcome. Approach all experiences with this attitude. Switch the thinking from “I am such an idiot.” or “I can’t believe I allowed that to happen!” To – “Isn’t that interesting. I wonder how it got that way. What can I do better next time?”
I went through several careers before becoming a Professional Speaker. I noticed in every job I held, I always said, “Hey, we need to do some training on that,” and then I’d set out to create a training program. One day it hit me that maybe what I should be doing is training instead of administrating. All my experiences in real estate, insurance, tourism, and retail gave me an amazing range of understanding for my seminars and keynotes.
We don’t always know what our path looks like from the end of the road, but we all have instincts about where we need to go next. Keep making those turns, stay open to learning, and eventually you will come home to YOU.
All the best,
Beth
~~
© 2008 Beth Terry Seminars, Inc. All Rights Reserved Internationally.
Thanks Jeff. We just beat ourselves up so much for our mistakes and seem to miss the point. If it’s a lesson, it still serves us.
Great to see you in Phoenix!
Beth
Beth – Great words! I’ve often said, nothing is a mistake unless you repeat it. Or to put it another way, you have to “Grow From What You Know.”
Jeff Korhan
http://www.therightwayworks.com
http://www.truenature.com