When do you REALLY learn life’s important lessons?

The really important lessons in life often take more than words of wisdom. As the saying goes:

 Success is the result of good judgement
 Good Judgement is the result of experience
 Experience is the result of bad judgement

The key to success is making a series of good decisions and taking action to follow through. However, as the passage above describes, the ability to make good decisions is often preceded by numerous poor decisions.

The secret seems to be to make decisions, take action and then have enough behavioural flexibility to react to the inevitable challenges that arise. That way, when a similar decision has to be made, you have the knowledge and experience to know what works. The most profound learnings are often the most simple; so simple in fact that people think there really must be more to it.

Behavioural flexibility helps maintain momentum. As soon as you make your decision, momentum starts building and this is compounded in action. The universe likes things that are moving. Have you ever noticed that the best things in life tend to happen quickly, with snap decisions often leading to incredible results? When you start rolling, the universe conspires to help you succeed by giving you even more opportunities to follow through with, and like a snowball growing, these typically start small and get progressively larger and larger.

Because of momentum and these coincidences and opportunities will soon find themselves pushing against the boundary conditions of your thinking, or your paradigm. Your paradigm defines your comfort zone, or the limits that your current mindset or education has on any given context. This is why so many people, even once they learn the success principle described above, fail to follow through to the levels possible. Once they hit this glass ceiling in their mentality, fear kicks in and the brakes come on, halting momentum and causing the opportunities to go looking for people prepared to take them on.

So in addition to the lesson above, it is clear that personal development is key to success. Personal development removes (or at least expands) paradigms allowing progress to continue unhindered. It is so important that you find a way to let go of the limiting beliefs that get in the way of your success, otherwise it doesn’t matter how hard you work, you will only ever reach the same level of performance and results in your life. This is why top performers so often come across in their language as arrogant; it is because limiting beliefs rarely, if ever, come into their conscious and they are completely convinced of their own success. They literally do not have anything holding them back!

So back to the question: when do you learn lessons in life? You learn when you make decisions that push you up against the limits of your current paradigm, or to put this in layman’s terms, when you do something that scares you.

Are you ready for another twist? The lessons that you learn are not always linear, that is they are not always directly related to the actions being taken. You may find yourself learning about relationships when tackling something new at work. You may finally understand how to pitch a new service when abseiling down a cliff.

Because life’s most important lessons can be applied in almost all areas, experiences can often be mapped across. For example, many businesses like to hire sports people to speak and motivate their teams, not because of the specific skills the sportsperson has, but rather the principles and application it took for them to get to their particular level of performance.

So your challenge today is to do something which scares you. Now you know that life’s lessons are transferable, you can choose any area of life in which to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, as long as it is done in a safe and controlled manner. Also recognise that lessons learned often have elements of poor judgement, so be sure to make it a small step beyond initially. Think about what your current limiting patterns are, and then think of something that could be a great metaphor that would really make the required impact. For example, if you want to learn the lesson “Enjoy the Journey”, perhaps you could do something that would take a long time to do and which would typically involve something less than pleasurable, such as a marathon. If you wanted to learn the lesson of behavioural flexibility, something like rock climbing might work, where you constantly find yourself having to change direction, often in challenging positions.

Whatever it is you need to learn, you are likely already aware of the lesson itself, at least in words. Most people know what it is they are supposed to know, but rarely do they know it to the level where they personify it in everything they do. You know it only on a cognitive level. Real learning, and then living, of a lesson occurs when you own it at both cognitive and emotional levels, and this is why doing something scary is so important to your personal development. 

Try it today. Pick something scary to do, and then take action. Notice the learnings and lessons and find ways to apply them cross contextually in your life. Good luck!