As you can probably imagine if you’ve been reading this blog for a while, I’m the kind of person who reflects on my life experiences a lot. I’m always looking for new lessons to extract out of my past and consider it a reference book that I can open again and again to add to and read from.
And in general, I’d say this is a good thing. It affords me some wisdoms that many my age and my stage in life haven’t figured out yet. It makes me think before I act more often than not, and I end up making less decisions I regret. But all of this wisdom and knowledge is only so helpful.
My flaw
The thing is, a lot of this behavior comes from wanting to understand everything and be right. And wanting to understand isn’t bad or toxic. But you can’t understand everything. And you certainly can’t be right all the time.
Reflecting, getting every last bit of lesson I can put of my past is great until my past knowledge is simply not applicable. And while this habit safeguards me from being unnecessarily ignorant, it doesn’t keep me from being wrong. It also has a way of making me unaccustomed to being wrong and ignorant—which is good until I’m in a situation where I am.
Building up a tolerance
If you’re in a situation where you want to grow and you need new skills, you first have to get past the point where everything is new and you don’t know what you’re talking about at all. You’re going to start from a place of complete and utter ignorance. And this is uncomfortable.
Especially if you’re the kind of person who was considered a smart kid, you might not have gotten used to being wrong and completely ignorant. This is something you’ll have to build up a thicker skin for. If you want to grow, you have to learn how to be uncomfortable and wrong but still keep moving forward, instead of retreating into your shell.
Get used to being wrong and using it as an opportunity for learning. As much as us “smart kids” may not want to admit it, this is a skill we never really learned.
Being a student
But it’s not just about being wrong. It’s also about being teachable in the first place. Coming into a situation knowing that there are different ways of doing things and you might not know the best one.
Your hard-earned wisdom is only worth so much. And if you want to get more of it, you’re going to have to learn to acknowledge where it is not applicable.
What I mean is, if you want to learn, you’re going to have to be taught—by something or someone, somewhere. And in order to be taught you must first be teachable. So be open when it comes to the things you’re trying to learn about. Take a deep breath and feel the discomfort. Know that not knowing is the first step on the path to learning more.
And give yourself a little time. A little space. A little buffer before you call yourself a failure. Because getting so down on yourself will just give you more emotional blocks in front of your learning ability.
Failure
In fact, let’s talk about failure for a brief moment. For many of us, the first time we encounter the idea of failure is within school. And I do have qualms with the perspective of failure that schools give us, in general.
If you fail a subject or a test in school, you’ve got quite a bit of scrambling to do. You might not be able to make up an important test or ask for extra credit. You might have to literally invest a whole extra year of your life (or maybe three months, if we’re talking about summer school) just because you didn’t learn something as fast as some dude in an office somewhere thought you should. I mean, how is that fair?
And so we get this huge fear of failure, like it’s permanent and it means something about us. But the truth is, there are very few things in life that are this cut and dry.
You have pretty much infinite chances to keep trying to learn and improve in life. And while it’s true, there are certain actions and risks that you should calculate and figure out if it’s the right time for them, learning in general is not one of them. You can keep trying and adding onto what you know. And you should, your whole life, if you know what’s good for you.
And it’s for this reason that you can never really fail in learning, no matter what the teachers in school used to tell you. The only time you fail in learning is when you stop trying.
Student of life
So being a student of life is a little bit different than being a student in school. There are no grades, no failures, nobody forcing you to go back to the beginning, and no timelines.
You come into situations with an open mindset, knowing there is more to be learned. That doesn’t mean you need to feel bad about yourself for your ignorance now.
You listen with an open mind, open ears and an open heart. Try to take as much in as you can and not assume that your way is going to inform any of it.
Then, when you get down time, that’s when you reflect on it. Extract what lessons you can and file it away for future use. But don’t expect it to be universally applicable.
You can’t fail when you’re a student of life. You’ll never have to go back to the beginning. But you will get wisdom. You will get knowledge. And if you learn how to be truly teachable and wise at the same time, you will also be more at peace. While sometimes, it feels like a big effort, the trade off isn’t too shabby.
