Have you often wondered how one person is able to learn from experience while another is not?
Some young people learn this skill from a very early age by reflecting on their actions/mistakes/challenges. Their life can as a result become more fulfilling as they start to create building blocks to help them meet and face difficult challenges in their life path. They have the skills to learn from both positive and negative experiences. They do not perceive failure as failure, but as a challenge and an opportunity to do better next time.
There are other individuals who, through no fault of their own, are deprived of the encouragement to reflect on their experiences in school, at sport, in the community, and socially. Learning from experience is an essential skill for all young children and teenagers and if they have not developed this they will not see the relevance of learning in the classroom, exceeding at sport, or other hobbies or interests.
If you have not developed this skill as yet it is not too late to start. You can do this by asking yourself after every negative or positive experience:
What happened?
What part did I play in the result?
What was I most happy or unhappy about?
What have I learned?
What can I do differently next time?
Young people have to be given the opportunity to review their mistakes and successes on an ongoing basis. This happens during their school years where tests are part of school life. Very often at this stage in a young person’s life they start to form negative beliefs about themselves. A teacher may give the same advice to two different students, and one will run with it and say to him/herself that he/she will do better the next time, while the other student will internalise this and see him/herself as a failure. Past experiences may have led to this, where because of their past experiences they may engage in very negative or destructive behaviour.
What determines the outcome is the decision/choice that we make in relation to what we decide to believe. Let’s use the example, “I am good at school.” If you choose to believe this (consciously or subconsciously ) you will find references to support it like, “I did well in my spelling test,” “I played well on the basketball team,” “I finished a big geography project,” etc. You could also choose to believe that you are not good at school and look for any references to support that such as, “I only got 80 per cent in my history exam,” “the teacher corrected me twice today,” and so on. We generally make these decisions unconsciously, and now that you are consciously aware of that, you can decide to choose empowering beliefs for your future and you can also, with the help of some techniques, change old disempowering beliefs from negative to positive by asking yourself the questions listed above and by getting into the habit of acting on them.
A habit will only have changed when you are comfortable doing it. Most of our habits are done subconsciously. Ask yourself:
Do I have an automatic habit of being stressed, overwhelmed, and stuck in my comfort zone? Most of our negative habits which are not serving us come from past experiences. Therefore you need to ask yourself:
What behaviours/habits are working for me?
What behaviours/habits are not working for me?
The outcome you want to achieve must be compelling. It is very difficult to focus on an outcome that is not compelling and feel motivated to achieve it. Whatever goal you are setting or behaviour you want to change, take some time to check in with yourself and see what the motivation is in achieving it.
Ask yourself again:
When I achieve it how will I feel? Am I motivated to achieve it because I want to please others, or myself? Get very clear on how you can make that compelling. If you cannot do this, look again at your decision and your motivation to change your behaviours/habits, and see what you want to learn from that experience.
