Valuable Lessons

I want to share with you two valuable lessons that I learned years ago that have made a huge difference in all aspects of my life. These lessons were gained from questions that I continue to ask myself to this day…and will continue to ask well onto the future. These questions are:

1. What did I learn from this experience?
2. How will this help me in other aspects of my life?

What did I learn?

The beautiful aspect of this question is that I never feel that I’ve failed…if I learned something. I know, from experience, that what I learn helps propel me forward quickly. I no longer bemoan the fact that something didn’t work as I anticipated. Instead, I realize that I’m one step closer to my goal.

Instead of feeling drained because my efforts didn’t produce the desired result, I feel energized by the progress I made…an experience all of you have had at one time or another.

This brings us to the second question.

How will it impact other aspects of my life?

All too often we forget to apply what we learned to other aspects of our lives. Here’s a personal example to illustrate my point.

I just finished practicing my piano. During the practice session, my mind went blank on a song I’d played hundreds of times over the past two years. My initial reaction was to push harder to regain memory of how to play this song.

In that instant, I remembered a lesson learned years ago in both my business dealings and my personal life. That lesson is: the harder you push, the more elusive the goal becomes. Armed with this lesson I moved onto the next song I intended to practice.

When I completed the remainder of my practice session, I went back to the song I’d struggled to recall and played it without a hitch.

This is a simple, everyday example of how lessons learned in one aspect of our lives can enrich other aspects of our lives.

Takeaways

When you experience disappointment, mounting tension or frustration, pause a moment to let the emotion subside. Then ask yourself:

1. What did I learn from this experience?
2. How will this help me in other aspects of my life?

You too will feel your energy and excitement return as you make quicker progress toward whatever it is you’re trying accomplish. You’ll also find that you become more confident in your ability to deal with anything that comes your way…because you are regularly applying lessons learned in other aspects of your life.

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Resources

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