I used to tell my teenagers, “You know, you don’t have to make all the mistakes yourself; you can learn from other people’s mistakes, too!” Then, the more I thought about it, I remembered making plenty of dumb mistakes myself, even after getting advice to the contrary. I thought it was because I was so hard-headed, but maybe there’s more to it.
Shane Parrish discussed this topic in his weekly blog:
“Borrowed wisdom breaks under pressure because you haven’t earned it. You’re trusting someone else’s compression without knowing what created it.
“Earned wisdom, on the other hand, holds up because it’s rooted in your actual experience. You know when it works, why it works, when to ignore it and when to bend it because you created the compression.”
This makes perfect sense! How can you know how far to push the system, if you haven’t broken it a couple of times? Every piece of advice I’ve received has given me a great starting point. However, it still has to go through my logic, reasoning and application before I can make it my own.
This brings me to my favorite saying, “Some lessons are best learned the hard way.” Lessons learned from the school of hard knocks are rarely forgotten!
This works both ways. We are rarely eager to change until we experience the effectiveness of the said change. Before PCC® calving-ease bulls, I just thought it was normal to check heifers around the clock. Since I started using PCC calving-ease bulls, I don’t have to do that anymore – and I would never go back!
Borrowed wisdom is Kit telling me about PCC calving ease bulls. Earned wisdom is me trying it for myself and coming to the realization that I should have done this years ago!
Quote Worth Re-Quoting
“There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.” ~ Paulo Coelho