Learn from Every Experience You Have Ever Had

One of the greatest things you can do for yourself is to learn from every single experience you have ever had. Each and every day you are having experiences, and you choose what to do with them. The wisest people are the ones who see every experience as an opportunity to learn. Smart people can transform even the smallest experiences into lessons that drive them to become better at everything they undertake in the future. You, too, can learn from your experiences and, in so doing, benefit tremendously. In every experience, there are things that did and did not work for you. Your objective is to learn from what happened. The more you learn from your experiences, the more effective you will be at whatever you do in your career and life. Think back on your career: there are things that have happened from which you can still learn. What lessons can you use to drive yourself forward? How can you get better at what you want to do now? Every experience, no matter how trivial, offers a chance for you to learn. I’d like to tell you a story about just such an experience of mine and how I shaped my life by learning from it. Years ago, when I was in college and about 19 years old, I was sitting in the television room of my dorm at the University of Chicago. As I sat there with a friend of mine, Danny Weisberg, a commercial came on for a real estate seminar led by a man named Tom Vu. In the 30-minute commercial, Tom Vu was shown driving around in fancy cars and on boats with beautiful women while talking about his real estate seminar. As I watched this commercial with Danny, I was incredulous when, near the end of the commercial, Tom Vu said something to the effect of: “I came to the United States from Vietnam with no money, and the only job I could get was as a man who refilled peoples’ water glasses in a country club. One day, a very rich man came into the country club and sat down at a table. I asked him to tell me the secret to his success and he told me it came [Read more]