Steem4nigeria Accelerator Contest Week 139: Is Experience The Best Teacher?

Hello great members of steemit community. It's another week and another wonderful accelerator contest of the week is here. I find it exciting participating in this week's topic, because of it's connection to our daily lives. For this week I'll invite my friends @joycepizzazz, @christabella, @ab-rich23 to come join the contest.

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We all have heard of this statement “Experience is the best teacher” either from our parents, elders or teachers. In Nigeria, this statement is a popular one and is used by many people on a daily basis. Some of us believe that we learn lessons from life that we can't forget easily, while others believe that learning from people's experience is better than when we learn the hard way by ourselves. In this post, join me as I share my thoughts on this statement “Experience is the best teacher”.

What is Experience?

To my understanding, experience is the knowledge, skill, life lessons, we gain through direct involvement in events, activities, or situations. Experience can be derived from the things we go through in life because it good or bad. Could be through, relationships , businesses or personal struggles.

Back then, there's this friend of mine who owned a business but failed to keep up due to mismanagement. After everything he was full of regrets and said he has learnt his lessons in life through the hard way. Now, if given a second chance, he will understand financial management and avoid mismanaging it because of the experience he had before.
So, can relate better through the emotions and personal reality the experience thought him, than someone who reads about experiences in books.

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Do You Agree or Disagree with the Statement “Experience is the Best Teacher”?

I totally agree with this statement on experience being the best teacher. Practically we learn through experiences in a way that it helps us to understand reality better. Some of these lessons are more clear to us when we experience them.

There are lots of lessons I have learned through my encounter and situations in life. I can relate to this, when i experienced frustration and was emotionally drained after loosing my job in 2022. Though, I relied solely on the job at that time, but I learnt how to be patient, emotionally strong and not to give up during that difficult moments.

Reading or listening to people's experiences can not be compared to when we are the one's experiencing it. Through experience, many has learned a lot of lessons which has made them become better people to themselves. I learned to make better choices, through the things I have experienced. We make future decisions in life through through our experiences.

Is Learning from Mistakes Faster or Slower Than Learning from Books or Mentors?

Learning from mistakes can be sometimes slower than learning from books & mentors. Mistakes have consequences depending on the mistake. Meanwhile, learning from books & mentors can help us in learning from other people's, experience or mistakes, so that we do not share the same consequences like them. In my workplace, during some morning safety meetings, the safety officer onboard will share an LFI (Learning from incidents) so that all personnel onboard can avoid accidents by learning from past incidents.

Regardless of this lessons learned, personal mistakes are often remembered more deeply. Many people hardly forget lessons connected to painful experiences because those moments leave strong emotional impact on them.

So, I believe both methods of learning are very important. We can get practical understanding and guidance too.

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How Would You Balance Between Learning by Experience and Listening to Someone Who Has Been There?

Personal experiences helps in building our ,confidence and maturity.
We can understand and relate to some situations in life when we are fully involved in them. For instance, Leading a group of people is different from reading about leadership. Both the theory & practical experience work together.

I will say, a good way to balance both is to stay humble so as to learn from others and also open to personal growth through experiences. When we combine the wisdom gained from mentors and the lessons from our journey in life, it becomes easy for us.

In summary, We can learn both practical & unforgettable lessons through experience. We shouldn't wait to learn things the hard way or through painful experiences when we can as well learn from books and our mentors.