Welcome to the Daily Quote, the podcast designed to kickstart your day in a positive way. I'm your host, Andrew McGivern, and this episode is brought to you by the Great News podcast. Because great news should be heard, and the link is right here in the show notes.
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Today’s quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) was an American essayist, lecturer, poet, and philosopher who became one of the leading voices of the transcendentalist movement. His writing emphasized individuality, self-reliance, personal growth, and the importance of learning directly from nature and lived experience. His influential works include Nature, Self-Reliance, and The Conduct of Life.
Ralph Waldo Emerson once said…
“Life is a succession of lessons which must be lived to be understood.”
(Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Illusions,” The Conduct of Life (1860) )
There are a lot of things we can learn from books, classes and lectures. We can learn from mentors and get advice and learn from other people’s mistakes. I don’t think Emerson was saying education is worthless.
Education is definitely valuable. But there are some things that you can only learn through experience. Experiencing something has a way of making the lesson sink in much more than just reading about it.
As students we think of our education as something that happens in school and has a clear beginning and an end. But then we realize that life never stops presenting us with challenges that stretch our knowledge and capabilities. And then we realize that there is more to learn.
There is a difference between knowing the lesson and understanding it.
You don’t really understand it if you haven’t done it yourself. If you think about the big lessons you’ve learned in your life, a lot of them probably came from things that didn’t go according to plan. Those lessons can be painful but they help us develop better judgment. If we learn from our mistakes we won’t repeat the same destructive pattern.
You can read a sales book but if you never make any sales calls then you can’t possibly really know what it is like. You can read management books but until you have a group of people to manage you won’t really know what actually works. If you read case studies about other peoples mistakes but don’t take any risks yourself then you lose the opportunity to learn from your own mistakes.
Education can prepare you and prime the pump but nothing beats real world experience.
So here’s the question:
What is one lesson you’ve learned that you could not have learned in a book? And what experiences will you pursue next to get even more life lessons.
That’s going to do it for today. I’m Andrew McGivern signing off for now, but I’ll be back… tomorrow! Same pod time, same pod station with another Daily Quote.
