Leverage Experiences to Catapult Development Exponentially
Applying experiences to catapult development will thrust you into deeper growth and wisdom.
As I am writing this article, I hear my second oldest son scream. Then my wife scolds my oldest daughter for biting. I hate to admit it, but this interaction happens occasionally in our house. Having four very young children can result in a few fights.
The biting episode tied into this article so I had to rewrite the beginning.
When we have something physically hurt us, we naturally react. My son got bit by my daughter and my son screamed. That’s a normal reaction. The nerves shoot signals up to the brain and translate this message, “OUCH!!! THAT HURTS AND STOP!!” The scream also acts as a release. We can’t keep the pain inside so we scream out loud.
This is normal.
However, what happens when we get older? What happens when we don’t want to allow others to see our pain? Or what happens when we want to telegraph the slightly exaggerated significance of the pain…professional athletes…? (Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.)
We alter our responses. Responses don’t only display the internal reaction to an event, but also the internal processing.
Development Is Halted When We Suppress Our Internal Teacher
Everyone has an internal teacher dictating responses to experiences. This internal teacher has learned lessons from past and present events, teaching us to react in a certain way. When we encounter another event in our life, our internal teacher begins to direct our response according to the past lessons learned. We know it as expression, but it really is our external release from the internal teacher.
Just like my son expressed from his internal teacher telling him, “Pain.”
However, we do not always listen to our teacher. We can be very rebellious students in certain life events or experiences.
Typically our rebellion is due to alternative motives outweighing our natural responses directed from our teacher. Whatever the reason for the rebellion, it ultimately halts our growth and development.
Life experiences are openly available for us to learn the skills needed to be better relationally, financially, professionally, and spiritually. Life is full of experiences and opportunities to grow. However, we sadly do not always learn lessons through the experiences.
We need to listen to our internal teacher. We need to grow through life experiences by maximizing these events.
Why Developmental Growth Comes from Life Experiences
When you experience life, you receive input from the event. You process every ounce of information consciously and subconsciously for the future. The better you’re aware of your life lessons, the better positioned you are to grow and develop.
As a young professional, you probably position yourself in stretching experiences to prepare for successful growth. Like other Millennials, you see the value of experiences. That is great.
But only if those experiences are leveraged as lessons by listening to your internal teacher.
It’s relatively basic. If you want to learn how to sell better, start selling. If you want to be a better communicator, put yourself in experiences to communicate in many different environments. These are basic lessons to learn from experiences.
But there are deeper lessons to be learned from experiences. Look for the alternative lessons being taught. Observe what is happening outside of the obvious experience. Doing so will help you grow more from one single event. If you are able to do this at your young age, you will grow in wisdom, understanding, and life skills—ultimately positioning for true development and future success.
4 Skills to Leverage Experiences to Catapult Development and Growth
To grow through experiences, look outside of the box for lessons being taught from experiences. Here are four skills to focus your attention on:
1. Interpersonal Skills (Read Other People). Do not just focus on yourself. Having the skill to translate people is priceless. It could be one of the greatest lessons learned from experiences. The more you are able to listen, watch, and understand people in experiences, the more you will be able to relate and communicate with others. When you learn how people can process information, you will better prepared in your interpersonal skills.
2. Self-Awareness (Tie Experiences Together). One experience should not be left on an island. Every experience has leverage to learn from another experience. Intertwine multiple experiences to be internally aware how you respond, react, and communicate in every type of event. How do you respond in stressful situations? How do you communicate in controversial situations? How do you react when you succeed or are praised? Learn how you respond by tying experiences together.
3. Selective Skill (Give An Experience A Theme). You can truly give any experience any theme. Let’s say you want to learn how to problem-solve better. Apply the theme of problem-solving to an experience and you will grow in problem-solving. You will be better prepared for the next problem-solving experience. Do this for any experience with any applied theme to develop and grow. I suggest to apply skilled themes. This will help you develop your skills which sets you up for the future.
4. Critical-Thinking (Retell Your Experience In A Story Format). Do not let experiences go to waste. You can leverage experiences by rehashing the experience through a storyline. However, your storyline must have a conclusion or a resolve. What is the resolve? What is the lesson? You can tell the story in a journal format or in a verbal format. Tell the story to friends, family, or record it on your phone. Give your experiences a story to pull all the great lessons being taught in each experience.
Experiences can potentially to be the greatest developmental tool in life. But you must utilize the experience correctly. Listen to your internal teacher through the process and explode in growth. Rebelling against your internal teacher will not only halt your development, but could also harm you physically for not releasing the internal processing. Usually this can surface in anxiety, depression, anger, or stress.
Rid yourself of this suppression and develop into the person God made you to be through your life experiences.
