The most successful people in life are the people who learn from other people's experiences to make positive changes in their life. They do not wait until they directly experience setbacks or challenges before they make use of what they have learnt from others. They read books, journals, and different publications to garner different knowledge from the experience of people that have walked the path they are about to embark on.
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It is easy to navigate through life and overcome stumbling blocks when you learn from people's experiences by studying their methodologies. "Experience is the best teacher" does not mean you are limited to learning from only your own experience. You will be considered not to be smart if you made the same mistakes your parents, friends or colleagues have made in the past. The people around you will blame you for orchestrating your own failure.
Learning from people's experiences can only be possible when you are willing to learn in the first place. It may be impossible for you to learn from the happenings around you if you have nonchalant attitude. You must be inquisitive and always ready to ask questions when you see something that you do not understand because you never can tell when you will be needing the information or the experience.
Let me share some instances where you need to learn from people's experiences to make life easier for you. There are many stories on social media about job seekers who were supposed to be going for an interview at an unknown location but were tricked into the hands of kidnappers. These kidnappers will post job vacancies on the internet and applicants will be scheduled for an interview but on getting there they discover that they have been lured into kidnappers den. Some survivors have shared their experiences, the tricks that are being used and some of the features of the location that are being used by these evil perpetrators.
You may be doing yourself more harm than good if you are applying for a job and you didn't make your research about the company to know if they have similar features to the bad experience people have shared online. You may even be doing yourself more harm if you saw those stories and ignored them due to your "I don't care attitude". A lot of time we do not care about these little things until we fall victim and the next line on our mouth will be "Had I know?". You must be willing to learn from the experiences of people around you if you don't want to make mistakes that you will regret.
As a business owner, student, parent, leader, follower or in any capacity that you function, you must know that some people have been in those position before at some point in time. They have made good decisions as well as bad ones. Some of these information may be available for you to access, do not fail to learn from them. They will be useful for you to navigate through your chosen path. As a business owner, don't invest in any business without making enquires and research from reliable sources that have more experience than you. As a student, your senior colleagues should be able to put you through challenges in your academics through their past experiences. They have been in that class before so they can share their thoughts and knowledge with you.
The journey of success will be faster and with less stress when you learn from the experience of those that are ahead of you.