Experience is your successes, failures, wisdom and memories. The way to gain experience is to simply try things. Learn like a child, learn by doing. Of course you will fail along the way, but what you learn will be your gain. Solomon gives us a list of various outcomes that may be outside of our control and what we should do with that knowledge.
1 Cast your bread upon the waters,
for you will find it after many days.
2 Give a portion to seven, or even to eight,
for you know not what disaster may happen on earth.
3 If the clouds are full of rain,
they empty themselves on the earth,
and if a tree falls to the south or to the north,
in the place where the tree falls, there it will lie.
4 He who observes the wind will not sow,
and he who regards the clouds will not reap.5 As you do not know the way the spirit comes to the bones in the womb of a woman with child, so you do not know the work of God who makes everything.
Ecclesiastes 11:1–6
6 In the morning sow your seed, and at evening withhold not your hand, for you do not know which will prosper, this or that, or whether both alike will be good.
Solomon says to try stuff. Don’t be paralyzed with fear which leads to in-action which leads to never gaining the experience. You don’t know what God is doing or what the outcome will be, but you should still sow in the morning and extend your hands in the evening to learn which one might prosper, or maybe both.
Learn Like A Child
Learning like a child means being allowed to take risks appropriate to your skill level, failing often, and then course correcting along the way. Mentors are important, but they cannot do it for you. You must do the thing.
Your attitude, not your aptitude, will determine your altitude.
Zig Ziglar
Before you could walk, you were standing while holding on to the sofa, looking at your Mom and Dad who were holding out loving arms about 3 baby steps away, saying, “Come on, take a step”. They were your experienced mentors. If you grew up learning and knowing intellectually what to do, but never actually taking that first step, you would not have learned anything. But the moment you took that step, you immediately gained experience.
Inevitably, you fell down, and would fall many more times. But you were allowed to operate within a context of reduced risk as determined by your loving mentors who were much wiser. Their immediate encouragement to you at that moment of failure is “Get up! Try again.”
Learning like a child does not end at adulthood for The Whole Steward. Those making the biggest impact always operate by these principles. Be biased toward action that helps you reach your goals. Then you will be gaining the most valuable experience.
If you want something you never had, you have to do something you’ve never done.
Thomas Jefferson
Leveling up
You can measure your experience by the risks you take. There is always risk in trying new things, but that’s how you grow and expand our experience. We grow when pushed outside our comfort zone.
The scarcity mindset says “don’t try something new, because you might fail.” The abundance mindset says “try something new, though you might fail.” For example, when investing, there is always risk. Many will never try for fear of failure. But look at failures as lessons.
You either pay for profit or lessons.
You could pay $5k in seminar fees learning a new business. Or you could spend $5k trying the new business. Which lesson will you remember better? In the first, you exchanged $5k for knowledge. In the second, you exchanged $5k for experience.
Don’t be afraid of failure. Learn from it and try again.
I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.
Thomas Edison
You can be thankful for his attitude every time you flip on a light switch!
Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.
Henry Ford
You can be thankful for his attitude every time you sit behind the wheel!
You don’t have to accomplish what they did, but you can adopt the same attitude they did.
Summary
Try new things. Calculate and embrace the risk of what God has called you to do. Then do it with all your might. Don’t be afraid of failure. Learn from it and press on.
Reflect
What new experience have you gained this year?
Or what new thing will you try moving forward?
