There are two thoughts I want to put in my blog today.
~ We read a lot of books, listen to a lot of people, visit places, have various experiences. How far do we actually “implement” the good things we learn in the process? Like suppose I read the Tirukkural or even a book on conserving water. Do I actually extract what is useful for me and implement them? I don’t completely. Probably 10%? What about you all? Do you implement or think over the lessons you learn through the journey of life? Probably I do them unconsciously.
~ We have heard many people say “We have learnt the best from failures“. Then what about the learning we get from “success”. I have personally learnt a lot from what I term my personal “successes”. Be it the gold medal I received during engineering or my 4.0 GPA in M.S. “Successes” also have lessons to teach us. The “flow” & “passion” you put in when you create a beautiful product (it can be a drawing, a blog post or anything else) which succeeeds (in your own terms) is a lesson in perseverance, patience, humility and a positive attitude. (Success and failures are relative terms and there is a lot we can talk about it. )
7 Comments
June 16, 2009 at 5:28 am
Interesting post Saraswathi. It also depends a lot on how actionable the books’ advice is. Many a times we read books that give us some broad level generic advice. However your point is well taken – we don’t always have an action plan for implementing things we learn.
As for learning from success, absolutely. you can learn from everything. BTW, Congrats on your 4.0 GPA and your gold medal. Well done.
June 17, 2009 at 1:07 am
Our experiences or learning does have an effect on us be it positive or negative. We implement them unconsciously and even spread them to others. But as Rajagopal has said most of books tells us generic advice.
Recent book which I read the author clearly states that he is not there to tell the solution but only a way to find out the same. I felt such books definitely makes us think . This helps us to locate where we can implement our findings which we got from reading a topic. This becomes a good start for real implementation.
June 18, 2009 at 3:08 am
Beautifully expressed saras!!!
I kinda feel we learn or rather get impacted with a success which comes to us after a lot of effort more than a failure. Probably its one of the natural traits of humans to respond to something “positive” than something “negative.” What do u say?
June 20, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Excellent post. I agree Success and failure are relative terms. But I never felt that they can impact ones thought. Atleast I never experienced that. Not that I am a sanyasi…may be I am a sanaasi (fool in Telugu)
but on a serious note , I really feel learning from mistakes and success are too idealistic. Moreover what may be right today may not be right tomorrow, so I really dont try to learn from the past. When such a big mass called Earth can cahnge its position (rotates a full circle) in a single day, no wonder today’s right may be tomorrow’s wrong.
June 24, 2009 at 9:55 am
@Sukumar:
Thanks a lot for your wishes!!
I agree with you when you say a lot of books give general advice which may not be applicable to us.
It depends on the advice given and our willingness to implement it if its relevant. Most times I feel, I do not have enough motivation to implement some advice that I find very relevant and useful
June 24, 2009 at 10:01 am
@Krithika:
That’s true. Books give us a “lot of food for thought” which may not be direct solutions. I like the way you put it, that they are “starting points” for real implementation.
@Dee: So very true. We do gain a lot from positive feedback and esp if the success has come after a lot of hard work.
@Hariram:
Thanks a lot!! I would like to disagree here.
We do learn from our mistakes and success (probably even without our knowledge). I am not sure what you mean you don’t try to learn from your past. Situations do change. But there are some basic lessons we can learn from our past. Like suppose in the past, I have hurt someone with a harsh word and I realise it “after” the incident, I will try to learn from that mistake. The incident was “past”, but the lessons it has taught me are still valuable in the present.
June 28, 2009 at 4:51 am
Thanks for correcting my words
In fact that was my personal opinion, which meant that i never do a postmortem of something which happened in the past, neither for success nor for failure.
I let go the moments and then the next day is a new day for me where yesterday’s success or failure doesn’t matter. Thats the way I am and wouldn’t love to change