THE MOST PAINFUL LESSONS IN LIFE ARE THE ONES THAT STICK.
We all make mistakes. We’re human. No one is perfect, but for many of us, the lessons we learn aren’t always learned the first time around. I mean think about all your failed relationships, partnerships, the business, or the toxic family or friends that we encounter throughout our lives. We make these mistakes but for a lot of us, we fail to learn from these experiences the first time.
I went on YouTube the other day and I typed in the search bar “how to …” and a charade of things came up. How to communicate better. How to lose weight fast. How to be a better friend. How to be successful. How to tie-dye a shirt. The list goes on. Mind you, I went incognito so the YouTube algorithm does not populate things I normally would search, but you get the picture. We go on Google or YouTube or some other website because we want to better ourselves in some way. We buy into books, courses, or classes because we want to gain a new skill or strengthen our minds. We as humans are constantly evolving and for a majority of us, there is an innate desire to learn and grow. The hardest lessons in life though are not learned from a book, course, or YouTube video. The hardest lessons in life are learned from others. Lessons that shape who we are and who we want to be.
It’s crazy to think about right? I mean how many times have your parents told you not to run off with that boy/girl but you did it anyway? How many times did you allow someone to put you down before you realized your self-worth? How many times did you allow people to push your boundaries before you said to yourself that enough was enough? How many times have you watched the same motivational video but somehow still ended up back in the same life cycle? How much money did you have to lose in order for you to say something was not working? How many times? For most of us, these lessons couldn’t be learned the first time around because they didn’t hurt enough. Think about it.
The painful, frustrating, and stressful situations we encounter are stepping stones to understanding true happiness, self-worth, success, and more. There’s a quote by Robert F. Kennedy
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
The keyword here is “greatly”.
Compare failures and successes in a timeline of your life. You can have multiple mini failures and mini successes but it will take you many years to achieve that ultimate success. Or you can fail greatly and learn the much-needed lesson for you to jump ahead in success because this time you’ve really learned, Let’s even put this in a more simple example. How many exes did you have to go through in order to understand what you really liked, what you really wanted, and what you really valued in a partner? For most of us, the answer is “more than one” and for some of you “outliers” who married the first person you loved and managed to stay together congratulations! (Looks at you with envy and admiration) You’ve conquered love but I’m pretty sure there are other areas in your life that you may still be working on. Things like trust, boundaries, respect, self-worth, confidence, motivation, emotional stability, and so on. These are learned from other people, and it’s from the most painful encounters that these lessons truly stick.
Here’s another example. Have you lost $10,000 because you invested in a course from a guru that was supposed to teach you all about wealth and you were going to become a millionaire in 2 years? That was me. I didn’t have $10,000 sitting in the bank when I decided to buy the course. I opened my first credit card at the age of 25 just so I could put that money down to be “accepted”. Suddenly after 2 months into the program, the person I was connecting with quit the company. Now, I’m someone who has never had any debts or student loans. So to be suddenly $10,000 deep in debt I was devastated. I felt like my life was over. Credit card interest? REALLY? Really. Yes, that was stupid and definitely learned a lesson there. But at the time it felt right. And most of the time these scenarios feel right in the moment. I’m sure some of you have even worse stories than me.
The point I’m trying to make here is that if you somehow got involved with someone and lost $10 dollars. It wouldn’t be too much of a deal right? But what if it was $10,000? You would feel different. How different? What would change in your perspective? You would want to learn from this experience so that you wouldn’t fall victim to another $10,000 scam now, would you? You would now learn how to not even lose $10 because you’ve felt the pain and have really learned.
As I said, everyone is not perfect and everyone learns differently. You may fall victim to a $10,000 scam and not have learned your lesson. You needed to lose more, like $100,000 in order for you to learn but get this. We all have a price to pay to learn the lessons we need to learn. For some, it can take multiple situations and months or even years to just learn one lesson. We’re different but we do have one thing in common: the most painful lessons we learn are the ones that truly stick. The deeper the pain the harder the lesson hits.
Note: I no longer have that debt. I can proudly say I worked my butt off to get rid of the pain as fast as possible (6 months actually) because my mom kept reminding me about the horrors of interest. Thanks, Mom. I love you.
