Fail. Then learn.

Failures and Wisdom.

The wonderful Australian speaker and coach, the late Kerwin Rae said, “I can’t give you any wisdom, that takes experiences. I don’t have your experiences. What I can do however is give you a mechanism to get wisdom from within you.”

If you have a bad experience, was it really bad if you learn something valuable from it that will help you for the rest of your life?  If you go through a divorce, and you learn how to treat others better, or if you learn how to be happy within yourself rather than from externals, maybe you learn some thing about your personality that’s holding you back or you learn how to love others with giving rather than with expectations, was that divorce a bad experience?

I had a near fatal motorcycle accident in Los Angeles soon after moving there in 1988. I was coming up to a yellow light and I wanted to make it through. Yes, I had the right of way, so I gunned it.  I mean, haven’t we all been taught to look for opportunity, to take advantage of the times that are given to you by being in the right place at the right time?

There was a BMW in the turning lane facing me, and she was waiting to turn left at the light. When the light turned yellow, she was looking at the yellow light of course, not at me coming directly at her at 55 miles per hour, and she made her turn.

I remember going for the brake and was incredulous that she made that turn. Why would she turn in front of me when it was clear that I had the right of way?

I hit her doing about 45 miles per hour. My motorbike bent in two, My face hit her windshield with no helmet and broke my nose, my cheekbone, and instantly took away my consciousness.  I dislocated both knees taking the fairing off my motorcycle, I hit her A pillar with my chest and broke three ribs, separating them from my sternum.  I dislocated my left shoulder and suffered from extensive internal injuries from the instant deceleration.  I only know this because of the injuries I suffered and the paramedic statements on the accident report.  I don’t remember anything past going for the brakes.  I spent three days in Hope Medical ICU before I finally woke up.

I couldn’t remember my name, I didn’t know where I was, and I had no idea how I had gotten there.  I didn’t know what was happening, I didn’t have any memories of my family or my life.   

The only thing I could remember, and it’s so random, was my ex-girlfriend’s phone number in New York City.  It was the only thing really that they had to go on because all I had on me was an expired Nebraska drivers license, so they called my ex girlfriend in New York and she called my mother.

I lost my fear of death that day.  When I woke up, it wasn’t like I had died and came back, it was like I was born.  Not re-born . . . just born.

Now because I had just moved to Los Angeles I had no furniture in my apartment.  No chairs, no sofa, no bed.  For the next three months with three broken ribs, two dislocated knees, a dislocated shoulder, internal injuries, and a face that looked like I’d gone three rounds with Mike Tyson, I laid out all the clothes that I had on the floor and slept on them.  At around two in the morning when my pain medication would wear off I would carefully get up, pour a bath, take new pain medication, and soak in the bath until my pain was reduced.  Then I would go back to my clothes on the floor and fall asleep.

I couldn’t walk to the grocery store, so my mother sent me care packages from Nebraska with packaged food in them so I could eat, and with very maternal notes on the outside of them for the building management to take them up to my seventh floor apartment and knock on the door.

In an event that lasted all of 2 seconds I had lost my consciousness, my only form of transportation, my ability to make a living, and nearly, very nearly my life.

So that was a pretty bad experience, and what did I learn from that?  Was there anything that I learned that maybe made my life better after that, enough to maybe call this a good experience?

Well I think we can all agree that this probably wasn’t a good experience, but what it was, was a learning experience.  I say that when you learn something positive that lasts for the rest of your life how can that not be good?

The first and foremost thing that I learned was not to run yellows on a motorcycle, but the next few things that I learned have helped me make intentional decisions for the rest of my life.  Invaluable, right?

I learned not to be careless.  I learned not to assume things about other people, (like maybe that they see you), but extend that and I think you get my point.

Learning not to assume things about other people has huge ramifications about respect, intelligence, wealth, rights, even racism.

I learned that even if I have the right of way, or in other words that I’m in the right, expressing that correctness and acting on that fact without humility is not always good for me . . . terrific lessons for a happy marriage.

I learned that you should take care of things that are valuable to you, I learned that just because my childhood was messy, I am owed nothing.  I learned that even though I am in control of a situation, I am not in control of a situation.  I learned that doing dumb stuff is expensive.  I learned that if you act stupid, you get stupid results, and I learned that nobody really cares about you if you don’t care about yourself.

Now, in my life, was that experience a bad one, or a good one?‘

People believe that bad experiences make you become bad.  It’s true that sometimes that does happen.  But what people often don’t understand is that’s a choice.  Be curious about not only the good experiences in your life, but also the bad.  By learning from your bad experiences you gain the invaluable wisdom that comes with that.

These rough experiences in life, they are in some respect failures.  Everyone will have failures in their lives.  Some are small, some are large, and some can change your life.  Most large failures are life changing.  A divorce, even a long term relationship can pack a punch.  A business failure, a DUI, you’ll ruminate for sure.

The key of course, is to learn from them, gain the wisdom that pain brings.  Scott Iverson, the Sales Director at Hot Spring Spas told me once, “People in pain are sweeter, richer people.”  He was talking about physical pain at the time, but it works for pain of all types.

Failures are painful, there is no way around it.  To learn from these failures you must be intently curious about what went wrong and what your part was.  That information is the diamond amongst the coal, and to find it you must dig.

I taught my daughter that failure is merely a rung on the ladder of success, and you must step on it to get to the next rung.  Whether the next rung will be another failure is up to you.  We all know that if you don’t learn from your mistakes, you are doomed to repeat them.  If you rationalize and make excuses to escape looking inward and being curious about your own responsibility, the chances the next rung will be another failure is high.  If you instead look honestly at your own actions and admit you are responsible, even though it’s painful, being curious about how to improve becomes innate.

In the end, when your pain turns into wisdom, you too will be a sweeter, richer person.