If someone asked you to name your most significant 2 or 3 lessons learned in life, what would you have on the list? Not a difficult task is it?
I want to share five lessons with you from personal experiences in my career. I hope my lessons will spark a few ideas for you.
Check out our thoughts on team leverage.
Read this: Are You Looking for an Extraordinary Fast Track Career
Lessons learned in life … lesson One
My first real lesson in life came as a college student at the University of Virginia (UVa). I grew up in a southeast cotton mill country. During the summers in high school, I worked in a cotton mill, rewiring the mill. It was hot, grueling, and sometimes dangerous work, rewiring could not stop the mill. The hours were long and the pay was meager.
As you might guess, I was really, really excited to go away to college. I think that was my parents’ secret goal when they encouraged me to work at the cotton mill!
What I discovered at UVa opened my eyes. The learning environment was different. The students were more experienced and much more competitive than my peers in Goldsboro High School. They had fresh perspectives and provocative opinions. They caused me to pause frequently, laugh regularly, and think differently. I soaked it all in. Not just the classroom discussions, but the lessons I learned from life outside the classroom.
So what did I learn at UVa? I learned what you do with your education was more important than what was learned in the classroom. UVa sparked in me a passion for lifelong learning, a passion to question, explore, to think. This beginner’s mind is always an open mind – a mind allowing for doubt, embracing possibility, and seeking fresh perspectives.
Graduating was just the beginning of a life-long journey of learning.
Class continues daily … lesson Two
I learned my second lesson after I entered the work world. I graduated with a degree in engineering and began in flight school as an Ensign in the US Navy Reserve. The training was difficult and wasn’t as glamorous as I thought it would be. In fact, flying turned out not to be my cup of tea at all.
After 9 months of flight training, I finally accepted that leaving the training behind was the right thing to do. That was probably the most difficult decision up until that time. It was akin to leaving the priesthood, as I had always thought I wanted to be a pilot like my father. It was ‘quitting’.
My lesson; if you aren’t happy doing what you are doing, don’t wait, make sure this is what you really want, but do it without regrets. I did it and wish I had done it 3-4 months sooner. That was how long I agonized over the decision to move on.
Class continues daily … Lesson Three
After my years in the Navy, I went on to work at IBM Federal Systems. After only a year I was bored. I was suffering from the most insidious disease known to mankind, a disease that cripples millions of people every day: The Cancer of Complacency.
My learning curve had flattened. I wasn’t growing. I wasn’t learning. I wasn’t challenging myself. I was stagnating. Thomas Edison once said, “Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.”
It was the dawn of the digital era, and the world of technology was exploding with possibilities and potential. A job change was required and at my initiation, the company moved me from a mechanical design department to an integration and test department on a new large program in development. There were lots of new things to learn and many new digital tools to use. Probably one of the best jobs I had in my career … 3 years later the job took me to sea with the weapon system, where we were supporting the Navy testing in the real world.
I learned a valuable lesson from that experience. It’s this. Take risks. You will make mistakes. You may even fail. I can’t begin to count all the mistakes I made. But I’ve learned more from my mistakes than my successes. I’m a better business leader today as a result of those mistakes.
No failure is final or fatal. If you only focus on your mistakes or the possibility of failing, you will miss remarkable successes as well. It doesn’t matter that you are always right. It does matter that you are always learning and growing.
