Experience can be defined as “something personally encountered, undergone, or lived through.” I think all of us could agree on that definition.
Only you can fully know and understand your past and present experiences and how they have affected you on many different levels of your life. You can try to explain them to others in detail about a certain experience you have had to others in the best way that you can, but it is almost impossible for them to feel it, see it, taste it, or touch it the way you have experienced it.
Here is a good example. Take an orange. Suppose you have never tasted an orange before. You have probably have seen an orange, but never tasted one. A person is now trying to explain to you how an orange tastes, but no matter how much they try to explain it only you will know by tasting it yourself. That also means that what that person tastes can be very different from your experience. You may like it, dislike it, find it tastes sweet, pulpy, dry, etc.
But only if you taste it, you will never know.
That is also the beauty of your personal experience.
So how do you view your experiences, past, and present, so you can use them practically and productively in life? Also, be aware of letting thoughts about past problems and issues you have experienced take over.
By not getting stuck in those types of thinking you can be open to a new way of using those experiences as “a teacher” for self-growth in your present life.
During our life, we learn knowledge about the world through education and observation. Myself, being of mature age, I am seeing a trend that is including personal experience an equal part of learning. I’m hearing from different sources that our personal experiences are moving to the forefront when it comes to occupations and communication in our changing world right now. That makes sense to me.
In closing, I ask you to try a self-inventory of your experiences and contemplate how you can use them in moving forward in all areas of your life. Sometimes just a simple conversation sharing experiences can impact someone as well as yourself. Also, try to embrace all of your experiences in a nonjudgemental way. Shift your perception. We, humans, tend to make some things right or wrong when in fact they are just different. Let yourself be open to all possibilities of experiences so that life can show you what new and interesting encounters you may find…
