People learning lessons from another person’s experience--does this happen?

There are pros and cons in learning the mistakes from other people. The pros is, we can avoid necessary waste of time and effort. The cons is, we will lack of the experience in facing failures. Besides, attitude plays a very important role in avoiding mistakes made by others. Obstinacy will stop us from learning from others until we learn a costly lesson on our own. Therefore, in my opinion, we should always appreciate the experience shared by our elders, successful peoples and the great people in the past. There is a saying, "History is the best mirror of ourselves".

Hi Kala! This is a very pertinent observation. Most of the people do not want to learn from others experiences. If you tell them that if you use Axe in a wrong manner, it will fall on your foot and may injure you, they won't listen, they would say - "let me try". I also fail to understand that why some people just cannot learn from others. If someone shares his/her experience with me, I listen very carefully and with great intent and try to apply in my own life because I know - "There cannot be any substitute for experience." Have a nice day! Deepak

I have this quality of getting the style and character of the people I move with rubbed on me very fast. And at the same time I have never failed to notice their good and bad qualities in life.I am a little impatient man.I need everything now.But I have learned to be a little patient by learning from a couple of people I am close with.Hope I am improving.

Hello Kalav I agree with you totally, as the saying goes, you have to learn from your own mistakes, this is a fact of Life nd this is what Life is all about, make Mistakes and learn

I am a strong believer that mistakes are lessons and we should probably welcome them so we can learn. As far as learning from other’s errors, I guess part of growth is learning to be observant of what is happening around us and that every person we encounter for whatever reason has lessons to teach us and it could very well be from their mistakes. I like to think that there is a valuable reason for every single individual that enters our lives so the trick is to be perceptive to the world because I believe we are all connected here on the earth school.

Yes I can also agree with this line that sometimes we can learn from the experiences of our friends. Since then that we know the effect of the instances then we try to avoid and go away from it. But this happen to the person depending on how they put value on the problem and how they weigh all this thing into their life.It is in the own will of the person t learn or else ignore the experienced depending on what she likes to do also. But i my own thoughts that is one of my biggest idea for my life .

Well, though it is generally true that one needs to learn from their own experiences and no amount of telling them is going to help....I personally also feel that if a person is perceptive and is able to see every aspect of another's actions, they are able to make a few changes so that they do not make the same mistake or avoid it altogether. As I was growing...especially in my teenage years....I had lots of conflicts with my mother ...because she would stop me from doing something. My dad on the other hand, would explain things to me. My mother never gave explanations and I would never know what the consequences would be. But my dad would always give me reasons and what CAN happen. He leaves the choice to me. Even when I've gone against their wishes, he would just support me ..so that I could learn from my experience. But after a certain point, I blindly started doing what was expected of me...even when my heart/mind told me otherwise. And today, looking back...I know and understand what and why they had told me what they did. So, today...I also try to learn something from my parents' relationships with other people and what can/could go wrong and try to avoid it. ...or try to work out something my own way based on how I perceive the other people.

Hi Kala, Yes it is definitely possible on some issues. I will tell you an example. One of my colleagues told me that her friend got injuries in her hand because of her 2 year old son. She was working with Mixer grinder and after the work she cleaned the machine without switching off the main plug. Her son came and switch on the machine’s button and you can understand how she got injuries. My colleague told me when my elder son just started his walking; yes of course she told me the same for taking care as myself as my son started walking. After listening this story I took care of this and once he also done this but the main switch was off so nothing happened. Once at native place, my sister-in-law was making coconut paste in mixi, my younger sister’s son did the same to her when she opened the jar for checking the ingredient. You can guess the result; the coconut paste spread all over her body fortunately nothing bad happened (there was not chillies in the paste) except she had to take bath. Circumstances may be different with other people but some cases are similar and may happen in everybody’s life.

Some people have to make their own mistakes, over and over again. Others do listen and learn from other people's experiences. For most people, it's a combination of both.

Hi Kalav56, very interesting topic. What you mentioned here is true, why should we reinventing the wheel at the first place? While there are many examples for us to follow. If you can see things from the different angle, you'll notice that if they follow all the examples and avoid all the mistakes that someone did, there won't be a new thing coming up. Anyways, this is just my opinion. Happy Mylotting.

I think it may happen that people can learn lessons from another person's experience.I often listen my friends' story that they experienced.I like thinking when I'm free.I will think about the things which they experienced,then I will learn something that when things happen I can use it.however the experence that you learn from others is less deep than that you experienced.

Hi kala, some solutions from others' lives work, while others might boomerang. The point is, we still should get enough input from all the people, so that we can choose one of the options instead of just swinging between limited few which are no solution at all! Likewise, forcing our decision on others is also not right. Circumstances differ from individual to individual. We should not judge person either. At times the real outcome takes ages to surface!

Hi, Uhm. Here is another discussion I started that may interest you. http://www.mylot.com/w/discussions/2294000.aspx I personally think that our experiences are nothing but the mistakes we made in the past. So experience is just an euphemism for mistakes, or blunders. Avoiding mistakes is very hard, its harder to learn from others' mistakes. Until you have that first hand experience about a certain thing in life, you really can't draw a concrete conclusion about it. When we talk about repeating our mistakes, we often relate our observed instances. The strange thing is that we actually mean the things that once happened or are happening to others. This is just like learning about water from someone who touched and drank it. Even in spiritual sense this theory is applicable. No matter what a mentor is capable of, he will impart no wisdom on the disciple unless the latter himself is willing to have a first hand experience. So in both positive and negative sense, an experience or wisdom becomes consummate only when you get it first hand. Thanks God bless you

well that is the ideal i always thought but we have a statement in spanish that says "nadie aprende de cabeza agena" translated is no one learn from other's head... maybe because isnt a strong impression most of the time that we just forget it. when we live the situation is impressed in our bodies and that is why we learn

I would totally agree with you kala.No two individuals and their life circumstances are similar,even if they are almost similar there are however bound to be some differences with reagrd to their personality and mental make up.I feel that one can always learn better from one's own mistakes rather than from others mistakes. I too have been told this time and again by others and frankly have always found it quite irritating..

I think that it is very possible to learn from the mistakes of others and in fact it is something that I have done in my life. You see, my mother was widowed at a young age and that left her with my father's assests as an inheritance. She should have had enough money that she would have been set for life. However, because of a series of bad financial investments and other bad choices she is back in the boat that she started in. I did learn that I should be very careful with money from her and I have not repeated any of the mistakes that she made and am better grounded financially because of what I was able to learn from her.

I think it's possible that we could also learn a lesson from other person's experiences particularly if this person happens to be someone you personally know. That is, if we have personal knowledge of the "nature of his experience and the why and how it happened", and "its effect" on that person's life or way of life after the experience, we could easily relate it and learn a lesson that we may also be able to apply to our own life.

True, that we learn from others' mistakes. I for one has undergone many situations like listening to friends, elders of family members experiences. And yes, it did help me avoid doing the same decisions or actions because it has been inflicted in my mind and has been my mirror. Although there was one time i got caught on a similar situation but lucky enough to deal with it better since I have already known or listened to a similar scene.

I am always safe for myself. If I am doubted about a thing, I always check if somebody had experience it so I may know what did happen that I don't want it to happen to me. It is better to learn from the mistakes of other people and apply for yourself what is needed to do.

i think that you can learn from peoples mistakes...it just depends which mistake you are learning from because i do agree that some things can be best learned if you learn them yourself. but at least if you have seen someone else experience you have something to kind of expect.