Every day is an opportunity to learn.  As we travel through this journey called life, we don’t really know what the future holds for us and we do not know why certain things happen to us (life experiences).  Whether your life experiences are good or bad, they are intended to teach you some type of lesson.  Life is both good and bad and sometimes life can go from one extreme to the next.  Those experiences helps to develop our character.  There are many lessons that we will learn in life.  The lessons could be, that we are not in control of every aspect of our lives, or to help us learn what to do better next time the same or similar situation occurs again in the future.  Life experiences also teach us what we shouldn’t say, what we shouldn’t do, where we shouldn’t go, what paths to take in life, what to accept from people, what not to accept from people, how what we do and say impacts those around us, and how we can help others.  No matter what lesson you learn, know that the intent of the lesson is so that you can be and do better.  Sometimes, when we do not learn the lesson from an experience the first time the experience occurs, God knows how to really get our attention. Pain is one of the fastest ways to get our attention in a way that we learn life lessons quickly.  Sometimes, when there is a lesson taught, we do not always get the intent of the message in the lesson, until after pain is the end result.  It’s like cheating on someone again, who forgave you after the first time you cheated on them.  You may not have learned the lesson not to cheat again, because you didn’t experience the pain of losing the person you cheated on.  Therefore, the cheating behavior does not change and you don’t learn the lesson that cheating is wrong and painful.  The lesson isn’t really learned until after there is a consequence for your actions and that consequence causes you pain.  We learn quicker in painful situations.  The pain causes us to think differently about our actions and how what we do impacts others.  When we experience pain, we then begin to understand that what we did was wrong and will then try to modify or eliminate the behaviors, now that we know the pain that can result from our behaviors. 
 

Life lessons are here to teach us what to do and what not to do in every aspect of our lives.  We cannot escape from life lessons, therefore we should learn from them.  We have to be accountable for our own learning process, as well as what can occur when we do not want to accept our own truth.   Accountability is important to learning life lessons.  We have to be accountable for our own choices that we make in life.  One of the things that God gives us all is, Free Will.  We have the free will to choose.  The key is making sure that you are choosing to do the Right things.  We have to know that for every action, there is a reaction (whether positive or negative).  Therefore, if we take part in an action that we chose to do, we have to be willing to accept the reaction whether it is good or bad.  For example, not paying your mortgage is an action, and the reaction could be that your home goes into foreclosure and you eventually lose it.  Not paying your car note payment is an action, and the reaction could be that your car is repossessed and this negatively reflects as bad credit on your credit report.  Treating your partner badly is an action, and the reaction could be that your partner eventually leaves you.  We cannot blame anyone else, but ourselves for our choices that we make.  We can’t have the victim mindset (It’s always something, why does these bad things happen to me?), when we don’t do the right things.  The result, was a reaction to Your action.  The lesson in all of these situations is to learn what to do better.  We have to be accountable for our actions and not put the blame on others when our actions causes a reaction that we do not like or agree with.  Don’t blame other people for the decisions that you make.  Learn from life lessons.   We don’t always have to learn life lessons through our own experiences, we can also learn by watching someone else’s experiences (vicariously).   Now, their experiences do not have to be our experiences, but sometimes, by watching other peoples’ journey through life can help you know what not to do. 

 

Ask yourself are you learning from your experiences or are you still making the same mistakes?  If you are not learning from your experiences, you are not learning life lessons.   Life lessons are teachable moments, they are here to teach us.  As the saying goes, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result/outcome.  Life experiences are intended to teach us what to do and say, so that we can be better and so that we can teach/help someone else along the way, who may experience the same or similar situation.  Sometimes, the lesson is not for us, it is for other people.   Think about it, someone who is sexually abused and survived, or someone who has abused drugs and recovered are the same people who work as sexual abuse survivor counselors or drug addiction counselors to help someone else overcome those life experiences.  Life is about learning from the lesson, not getting consumed by or stuck in the pain that results during or after the experience.   We can overcome just about anything, if we really want to overcome the experiences and if we are willing to learn from the experience and be accountable for our actions, what we learn, and how we get through the lesson that the experience is teaching us.  Ask yourself, what are your life experiences trying to teach you?  Do not focus on the experience, focus on what the experience is trying to teach you; for this is the lesson and it is the lesson that teaches us, resilience.  Learning, is always by design.  What’s your life trying to teach you?

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By Lynnette Clement