When It Becomes Your Experience

By Bernadette A. Moyer

This past year has been filled with people telling me things like “Now I get it!” or “You were right.” And even “I am sorry that I doubted you.” These statements came after I had an experience and shared it. My friends that came to the same conclusion needed it to become “their” experience before they could fully relate.

I could so easily have said “I told you so!” but that isn’t me. Most people need to experience things for themselves and that isn’t a bad thing. I remember the first time that someone responded to something that I shared with “well that hasn’t been my experience.” I immediately respected that statement. He wasn’t going to be swayed or manipulated by what anyone said. Not long after though, what I shared soon became his experience. It was so much better that way.

“Nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced.” John Keats

We can have a certain degree of compassion and empathy for what others are going through and what they are experiencing but when it becomes our own experience, we really get it.

I am always amused when I hear people complain about this person or that person or about a business, this usually catches my attention and I tend to look deeper. The person who finds fault with several businesses at the same time is usually the one with the problem. Think about it? If you are simultaneously having difficulties with three different service providers at the very same occasion could it just maybe be that it isn’t all of them and that you might be a part of the problem?

My other amusing statements come from people that never ever had any children of their own but will declare with conviction things like “kids never lie” or “it must be the parents.” Anyone that has raised children knows that kids do lie, sometimes it is a little white lie and sometimes it is a whopper. And by the time a child has reached their teenage years parental control is waning. Kids do things every single day that parents do not agree with and parents often have very little control.

When an organization has had 6 different “leaders” in a period of 16 months, they might want to stop pointing one finger out and contemplate the four fingers that are pointing back at themselves. Clearly with so much turnover in a key position during such a short amount of time, they aren’t doing something right. Most probably they aren’t listening to the right people and/or have their own agenda. When something becomes our experience we can relate, we can understand and we really do appreciate it and we get it.

“People never learn anything by being told, they have to find out for themselves.” Paulo Coelho

I think it is noble and respect worthy to suspend judgment until it becomes our experience, otherwise we could so easily become manipulated by what people share with us.

So here is to learning and understanding and truly “getting it” when it becomes our own experience …

Bernadette on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bernadetteamoyer