Discover the Benefits from the Most Ignored Resource

Discover the Benefits from the Most Ignored Resource

My observations, for the last ten years, on what resources are available for personal and professional growth, and how people use them have led to one key conclusion. To a great extend, people don't succeed because they ignore the most available and accessible resource-other people's experience.

Name any human enterprise and chances are that someone has done something on it. Whatever your life's endeavor is, there is somebody with knowledge or experience, and mostly likely both, that you can use immediately and start living the life you have envisioned. The use, expounding on existing knowledge and experience is the shortest and least bumpy path to your goals.

A few months ago, I wrote about how Lewis and Clark benefitted from a resource, Sacajawea, that they had not planned on when the left for the uncharted west. They benefited from her experience. How many doctors, engineers, lawyers or researchers just show up for work and expect to have spectacular performances without ever observing some experienced professionals

How do you make it a practice to benefit in life by using other people's experience?

1. The first step is your willingness to learn from other people's experiences and change in order to grow and remain relevant in what you do. If you don't change as times change, then you are changed. You can never have progress without change. It's a tragedy to let the fear of doing something different shackle your future by stifling your growth.

1. Have top notch clarity on what you need to learn. It is a waste of your time and that of the "guru" you want to learn from if you met with him or her and you had not taken the time to prepare specific questions. It's frustrating and you are not likely to be given another chance. Investing time to think and put your questions in perspective will provide the opportunity to have several items that have direct impact on your goals addressed.

1. Have an open mind. It is amazing to find a solution for a challenge you are going through from a source you didn't expect. I have attended conferences only to get practical tips that take my business or life to new heights, from one of the other attendees and nothing from the featured presenters.

1. Know that you don't have forever to learn everything you need through costly trail and error. In 1996, I learned the steps one needs to get a regular column in newspapers and magazines. It was written by someone who had done it for years. Within a relatively short time I was a regular columnist. There are endless stories of successful people in many areas of life and all attribute their success to what they learned from others.

1. Develop the courage to say, "I need help" and do so before you are discouraged beyond recovery. It takes a strong person to ask for help. What happens if we don't ask? When I was a sophomore in high school in Kenya, I helped a teacher carry a gas cylinder from a bus station to his house. His wife was so thankful she gave me a cake. I had never seen a cake like that. Without hesitation, I just put the cake into my mouth and started chewing, only to find that the cake was wrapped with a paper that had to be removed before eating. Failing in your goals because you didn't ask for help is worse than eating a piece of paper

1. Put what you learned into practice. If you have knowledge on something but you don't put it into action you are no better than someone who doesn't have the knowledge.