Learning through Life’s Knowledge Diamonds

“Experience is the best teacher” may be a time-tested proverb, but in reality, learning from life’s experiences is not always as simple as the conventional wisdom suggests. We each learn different lessons from life’s experiences based on the knowledge we use for making sense of things that happen. While knowledge is important to us, it is not always reliable. All knowledge is limited and limits us. Yet we often ignore the flaws or narrowness of the knowledge that we have come to habitually rely upon. It is often only in retrospect that we discover that our knowledge is more limited or imperfect than we ever imagined it to be. How can we create better-quality knowledge that can really be counted on to guide us when we need it most? One answer is to view experience freshly through the lens of life’s knowledge diamonds.

Nikki’s Personal Journey

Let us consider how Nikki improved the knowledge in her life. After nearly 15 years of working for large insurance companies, she left that business behind to start a small business of her own. Her early success in the new business was driven by her work ethic, people skills, and buoyant optimism. Her “can do anything” attitude grew out of her childhood experience of growing up on the family’s farm on the northern plains of America’s heartland. By the time she reached age 40, Nikki found herself working ever harder to keep her business afloat. Feeling more stressed than ever, in a crumbling marriage, chronically tired, and nearly 25 percent overweight, Nikki knew that it was time to reevaluate her life. By the winter of 2002, Nikki faced a crisis. She developed a severe case of pneumonia and landed in the hospital. Her physician warned her that next time could be much worse. Her childhood spent on the family farm taught her the importance of relying on personal grit and determination to defeat hard times. Did she reach the limits of her simple wisdom gained on the farm and growing up on the prairie? As she lay in bed recovering from pneumonia, Nikki discovered that trusted knowledge is not the same as perfect knowledge.

Paying Attention to Life’s Knowledge Diamonds

What are the secrets to creating personal knowledge diamonds that will effectively guide us toward the lives we most truly desire? If we look at the diamonds of our lives’ knowledge, we find that the many sides are shaped by the meaning we have given to the lessons of our lives’ experiences. There is no form of knowledge that is as powerful as our own life knowledge. Knowledge supports our beliefs about which rules of action will potentially be most effective in guiding us in various life situations to achieve the results we most truly desire. It helps us know which actions have worked well at getting the sort of results we want in the same or similar situations. As opposed to external knowledge about how the world works, facts, or data, life knowledge focuses on understanding what has worked for you personally to get the results you seek. How can we create the high-quality life knowledge that will serve us well?

If we follow seven simple steps, each of which will help clarify one side of the diamond prism, we can move ever closer to seeing life’s challenges and opportunities with the clarity that comes with being informed by the lessons captured in life knowledge. Let’s look at the seven sides of the knowledge diamond.

Side 1: Continuously improve the quality of your beliefs about how things work in your life. Let life’s experiences provide you with the raw material to create richer, more elegant stories and explanations for how things work in your life. Experiment with designing new theories about what might possibly work in the future, and create an explanation for why it might possibly work.

Side 2: Personal Life Knowledge is the most powerful type of knowledge. Focus your own knowledge-building efforts on being attentive to what actions tend to work reliably in producing the results you value most.

Side 3: When in doubt, look for evidence of success in the lives of others. If you have clearly lost confidence in the ability of your own knowledge to get the job done, then inquire into what has worked for others. Take a lesson from their success and discover how their actions differ from your planned actions.
Side 4: Capture the lessons of what has or has not worked by making a deposit into your own knowledge bank. Formalize your evaluation of what works best by asking the question “do I consider this little experiment with this aspect of my life a success?”

Side 5: When you discover something that works well, ask yourself why it works. More important, what does this recent success mean about how things work in general? Unless you allow surprises or unexpected results to inform your beliefs about what is possible, the experience is wasted.

Side 6: Use your best reasoning to apply your knowledge to new situations. The true value of knowledge is found in your ability to apply it to situations where you can leverage it to the greatest extent. Knowledge tells you how to act in certain situations, so if you can effectively recognize how certain knowledge applies in a given situation, you can reason how to use it to get the results you want.

Side 7: Create your best knowledge by actively learning from your experiences. Creating knowledge requires that you invest time into it. Time devoted to reflection, to imagining new explanations of what is or is not possible, and to experimenting with new approaches are all good investments in your own success.

Nikki’s New Knowledge

What about Nikki? After a long period of self-reflection, she discovered that she wanted a simpler life that was based on more tangible, everyday experiences of being happy. Unfortunately, like most knowledge, the lessons Nikki had learned earlier in life were limited—her knowledge was narrower than she needed it to be. She needed to find a new and improved sort of knowledge that would help her to see her life in a new light.

Her illness and marital difficulties taught her that her old habitual knowledge led her to ignore many important aspects of her life, such as health and feeling good each day. Nikki decided to take control of her life’s experiences. She sold her business and took a routine 9 to 5 job in government services—with fewer pressures. She also began a rigorous exercise routine, worked as a volunteer, and learned to savor the simple pleasures in her life. She lost the extra pounds, smiles more, has a healthy glow, and is now happily married again. Nikki discovered that she had been only paying attention to a small portion of the knowledge available to her. Once she began looking at life through more sides of her personal knowledge diamonds, she became capable of envisioning a much more exciting future that compelled her to transform her life. Can you find the knowledge diamonds in your life?

** This article is one of 101 great articles that were published in 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life. To get complete details on “101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life”, visit http://www.selfgrowth.com/greatways3.html