Learning Unwanted Lessons

When he was a toddler, my first son went through a phase during which he was always drawn to the open candle flame we sometimes had lit on a table in the center of our living room.

If you live in Europe or North America, you’re most likely wondering why we had open fire inside the house. It was actually a very common occurrence at that time in many parts of Africa, even in the big cities.

Living at the time in a country with epileptic power supply, we would light a candle to provide some semblance of lighting in the evenings anytime electricity was out. But the attraction to that single flame was too much for 8-month old Paul to resist.

Each time he would crawl towards the fire to touch it, my wife and I would rush to pick him up. We didn’t want him to experience the pain that we knew would be the result. But he didn’t know this. How could he? He was just a baby! All he knew was that we were preventing him from something he really wanted.

Once we put him down after pulling him away, he would start crawling right back toward it.

After a while, I told my wife that we should just let him touch the flame. After all, it won’t kill him, I thought. And he would learn the reason we have been trying to prevent him from touching the fire.

But she wouldn’t have it. His mother’s kind heart won’t allow her to go along with my plan. So, she continued to run after him to pick him up from approaching the definite danger. Until when she didn’t.

One day, while she wasn’t paying attention, my son darted towards the flame again. I saw him, knew what was going to happen, but did nothing to stop him. My wife’s back was turned, so she didn’t see him.

Eventually, he reached the flame and poked his forefinger into it. By the time his sudden cries reached his mother’s ears, I was already there to pick him up. I rubbed the aching finger, blew on it and even licked it in an attempt to ease his pain.

After that incident, my son never touch the flame again. For a while after that, he would just sit on the floor and watch it from afar. I could tell he remembered the pain he had felt when he touched the flame.

What I described here is a common scenario for most parents. We take the job of protecting our children very seriously. From our experiences we know what’s dangerous and we try to shield them from these.

As they get older, we continue to try to steer them away from the mistakes we had made when we were younger. We want them to avoid the heartaches we had experienced. But in many cases, it’s all for nought.

During their teenage years, they begin to test boundaries. As young adults, knowing that you no longer have the power to compel them, they could choose to turn deaf ears to your warnings against making the mistakes for which you had experienced bad consequences.

You wonder why they’re so strong-headed and would not listen to you. It’s as if they seem bent on repeating the same mistakes. To them, you’re still operating with ideas and approaches best left behind in the stone age.

As I think back on this, it occurred to me that many of us who are parents today had similar responses with our own parents when we were younger. We thought their ideas were old and archaic. We felt they didn’t live in the modern world.

While this may be true in some instances, I have since recognized some of the painful lessons I have learned - heartaches that could have been avoided if I had simply listened to reason and wise counsel.

Of course, I didn’t know it was wise counsel at the time. I just thought they were trying to control my life. Yes, there may be parents who are too controlling. But most are simply trying to guide out of the immense love they have.

While it would be too late for some of us whose parents are no longer around, there’s still time for the rest of us. We would do well to seek, listen to, and reflect on their sage advice. It doesn’t mean you have to follow it. But you may be surprised at the wisdom nuggets that you could acquire in the process.

So, if you have a parent, relative, or friend who have had a longer life experience than you, it would do you a world of good to learn from them. Tap into their insights. Actively seek their counsel.

Their experiences may not apply directly to your situation, but you can still glean some pearls of wisdom that are helpful. Simply form the habit of listening to and reflecting on given advice with a positive attitude.

Actively ask for it too! You could be surprised at what you may learn.

Your future self will be thankful you did.

Lessons Not Learned

If we’ve learned anything from experience, it’s that most things in life never go according to plan. Despite that, most business coaches worth their salt, would tell you that making a plan before venturing into anything worthwhile is an obviously good idea.

I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said, “By failing to plan, you are preparing to fail.” If you think about it, it simply makes sense to plan a course of action before diving headlong into it. Doing that will ensure a high probability of success.

Still, having a plan doesn’t mean things will pan out as planned. This is the reason why the ability to pivot and course-correct is important even when you have a good plan. As someone who has spent about two decades in the project management profession, course-correction is something I’ve always come to expect.

During the years when I was actively leading corporate project teams, I learned to expect the unexpected. This served me well because it allowed me to quickly overcome that initial, instinctive negative emotion that comes with unexpected changes.

When the project is eventually completed successfully, one activity I used to earnestly look forward to was “Lessons Learned.” Depending on the project, this could be an all-day activity (or longer) involving most of the people who worked on the project.

As the name implies, we would recollect what we didn’t know when the project began, what changes occurred during the project execution, and what was done to steer the project back on course. All of these would be documented so that the next project could incorporate these learnings.

Funnily enough, once we were done, we would file these documents away to never see them again! And when that next project comes around, we repeat the mistakes and then go through the entire process again.

In hindsight, this usually happened because the project manager of that next project is typically different from the one who learned the lessons of the previous one. As it is in project management, it proves true with many of our life experiences.

My conclusion: we don’t seem to learn from other people’s mistakes.

It’s almost as if we’re more comfortable with shooting ourselves in the foot just to experience the pain. It’s not enough to see and learn from another’s uncomfortable or painful experience. We want to live it! More about this in the next newsletter.

For this week, I’d love your take on a couple of things:

Firstly, why do you think we do this? Why do we forgo learning from others’ pains in favor experiencing it ourselves?

Secondly, please share any experiences you may have in this area. In what situations have you (or others you know) not learned from the experiences of others, and ended up making similar mistakes.

I’d love to get your perspective. Share it in the comments below.

Please don’t leave me hanging!

Not the Same Language

The first language shock I received after relocating to the United States more than two decades ago happened almost immediately on arrival. To be clear, I have spoken the English language all my life, so I wasn't expecting a language difference.

Imagine how wrong that turned out to be!

The first encounter with this difference came soon. My employer then was Siemens, and my first assignment was working as part of a team of engineers on a project for our customer, Anheuser-Busch.

The majority of the work was being done out of one of the customer's buildings in downtown St. Louis, and my team had an administrative professional assigned to work with us. Her name was Pat.

One day, I approached Pat at her desk to ask for something I needed.

Me: Pat, can I please have some gum?

Pat: I'm sorry, Sunny. I don't have gum.

Me (looking confused): But I've seen it here on your desk before.

Pat: I think you're mistaken. There has never been gum on my desk.

Me (still not convinced): I see it there all the time! It's usually here on this corner of your desk (pointing to a spot on her desk). I even saw it earlier today, so I know it's always there.

Pat (now becoming agitated): I don't know what you're talking about, Sunny! There's never been gum anywhere on my desk. I don't chew gum. I've never chewed gum in my life, so I have no gum.

Me (now surprised): Chew gum? I'm not talking about the gum you chew! I'm asking for the one you use to stick or bond things together, like an adhesive.

Pat: Oh! You mean glue!

Me: Yes, glue. But where I'm from, we call it gum.

Pat: Really?! Then what do you call the gum you chew.

Me: Chewing gum.

That moment began my education in the differences between American English and British English. There were many more to follow over the years.

 One time, I asked a taxi driver taking me home from the airport if his trafficator wasn't working because he wasn't using it as he weaved in and out of traffic. He responded with, "I don't have a trafficator."

"Your car comes with it. Is it broken?"

"No, I don't have it because I don't know what it is."

"It's that signaling light on the four corners of your car indicating the direction in which you're about to turn."

"Oh! You mean the blinkers!"

"You call them blinkers?! I guess that makes sense. They blink!"

 Another time, someone saw me one day, and said, "I love your pants." I was mortified! How did she see my pants? Is it showing up because I didn't tuck in my shirt properly?  I later found out she meant my trousers. What she called "pants", was to me, underwear.

And there were many more:

Queue vs. Line

Angry vs. Mad

Lorry vs. Truck

Lift vs. Elevator

Hood vs. Bonnet

Cooker vs. Stove

Nappy vs. Diaper

Sweets vs. Candy

Biscuit vs. Cookie

Flat vs. Apartment

Silencer vs Muffler

Curtains vs. Drapes

Spanner vs. Wrench

Holiday vs. Vacation

Wardrobe vs. Closet

Chips vs. French Fries

Braces vs. Suspenders

Pavement vs. Sidewalk

Windscreen vs. Windshield

Roundabout vs. Traffic Circle

Boot vs. Trunk (in case you're wondering, this is the rear side of a car)

Toilet vs. Restroom (I've always wondered who goes into a toilet to rest!)

 These and many more were a source of frustration to me at the beginning. Now, more than 20 years later, I'm used to them. As a speaker with audiences around the world, I've found ways to speak to specific audiences using the terms they understand.

It also helps that most people outside of North America get the meaning easily when you use the American words instead of the British ones. The only few moments of trouble are when those British words hiding in my subconscious slip out of their hiding place to an American audience, and I get some blank stares in the room.

Usually, I quickly realize my mistake and correct it.

The process of change is difficult for most of us, especially when you didn't anticipate it. You thought you knew the language, but you really didn't! I can only imagine the magnitude of the change for those arriving in a country with a language that is completely different from the ones they've spoken all of their lives.

But many people have weathered that storm. If they can, we all can do it also. All we need is a little bit of patience and resilience. This is true for languages, and it's true for many of the changes we go through as human beings.

Still, even though it's not the same as trying to speak German when French is all you've spoken all your life, I still hold firmly to the belief that American English and British English are not the same languages.

If you disagree, I may have to ask my attorney to speak with your barrister!