On Learning from Experience

“Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.”
― Otto von Bismarck

Originally heard in my life from Charlie Munger, but upon a quick Goog, turns out Otto gets the credit. The abundance of misattributed quotes aside, you get the gist.

This has largely inspired my learning journey over the past 5 years as I have tried to learn different philosophies for how to structure my life and see where others fail.

You hear stories of people who get to the end of their life and think "I wish I spent more time on X or Y."

Countless tales of people neglecting their health, families, friends, mental well-being, faith, etc.

Jack Harlow song came on shuffle recently:

Time's tickin', my mom's 50
Told me that she been thinkin' 'bout spending time different
It's more precious, what if I took the same method at 21 and adopted it?

Great question, Jack. What if?

Is this possible?

To a degree, certainly. But what lessons can't be learned from the experience of others?

I have been thinking of people hitting rock bottom and having that singular moment where you turn things around.

Sure there will be ups and downs no matter what you do, but to what degree can they be mediated by planning in advance, premediato malorem, and learning from other's mistakes?

Speaking of the stoics, there is a lot of wisdom in the ability to control your own mind.

There is a quote that eludes me (and ChatGPT) that is something like "imagine all of the misdeeds in your life you were once mad about and you have forgotten, you are not still mad about those, so why don't you just pretend that you forgot about this one."

^ Absolutely butchered, and may not even be a quote, but you get the point.

Why does it take my friend actually dying for me to want to reach out to all of my other friends? Why does it take me drinking too much to examine how alcohol impacts my life? Why do I have to binge eat and gain 10 pounds in a weekend to put guardrails in place?

Do I?

Or can I just pretend?

For some things, this will certainly work. I think the kicker is how much the lessons stick - how good is your imagination?

A lot of people meditate, manifest, dream, etc. positive things and feelings in their lives. What if you can do the opposite?

Is it actually adaptive to fully envision me in 20 years neglecting my family and my relationships and I hit rock bottom, and then I hope and I pray and I wish that I could only go back 20 years ago and do it all over?

We have all bargained with God in moments of desperation.

Please God if you help me do this I promise I will never do x, y, or z ever again.

When I got badly injured in sports during my life, I would think every minute that I was in the training room, "man, once I get back I will be stretching, pre-hab. preventative strengthening, etc," and time and time again I would recover and then be like eh, probably fine.

After a close loss in a high-stakes game, you want to think, man if I could only go back to myself pre-game and say I need to go all out on every single play. You let up for one second and it costs you.

One of Dalio's principles he frequently touts is "Pain + Reflection = Progress".

Can I skip the pain, please?

Probably sometimes. Worth thinking more about.

Tangential follow-ups for this post can be found in the parable of The Mexican Fisherman, or Oregon by Kota the Friend.

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