I recieved some interesting feedback yesterday on my post about the value of experience.  I had seemed to imply all experience was good.

Most of us have had bad experiences (think about Ryan Lochte’s recent Brazilian experience for example) and do agree experience can be percieved as being positive, negative, good or bad.

Life Lessons

I would argue though that in the context of life lessons, any experience, regardless of how it is percieved by the recipient, is valuable and sets the frame for growth, increased competency and ultimately success.

In the context of life lessons or even just professional activities experiences lay the ground work for us to choose to repeat or avoid actions based on past results (i.e., the experience)

Avoid Bad Experiences

The feedback I recieved suggested experience in and of itself does not have value and some experiences were to be avoided (e.g., a car accident).

In the context of capability to perform certain tasks (e.g. a medical operation) I would argue having the benefit of performing surgery in addtion to training and skills derived from practice positions me to be a better practitioner than someone without that experience.

Does this mean I would strive to avoid the experience of an unsuccessful surgey with a resulting fatality, of course.  However, if I did encounter that situation I would use the experience to advantage,

The knowledge of what went wrong and possibly how to a avoid a reoccurrence is golden. A bad experience can ultimately be leveraged for good.

My thought is that while the experience itself could be classified as negative, unpleasent, not to be repeated; in terms of the triumverate of attributes that forge sucessful results (education, ability and experience) all types of experiences are needed