Experience - A Fresh Look!

Experience and Expertise both form two sides of a coin. We use these 2 words very fairly without getting the inner significance. Most of the time, we say or affirm, Experience automatically results in Expertise. Let explore more...

Trying to understand meaning of the above 2 words, we would be able to pull out many definitions from Oxford dictionary, Wikipedia and other reliable resources. But, in simple term, we can understand:

'Experience is an outcome of an event' and 'Expertise is Learning from that event which causes change in behavior.’ Expertise comes alive from the Experience.

It’s interesting to watch by looking deep into the above perceptive. Both experience and expertise evolve out-off an event with significant differentiation factors namely, Learning and Change in Behavior. Now, let's consider a scenario illustrated below:

'A young child enters into the kitchen and finds a beautifully designed knife on the floor. Being attracted towards it, the child picks up and begins to play. While playing, she accidentally hurts herself in the finger and blood started oozing out. She immediately throws the knife, run towards her mother and takes medication…Again another day, she finds the same knife, again picks it up and starts playing. But, this time, she handles it very carefully and used it to cut papers and didn’t hurt her finger!'

The above scenario could be broken into the following pieces of information and correlated to:

§ The Event - Child playing with Knife

§ The Experience – An unexpected hurt while playing using knife

§ The Learning – Knife would cause harm

§ Child's Pre-behavior - Playing inattentively with the knife

§ Child's Post-behavior – Knife can be used to cut papers

§ Expertise gained – Being attentive

Here, considering the above child’s experience, she learns how to use a knife and gain knowledge of being attentive. In similar fashion, we encounter in our daily life such significant sources of unexpected events which mount into our experience and translate into our expertise. But, unless and until we recognize and experience those events, it will just remain as a ‘match stick without a spark.’

Many times, we consider ourselves as an Expert as our Experience enlarges. But then, stop now and move a step backward and ask ourselves, Did We Really Experienced an Experience?

Experiencing an Experience generates learning which in turn develops Expertise.

Let’s all try igniting our Match Stick this Weekend!

Have a Happy Weekend!