Brent Kelly argues that raw experience doesn't teach you anything. What matters is evaluated experience: asking yourself what you learned, how it affected you, and what you'll change. The difference between going through life and growing through it.
Chapters
Hi, Brent Kelly here, the sitkittens group with my Pro Fit tip, helping you and your agency become your best version possible. I recently recorded a podcast on my Agent Leader podcast and the title of the podcast was this Experience is Not the Best Teacher. I got some great feedback on that podcast. I want to share a little more and give you some prompts of what this really means and some things you could tactically do and understanding how to best leverage your experience. Now, I don't know about you, but I've had my own experiences and I've had conversations, interactions with other people in different areas and walks of life or business where they have said to me, well, you know, Brent, I've got five years or 15 years or 25 years of experience in this particular area. And it wasn't long after I had some conversation with them that I realized I don't know if they really have five or 15 or 25 years of experience or if they really have one year of experience doing the same thing. Five or 15 or 25 years. Mentor and author John Maxwell says this so well. I love this phrase that we can either go through life or we can grow through life. We can just go through things, go through the motions. And experience is a good teacher. But experience isn't the best teacher. It's evaluated experience. It's understanding that it's not just the things that we experience, but how we deal with them, how we improve from them, how we take action around them. So it's about evaluating your own experience. I want to share with you three questions. These are questions that I came up with that I use in my own life. You can make your own questions or improvise as necessary, but just three questions you should ask yourself. I believe every day, at the end of every day, or maybe the start of the next day, about the previous day that are going to help you not just go through life, but grow through life again. Experience is a good teacher, but evaluated experience is the best teacher. So here's the first question. What did I learn today? Pretty simple question, right? But sometimes we go to the end of days and we look at the previous day like I do the next morning. I go through and journal and go, what did I learn yesterday? Because sometimes we forget. There's so many things that we forget that can be such great lessons, both good and bad. And here's the next question. How did that impact me? What was the impact, good or bad? Is it something that I want to repeat because success leaves clues? Or is it something I need to change and revise because it was a challenge or frustration for me. And the last question to consider is this what improvements will I make? So now I've evaluated it, I've thought about what the impact was. What improvements am I tactically going to make? What difference, what change am I going to make in my life, in my habits, whatever it may be, so that I can expand, improve upon what I did, learn from that experience. So three questions again to consider. Because experience is a good teacher. There's no doubt that if you experience things, you're going to have an advantage. But the true advantage, whether you have 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 20 years of experience, certainly in the insurance world, is how you evaluate and improve from those experiences. Do want to invite you as well that if you want to learn more about what we do at C. Sitkins as coaches to help agencies help insurance professionals become their best version possible, visit our website@sitkins.com or you can give us a call at the number there. I wish you all the best in your success.
