Experience as a teacher

“No Teacher is greater than one’s own experience” Timothy Gallwey in ‘The Inner game of Tennis’

“The burned hand teaches best, after that, advice about fire goes to the heart” JRR Tolkien in ‘The Lord of the Rings’

If experience is the best teacher why do we love to rob people of the opportunity by telling them what to do?

So far I can think of two reasons.

Safety and praise.

Safety first.

Our parents and their parents before them and their parents before them want to save their children the pain of the burned hand lesson.

You don’t want to learn the hard way you don’t cross the road without looking both ways.

That’s a lesson you may never recover from.

So a lot of our instructions come from a place of protection, trying to keep a loved one safe.

Praise now.

We learned in school and trivia games that you get rewarded for knowing the right answer.

Couple this conditioning with the temptation of possibly helping someone and people practically blurt out their suggestions before they have heard the problem in full.

It can be tough but I think the best way you can help someone is by not giving them the answer but rather trying to develop their problem solving skills so they can stand on their own two feet.