The Girl Who Never Learns From Herself and Others

As my mother always says, “always learn something from all your encounters”. Whether it is a party, a random encounter on the street, whatever the situation or event, never lose the opportunity to learn. I think this concept totally applies to not only your close friendship circle but also yourself.

This slightly brings up the old age argument of nature versus nurture. I think the two concepts are intrically intertwined. I am who am I because I was born this way and have certain predispositions but also I am who I am, from what I have absorbed from my surroundings.

Now some of us girls, seem to live in this perpetual cycle where we seem to not learn from the mistakes of our friends or our surroundings or worse, ourselves.

I’m talking about the girls who seem to make the same mistake over and over again, to the point of predictability yet we still get surprised as to why we are in the same position as last time. However we all fall under this category, we all can sometimes be so caught up trying or wishing to attain something that may not necessarily be meant for us or that we simply can’t attain.

That’s one of the main reasons; us girls never seem to learn from ourselves or from others because we are too caught up in chasing an ideal or a dream. Time to play the cliché card here but we all know chasing after guys for self-validation is the most common chronic mistake made by girls.  Kissing every frog on the planet doesn’t give you a prince ladies, it gives you herpes and a broken heart. The issue isn’t the frogs; it’s the princess who needs some time away to love herself before finding a prince.

Now, what do you do if you find yourself in this never ending cycle and you want to free yourself of your own supposed ‘stupidity’?

1. Stop idealising your life and wishing it was different. Accept the moment you are in now, be content that the present reality is your reality and no amount of idealising, wishing or dreaming can change that.
2. Know yourself. Be aware of your weaknesses and your triggers. Once you know yourself, you will find yourself removing yourself from situations or creating barriers to give yourself the best chance of not making the same mistake again.
3. Acknowledge that you won’t make it in this life if you don’t allow the people around you to help shape your character. Once you are aware that each and every day, the people you are interacting with are leaving a stamp on the letter that is your life, you will not only be richer in a sense but subconsciously learn to not make the same mistake themselves.
4. Understand that the only way to learn and be better is to make mistakes. Look at Oprah Winfrey, she wasn’t born as the Oprah Winfrey that people now know, over the course of her life she went through certain life experiences and made several mistakes. She learnt from them and look at where she is now.

I’m not saying that these 4 points above are going to make your life like an ‘easy, breezy, beautiful-cover girl’. No, that isn’t happening for neither of us. But I think following the above 4 steps will make you more stable, aware and comfortable within your own skin.

 Once you are comfortable and aware of your boundaries, you are more likely to jump into new experiences with a little foresight into how you might handle it, and the ability or knowledge to have a small inclining into potential outcomes will make learning those crucial lessons, easier and climb back up the ladder once you’ve fallen that much less painful every time. Because it’s like exercising a muscle, you start to know when to push it to its limits without breaking it or how to under do it and believe me, life becomes just that little less stressful and fearful and those mistakes when they come, you’ll thank your lucky stars you made them because now you know what you didn’t before and knowledge my dear friends is power.