Advice Is Best When It’s Based On Mistakes

I learn best when people share their mistakes, their losses, rather than their successes. 

I remember, as I was starting out, telling an older GP how difficult I was finding a patient who was coming to see me frequently. He said, “Well what I do is think to myself, what must it be like for this person, for everybody that they meet to dislike them, or to feel what it is that you’re feeling about him.” 

I thought yea, that’s actually right. Once you make that shift in your thinking and come from the angle of compassion, it becomes fascinating not frustrating.  

I think there’s the potential to cause harm whatever path we walk, but it’s necessary and inevitable that we will make mistakes along our way. When we’re brave enough to share when things have gone wrong, we can learn so much more.