Was tailgating at the Stanford football game a few weeks ago when I was immersed in a solid conversation with a couple Daily Hustlers that were hosting the party, Vince Sakowski & Mark Daschbach…
Both of them were talking about the recent Confucius Daily Hustle where he was quoted as saying…
“I hear and I forget,
I see and I remember,
I do and I understand.”
For whatever reason, this one really resonated with both of the Stanford alum and they were explaining to a buddy of theirs, former Stanford football player Rob Moore, that the message of “experience is king” in the Confucius quote (and then expanded upon in the Daily Hustle) was invaluable…
Rob then quickly chimed in…
“Absolutely, it’s just like what my Dad used to always say… ‘Tell a kid 100 times not to touch a hot stove and they may never learn, let them touch it once and they will never forget.’”
Holy shit balls I LOVE this…
As parents, educators and influencers, we try so hard to hammer home messages by telling and showing somebody how to do something… Yet the reality is that until we let somebody experience life for themselves, true education never really takes place…
Ironically, when I was a kid, my Dad taught me how to ride our Yamaha yellow banana motorcycle…
One of the first lessons I learned was NEVER touch the tail pipe because it was scorching hot and would immediately burn whatever it came into contact with… Of course, my Dad verbally told me this 9,000 times, but it wasn’t until one day when I mindlessly got off the motorcycle, brushed my leg up against the tail pipe and burnt a gigantic hole into my skin when I truly comprehended WHY…
Look, I’m not saying to have a hot stove burn party, unless you and the fam are into some sort of whacked out body branding rituals (that’s up to you guys)… But what I am saying is that there is absolutely no better way to learn than real LIFE EXPERIENCE, and sometimes that means still getting to carry around the lesson reminder 30 years later….
-EB