• You won’t really learn obvious lessons until you’ve done the mistakes yourself.
• Focus on one project at a time.
• Don’t be afraid to fail.
• Fall down 7 times, get up 8.
• People come before anything else.
• Treat people the way you’d like to be treated.
• Don’t wait for the perfect time, start now.
• Etc.

We know all these obvious lessons. Or maybe not.

Why don’t we all abide my them? Why does it take years until a few of (these lessons) become part of our system?

I’ve come to realize that they are a huge difference between two edges. The first edge is knowing and accepting these obvious lessons. The second edge is Having these obvious lessons as part of our belief system.

We all know about Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and so on. But one or none of these religious figures is part of our belief system. We will not act according to the teachings of any one of these religious figures, until one of them becomes part of our belief system.

And I’m not advocating adopting one religion. I’m only using religion because it’s an example we can all identify with. I, at the moment, adopt none.

That’s the challenge.

Adopting obvious lessons as part of our belief system doesn’t happen on a rational level. It takes a strong emotional experience. A huge failure perhaps. Or a loved one turning their back on us. Or a “life changing” lost opportunity. Or a close person truly appeals to our emotions.

The problem is obvious, those of us who have experienced these obvious lessons on an emotional level, go on to share them on a rational level. It never works this way.

Belief systems or world views are always amended on an emotional level. That’s why you won’t really learn obvious lessons until you’ve done the mistake yourself.

Please share with me your experience in the comments. Twitter @williamchoukeir” End of post

Do you think these are obvious lessons?

The economist John Kenneth Galbraith is credited to have coined the term “Conventional Wisdom” as he wrote:

“We associate truth with convenience, with what most closely accords with self-interest and personal well-being or promises best to avoid awkward effort or unwelcome dislocation of life. We also find highly acceptable what contributes most to self-esteem…Economic and social behaviors are complex, and to comprehend their character is mentally tiring.  Therefore, we adhere, as though to a raft, to those ideas which represent our understanding…”  It is sort of we stick to community habits, customs, and consensus for acknowledgment, as one normal person, and not the designated fool of the community.

How do you understand “having common-sense” to mean?

Does it mean you have enough normal social-intelligence capacity to recognize how things are done in a community, to understand the customs and traditions within a community, and to behaving as it is expected of a normal member?

I have learned in Industrial Engineering the many pitfalls and errors committed in designing a system or product by simply relying on a designer common sense.

Countless people, consumers, soldiers, operators have died or were seriously injured because companies failed to conduct experiments on how people behave, using a particular system or product. Most experiments have demonstrated that someone common sense of a behavior, particularly the designer, is counter-intuitive to the majority of the subjects tested.

It is not clockwise but counterclockwise, it is not to the left but to the right, it is not up but down that the majority of people in a specific community tend to act, prefer, or behave…

The common sense attitude of people is mostly idiosyncratic to other communities that have their own preferences and opinions…

Have you read a set of idioms from another culture, civilization, country…?

Do idioms resemble closely what you have learned in school or overheard in your community? More often than not, you discover idioms with opposite meaning and carrying different value standards…

Are idioms retained because the idiot of the village was a good rhymer and very funny and the idiom was retained for its humor content…?  Or many idioms were rhymed so that common people who could not read or write memorize what is to be done and how to behave under particular situations…?

How obvious is it to learn after making “the mistake”? 

Aren’t all the knowledge and courses we have taken meant to know the correct answer before hand?  Are we learning our lessons the wrong way, according to our idiosyncratic predisposition, or we failing to attend to details, or we are opting for shortcuts when doing our due diligence is the norm…?

Are we applying equations mindlessly that are not appropriate to the case-study? Are we failing to double-check our procedures or asking a second opinion on problems that are more complex than expected?

If to err is human, should mankind basic characteristic is to be in the wrong most of the time?

Is “Don’t be afraid to fail” such an obvious lesson?

How many teachers, bosses, or superiors… do you know who have given you a second chance to making another mistake? How often did your community or close family “condescended” to let bygone be bygone and told you “It is okay to fail once, twice, 77 times, as long as you are diligent in avoiding repeating the same error…?”

How obvious is “People come before anything else…?” 

Do wars, particularly preemptive wars put people before anything else?  Do the board of director members of any corporation think that people come first? Why 50% of the profit is distributed to the 1% and the other  half to the hundreds of workers and employees? Why enterprises with monopoly over a section of the economy force upon the customers products and designs that should be redesigned for a healthier and safer usage…?

How about you develop and reflect on the remaining “obvious lessons”?