What do we actually mean when we say we have an experience? Experience, however, cannot be had. When we land on the ground when jumping from a plane or when we open our eyes after our first kiss, the experience is already behind us. Hypothetically speaking, the moment has passed and history is history. However, these experiences shape our further decisions and experiences.
How do experiences shape our subsequent decisions and experiences? When we experience something, these experiences are written into ours memory. A memory, of course it is not a direct and objective snapshot of the past, darkly representation, which also changes every time we recall it again - according to our current feelings, wishes, expectations and the like.
Representations of our experiences have a significant impact to what we will expect from ourselves, others and life in the future, what we will hope for and what we will not, what we will want and what we will avoid. That's it an inevitable part of man
Through ongoing learning through experience, we want predict possible outcomes of alternative choices in the future, se avoid bad and painful ones experiences and to experience as many pleasant ones as possible. Such a mechanism of action is inevitable and to a large extent completely sensible and functional. But also contains a problem ‒ withit draws us into the framework of our own assumptions, which can be largely wrong.
If, for example, we had a bad experience with our first partner, we can quickly generalize that all partners will hurt us, we decide not to pursue romance at all anymore and thus protect ourselves from heartache, and with this we also close ourselves before new love and connection.
So what to do? In any case, none of us are gods who can completely outwit our own brains. That's right pointlessly completely silencing one's own intuition and interpretations of the world, as they can benefit us to a large extent. It makes sense to be aware of, that they are our predictions of the future and our ideas are often wrong and influenced by good or bad past experiences.
Usually we simply cannot predict where a certain experience will lead us. It's probably optimal maintain a good degree of openness and awareness that us life can surprise you at every turn, and add next to it a dash of prudent caution.
