What life lessons make you a better person at work?

A magical thing happens when I sit down at the piano to learn a new piece of music. At first, my hands fumble to find the right notes and I watch the music closely to try to understand the pattern of notes following each other one after the other. Sometimes it makes no sense. It’s like feeling my way through fog with my fingers, and I may decide I don’t even like the piece.

But as I persist, I build on what I have learned from all the music I have previously learned, and I apply previous experiences to this new challenge, such as techniques for practicing trills or runs of octaves. Gradually over hours or days or even weeks, the pattern reveals itself. The purpose of each note, the way they work together to create a sound that elicits an emotional or intellectual response. Suddenly, when I forget that I am seeking it, the piece makes sense. I move from understanding the structure of the music to interpreting its expression, dynamic, nuance, the curve of a phrase. I move from focussing on each note to focussing on communicating with the listener.

The same thing happens in other disciplines as well, I think. When we learn something new at work or in life it may feel awkward or stiff, like new clothes, or it may feel like a moment of insight that stuns us with its implications. But as we absorb this new lesson we make it our own, and it becomes one more component of the collected body of wisdom and experience we bring to our work. Before long, it is a part of the unconscious knowledge that we apply to any challenge or problem that presents itself. It becomes part of who we are and what we contribute to the world.