For many years, my mother had a fluffy white cat that might reasonably have been called obstinate. It’s not that she was incapable of learning. Far from it. She was a very bright cat; she just tended to learn the wrong lesson. For example, whenever my mother opened the refrigerator door, the cat, realizing that the fridge was the source of all goodness, would try to dart inside. My mom tried to teach the cat not to do that by closing the door on her nose. The cat learned the lesson quickly — not “I shouldn’t try to get into the refrigerator,” but rather “I should dash in the instant I can before the door hits my nose.”
Veaux, Franklin. More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory (p. 423). Thorntree Press. Kindle Edition.
The charm of this story is that we can all relate to this. We all can point to instances in our own lives where we or someone else learned the wrong lesson.
Perhaps we have a friend who left an abusive relationship, and decided “that’s the last time I date a bodybuilder!” What she fails to realize is that the relationship was not abusive because he was a bodybuilder, but because he possessed abusive tendencies.
Or perhaps we get scolded on the job, and as a result we become withdrawn. We start participating less in meetings and at work. Our boss was trying to teach us how to do the work correctly, but the lesson we learned is that we shouldn’t do the work at all.
One area of life I’ve noticed the ‘wrong lesson’ phenomenon is common is giving personal feedback. For instance, two lovers may be talking. Lover A says, “I don’t like it when you do this x way.” Lover B responds “Fine, I won’t do that anymore.” This is a perfect example of the wrong lesson. Lover A was trying to communicate that she would like to try a different way of doing what they were doing, not that they oughtn’t do it at all.
Why do we learn the wrong lessons?
We learn the wrong lessons because we are insecure. Because we are unconfident. Because we don’t believe in ourselves.
People who are confident, who generally believe in their own ability to do things, can handle criticism a lot more effectively. They can analyze their own performance and identify areas of improvement without allowing that assessment to affect their own measurement of their worth.
People who are unconfident, on the other hand, can’t make these same assessments. When threatened by a failing on their part, they need to cut it out and quarantine it. They do this by declaring they will never do what caused that failure again.
How can we make sure to learn the right ones?
When we are discussing a concrete interaction with someone else, be it a spouse, parent or boss, it’s easy to make sure we’re learning the right one. All we need to do is talk to the other person and ask them point blank, “what lesson do you want me to learn?”
When you’re talking about a personal epiphany, however, the line gets more blurred. A therapist can come in handy here, but we don’t all have access to those.
Some ways you can know that you’re learning the right lesson are:
- What you decide doesn’t reduce your options. If you failed while trying something, you’re not giving up that activity altogether.
- What you decide makes you feel optimistic. The wrong lesson can often leave you crushed. The right lesson leaves you feeling hopeful.
- The right lesson leaves others around you satisfied. If anyone is disappointed or rejected, there’s a chance you’ve learned the wrong lesson.
- The right lesson leads to an emotionally satisfying conclusion. If it feels like a loose end, or that something is left unsaid, chances are you’ve learned the wrong lesson.
The (right) lesson of this article is that it’s only through accepting the potential for future failure that we are able to work on ourselves. If we are too afraid to fail in the future, we cost ourselves now by learning the wrong lesson.