One day, I imagined that I had a vault where I kept the most valuable lessons I’ve ever learned.

I opened the vault and was surprised to find that each of those lessons had been hard at the time. Often, deeply painful.

Really hard work. Major financial mistakes. Cherished ideas I was sure would work but flopped instead.

My most valuable lessons are painful, so I keep them in a vault. And because I keep them in a vault, I don’t revisit them often.

Isn’t that interesting? The lessons I value the most are the ones I seem to be intent on protecting myself from.

That seems backward. It seems to me that instead of trying to protect myself, I should build a life that exposes me to those sorts of experiences as often as possible (with some much-needed rest and recovery in between).

Instead of avoiding valuable lessons, I’m trying to learn to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. I’m setting my life up in a way that allows me to do things that may not work. I’m conducting experiments that are safe to fail instead of fail-safe.

I’m trying to cherish hard-earned lessons.

Doesn’t that sound better than keeping them locked away?