Almost 1 year ago, I made a blog post on Keeping an Empty Cup. This was a time when I had no understanding of the opportunity that I had been given, and I was still fighting my mentor. I still had issues with dropping what I thought I knew, and respecting the domain of my mentor. Over the past year, I have had more mentors, and I have worked to be more open to what they had to teach me. I look back at that time, and I think about the mistake of believing that I knew what to do to get to where I wanted to go.

#My Problem

My problem in all of this was not that I wanted to learn all that I did. It was that I was to eager to ignore the lessons that were being taught to me, and that I was choosing the ones that I was distracted by. The subjects that I wanted were interesting to me then, but now I can hardly remember them, and I am afraid that they were rather superficial.

There were a lot of books that I was encouraged to read during that time. I was not interested in reading, as much I was in coding. I thought that is were I would learn the more valuable lessons. Instead of accepting both sets of lessons, then making a fair comparison, I struggled through the reading, and through the coding. I did not know how to do what I wanted, and did not realize what I was avoiding would teach me that and more.

#What Happened?

I forget when it was that I realized that I had made a mistake. I guess I had always known, but never accepted it until I encountered others making the same mistake. It was when I saw what they were doing, that I saw what I had done. Since then, I have tried to be open to any experience I can get from working with someone. I am working to be a more empty cup, always able to take on more from anyone I can.

#Takeaways

I would encourage anyone reading this to think about their day-to-day. How often are your put in front of a new challenge? Are there times when others have something that they can teach? When you are faced with these things, do you approach them with an empty cup? When thinking about these things, try to assume nothing, except what you have been told. In this way, you can begin to empty your cup, so that you may become full.