Learning from others, whether their points of view we share or not, as is
invariably advocated and exercised by all successful individuals, is the
best way to learn. By this means, others' experiences and lessons can be
learned; others' failures can be avoided; and others' advises can be heard.
Those who are not prepared or even unwilling to learn from others are doomed
to face failures and frustrations otherwise can be avoided.
But people's attitudes to learing from others vary drastically. Statistics
show that most of people more often than not tend to learn from people whose
views they share, while decline to leran from others whose views contradict
theirs. Some even argue that disagreement often causes stress and inhibits
learning. Bearing this argument in mind, they have "good reason" to resist
learning from those whose view of points they partly or even completely dis-
agree. In fact, it's just this kind of attitude to learning from others that
inhibits learning. What a pity!
Thus here naturally comes up a question: How to learn from others effectively?
At first, one should be ready to learn from others. As is witnessed in many
cases, we can learn from people whose views we share their way of analysis
and reasoning, which may be different from our own yet still helpful and
instructive. Though the end is the same, the paths we choose to get it are
different. Another way of analysis and reasoning can serve as a fairly good
supplement besides our own way. It will widen our vision as well as further
our unstanding of the issue concerned to some extent.
As for those people whose view of points contradict ours, we'd better learn
from them as well. Many distinguished statesmen even chose to learne from
their enimies. Just...