The baseball pitcher, Vernon Law said,

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards." 

And Anton Chekhov said,

"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice." 

Welcome to The Soul Podcast. I’m Stacey Wheeler. 

The great thing about a love of learning is that there’s always new knowledge coming in. New knowledge means we’re always growing in our understanding of reality; what we know to be true. A love of learning keeps us in a constant state of growth, and that’s a beautiful thing. Learning alters our beliefs. And beliefs are what steer our lives. 

And I don’t mean trivial information. Yes, that’s interesting, but it’s the bigger things that challenge our current beliefs. Those are the ones that really matter… that really make a difference. This category of new knowledge doesn’t just pile up like trivia—it reshapes how we see the world, tweaking or even overhauling our beliefs.

 You see, beliefs aren’t just idle thoughts; they’re the compass for our actions, relationships, and choices.

Knowledge, along with experience are the primary things that lead to our personal and emotional development. Knowledge gives us the raw material—facts, ideas, perspectives—but experience is like the forge where it all gets hammered into something personal and real. 

I have a faint scar on my right knee that's five decades old. When I was eight, I used to watch neighborhood boys ride their bikes at high speed down Tressel Hill. This was a one lane road that led to the Mad River, past a dairy farm. Since it was a dead end, there were rarely any cars on it. On the left side there was a high embankment. On the right a barbed wire fence ran the full length. At the bottom, where it flattened out, the road turned to gravel. My brother Sam was a year older than me. We’d only had our bikes for just a few months, and we were still getting comfortable on them. My mother overheard us talking about ‘riding the hill’ and immediately forbid us from doing it. She said it was too steep. Too dangerous. 

But we’d seen older boys do it plenty of times. We’d seen them. And -after all... we knew how to ride our bikes. We had the basic knowledge. So, one afternoon Sam and I defied our mother and raced down Tressel Hill. Sam took off first and I followed. He was halfway down the hill before I got the nerve up to go. Halfway down I saw Sam skid on the gravel at the bottom and crash his bike. I panicked. I turned to the right of the roadway into the barbed wire fence. That day we walked home, pushing our bikes, battered and bleeding but wiser. We had the knowledge and lacked the experience. We didn’t know enough about controlling our brakes and speed. It would be a year before we rode down Tressel Hill again. When we did, we were smarter and more cautious... and didn't hurt ourselves. Knowledge is best coupled with experience. 

Without experience, knowledge might just sit there, abstract and untested. Without knowledge, experience could leave us stumbling in the dark, repeating mistakes without understanding why. Knowledge and Experience: together, they’re a powerhouse for personal and emotional growth. Experience allows us to test knowledge; to apply it to our life.

A third (and often ignored) element in learning is reflection. Learning and living can pile up a lot of raw data, but taking a beat to sift through it—asking why something hit us the way it did or how it fits into the bigger picture—seem to lock in our evolution. I reflected often about what went wrong that day on Tressel Hill. I reflected on my mother being right -that it was too dangerous. Reflection helped me solidify the lessen found in the combination of knowledge and experience.

Reflection’s like this quiet engine—you don’t always notice it humming until you realize how much it’s been driving things forward. It’s easy to let life just wash over us, but deliberately hitting pause to reflect on what we’ve learned or felt… that’s when it really locks in and shapes us. Without reflection, life experience can slip into the background and we can lose the value of the experience.

Books give you the map, but the road shows you the potholes.

There’s something powerful in embracing new knowledge… and applying it.

Much of our knowledge comes from observation. And some of our knowledge is more intuitive. Intuition is subtle learning. 

Most of what Sam and I learned came from observation—watching those older boys zip down the hill. We saw their speed, their confidence, maybe even their techniques, and figured, “We’ve got bikes, we’ve ridden them a bit, we can do this too.” That’s classic learning by example. No experience. No intuition. It’s concrete, external input—visual data we processed into a belief. In our minds it equaled “We’re capable.”

Intuition’s trickier—it’s that gut feeling, the internal nudge that doesn’t always tie to clear evidence or reasoning. It’s less about what you see and more about what you feel -without fully knowing why. Looking at our bike ride, it was more calculated defiance: we’d observed, we talked it out, we weighed our basic bike skills against our mom’s warning and went for it. That’s reasoning, not a gut call or intuition. But let’s zoom in on a couple moments where intuition might have whispered, even if it didn’t take the handlebars.

I had to get the nerve up. Was this because I’d learned that my mother was usually right… or was it something deeper? Was it intuition? I let Sam go first, and I hesitated until I got the “nerve” to follow. 

The French philosopher, Michel de Montaigne said, 

"Experience has taught me this, that we undo ourselves by impatience; intuition tells me when to wait." 

That pause—was it a flicker of doubt? A gut twinge that something might go wrong? Was that intuition poking at me; a quiet alarm that I overrode with conscious choice to chase my brother? A Desire to be one of the 'big kids'? 

Now, how about my panic mid-ride: When I saw Sam skid and crash, I panicked and veered into the barbed wire. That split-second swerve—was it pure reflex, or did intuition kick in, telling me to avoid his fate? He way laying in the middle of the narrow road and would have been hard to steer around at high speed. It’s hard to know where that subtle nudge of intuition shows up, but often it arrives in those snap decisions under pressure, steering you when there’s no time to think. When is it blind panic? When is it a deeper knowing? We only grow our intuitive abilities through recognizing when they may be at play. Over time we start to know it’s intuition, when it comes to call. 

A year later, when we rode again, smarter and cautious, it was hard-earned experience layered over our initial knowledge. Intuition probably grew a bit after that first crash, as a kind of internalized radar for danger. But it was subtle because I wasn’t aware it was at play. I wasn’t focused on expanding it. Intuition was like a bystander at best. As we get older, we’re able to recognize and strengthen intuition… but only if we choose to. It takes intention. 

Carl Jung wrote,

"Intuition is a function by which you see round corners, which you really cannot do; yet the fellow will do it for you and you trust him. It is a function which normally you do not use if you live a regular life… But if you were a hunter in the primeval forest, you would use it; you would have a hunch where the game is."

Experience is the mother of intuition—what you’ve lived whispers what you should feel.

Because we’re less connected to nature, we’re less connected to intuition. Intuition is about letting experience build that inner voice and then tuning into it. But how do we develop our intuition? Like most things – it takes effort. Like doing reps with weight; we build the strength through repetition. 

1. Live Actively: Intuition doesn’t sprout in a vacuum. Jump into life—ride your Tressel Hill, crash if you must. But apply what you've learned the next go-around. Each moment, success or scrape, feeds the subconscious. Jung saw intuition as a function of the psyche that pulls from what you’ve encountered, even if you don’t consciously clock it.
2. Pay Attention: Experience alone isn’t enough; you’ve got to notice what’s happening. When Sam and I watched those older boys, we were gathering data.. That’s raw material. Jung’d say it’s sinking into your unconscious, ready to bubble up later as a hunch.
3. Reflect: Take a beat to chew on what went down. After our crash, we didn’t just patch up and forget; we learned brakes matter. Reflection turns experience into a quiet teacher, and intuition grows from those whispers, like a gut nudge to slow down next time.
4. Trust the Whisper: Start small—act on those flickers of “something feels off” or “this feels right.” When I rode the hill again I felt a twinge to ease up before the gravel. That’s intuition kicking in, honed by my experience. Jung linked intuition to perceiving possibilities beyond the obvious, built from past patterns.
5. Repeat and Refine: It’s a cycle. Each experience sharpens that inner sense. A year later, when I rode Tressel Hill again, I was cautious—partly logic, sure, but maybe also a gut feel for the hill’s tricks. Over time, intuition gets louder, faster, because it’s got more to draw from.

Jung’s take is that intuition isn’t magic—it’s your mind weaving a tapestry from threads of experience. You develop it by living, watching, mulling, and then leaning into those quiet cues. 

How strong is your intuition? Are you letting it serve you? Have you learned to let it steer you the right way? 

"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards."

It’s never too late to start strengthening your intuitive skills. How about today…?