You’d expect fifty years of experience to make a doctor more confident in his ability to heal people. Instead, it led Dr Patterson Stark to the opposite conclusion,
“I realised I couldn’t heal anybody.”
We often think experience makes us better because we know more, but Patterson’s story suggests something else.
His experience changed his understanding of his own role. Early in his career, he thought his role was to ‘heal people’. But after his own brush with death through a terminal illness, he realised I can only ‘help people heal themselves’.
That’s not more knowledge, that’s a completely new identity.
As professionals, many of us come to believe we’re responsible for creating change.
Teachers educate.
Managers motivate.
Consultants solve.
Coaches fix.
Doctors heal.
But over time, our experience often shifts responsibility. The experienced practitioner becomes more of a facilitator. The work still matters, but it becomes a shared responsibility between you and the people you work with.
Patterson’s cancer diagnosis didn’t simply change how he practised medicine; it changed how he lived. He worked differently, rested differently, learned differently, and even related to people differently.
Experience eventually escapes into behaviour.
While knowledge can stay in our heads, eventually experience changes our habits. It can be embodied as a natural and automatic part of who we become.
This is the fifth conversation in the On Experience series. And as I reflected on this conversation, I realised Patterson isn’t alone.
Mindfulness Teacher Mark Molony no longer tries to give people certainty.
Industrial Designer Philippe Guichard no longer designs for himself.
Lifestyle Medicine Practitioner Patterson Stark no longer tries to heal people.
They’re all very different professions, but the pattern is the same. Experience doesn’t simply improve your performance; it reshapes your identity.
We often think experience teaches us how to do our job better. I’m beginning to wonder whether its greatest gift is teaching us who we really are.
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