Wiktionary
vb. (en-pastlearn the hard way)
Wikipedia
Learning the hard way refers to the educational results developed in the process of living life, the perspective gained as a result of trial and error—more often used in reference to the mistakes, mis-steps and misunderstandings which lead to better judgment.
The phrase is also used to describe learning from one's own efforts. The idiomatic expression refers to learning from bad, difficult or unpleasant experiences.
The etymology of this term developed in the early 1900s from craps, a game played with dice. An element of the game involves predicting whether the roll of dice will produce an even number. Predicting an even number is harder if the possibilities are narrowed to include only the sum of both dice showing identical values, also known as "doubles." This would mean that 2 and 2 make 4, "the hard way;" or 3 and 3 make 6, "the hard way." There is a greater probability in rolling an even-number sum composed of non-matched values: as in 1 and 5 make 6 or 2 and 4 make 6, "the easy way." Statistically, double values occur more rarely, and hence they are deemed harder to roll.
Example: "The Saturday Evening Post said charitably that perhaps every President had to learn the hard way. ( Truman might have added that that was about the only way he had ever learned anything in his life.) -- David McCullough in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Truman.Usage examples of "learning the hard way".
But the process of correction, of learning the hard way, is always painful, though the result may be one of inward growth.
She had practiced with it daily, learning the hard way the trickiness of using it.
If this was what they called learning the hard way, he wondered how he’.
They provided an excellent counterbalance to the high-tech professionals who were learning the hard way what it meant to cope with Stone Age realities.
Bry was learning the hard way the meaning of Einstein's statement that physics had lost its walls.
This was the first major crisis of the incumbency and the middle-aged politicians were learning the hard way the first rule of crisis manage.
He would have to do the remainder of his learning the hard way, too.