Over the past few years, I’ve come to realize curiosity is one of the most important skillsets we can ever develop. Curiosity helps us see the world as an opportunity to continue to pick up clues of success and insight from the endless resources around us.

Curiosity brings a level of excitement to learn more and help connect more dots for the future. It can be an incredibly impactful skillset not just when looking at our career but also how we approach relationships, personal growth, spirituality, health and wellness, and other aspects of our lives we value.

One aspect of curiosity that may be undervalued is the importance of also seeing through the lens of curiosity in our rearview mirror. Sometimes we forget just how diverse of experiences we’ve had up until this point. It’s a mountain of lessons learned that we’re sitting on but too often don’t leverage as much as we could. Never underestimate the value of all these lessons learned along our journey to help feed our curiosity and connect more dots both about ourselves and the world around us.

What we’ve faced in the past will not be what we face in the future. There will always be something different and new. But let’s focus on approach, not necessarily the details of what we’re facing. The approach is key to what we can learn and evolve from when we collect data from our past. Approach is one of those topics that can be transferable well beyond just one situation.

• When taking on something new and challenging, what approaches have worked and haven’t worked effectively?
• When roadblocks pop up, what approaches have worked and haven’t worked effectively?
• When relationships reach a struggling point, what approaches have worked and haven’t worked effectively?
• When you feel like you’ve reached a plateau, what approaches have worked and haven’t worked effectively?

There’s a mountain of insight we’re sitting on with life lessons we’ve experienced. Are we curious enough to spend time reflecting on and learning from what life has provided? There’s a variety of reasons why we haven’t been as curious as we could be when it comes to our rearview mirror.

• We may be in too much of a hurry to jump to the next thing on our to-do list and miss the opportunity to take the time to learn.
• We may feel we already have all the answers to the situation and are not curious enough to explore other perspectives.
• We may not see the opportunity because we’re not prioritizing bringing a curious lens to the situation.

How can we combat these missed opportunities to connect the dots on our lessons learned and benefit in the future? Here are a few ideas:

• Integrate the pause and reflect approach more often: it’s easy to get caught up with focusing on what’s next. Prioritizing time for simple reflection of what I just learned from this moment can make a small impact. You start doing this consistently, these small impacts start adding up to bigger changes.
• Memorialize lessons learned: if you’re like me you forget a lot. Whether you’re into journaling, have an app that records all your ideas, or simply use the Notes app on your iPhone like me, memorialize your key takeaways to help connect dots in the future.
• Ask for feedback more often: adding more perspectives on what happened can provide a wider lens to understanding what went well and why there were struggles. Additional perspective may provide more opportunities to see lessons learned.
• Practice reframing more often: reframing takes the subjective story we’ve created and adds a question – what other story may be true for this situation? There’s often more to the truth than what we initially see so try reframing the situation.

Whether we realize it or not we are all blessed with a wide range of experiences. How we take in and process these experiences is meaningful. We can choose to move on to the next thing life throws at us and forget about what we just experienced. Or, we can make a more concerted effort to learn and add another dot to connect in the future. As we spend more time reflecting and generating meaningful lessons learned, the number of dots that can form is impactful. The more dots we start connecting, the more we keep growing for the future.

Take your step: take 5-10 minutes each day this week to spend time reflecting. No expectations for finding some grandiose epiphany. Try to identify one lesson learned today to add another dot to connect in the future. If you’re having problems getting started reflecting, consider something as simple as what did I learn today? Keep the reflection questions simple and let the exploration go from there.