Reflecting on past life phases and listing significant events can reveal that experiences initially perceived as negative were ultimately beneficial for growth.

“A few years ago, I started keeping a folder where I would look back um to different uh phases of life and just list out sort of the bullet point events of like 0 to 5 and uh you know 5 to 10 with with no particular endpoint in mind. Um it's an exercise that I find very useful because um it offers the opportunity for this kind of like h how do I frame this thing? oftentimes that the things that felt the worst at that time turned out to be some of the best things ever.”