We often treat experience as a credential. Sometimes it is. But experience alone can also make us very practiced at repeating ourselves.
Wayne Cordeiro makes a distinction I keep coming back to: experience does not automatically become wisdom. Reflection is part of the conversion process.
That feels obvious until I apply it to my own life.
I can finish a project and immediately begin the next one. Lead through a difficult season and feel relieved when it is over. Read a book, attend a conference, have a complicated conversation, try a new tool—and move on.
The experience happened. But did I learn?
Reflection creates enough distance to ask different questions:
What actually happened?
What did I expect to happen?
What surprised me?
What did I learn about myself?
What would I repeat?
What would I change?
What pattern am I beginning to notice?
That last question may be especially important. Wisdom often has something to do with recognizing a pattern early enough to respond differently this time.
This is one reason the BBT Companion includes “Look Back.” It is not nostalgia. It is a deliberate refusal to let every encounter disappear into the next one.
Experience gives us stories. Reflection may reveal what the stories have been trying to teach us.
Source trail: Wayne Cordeiro, Leading on Empty; Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline.