Some experiences are valuable because of what they teach you to notice afterward.

Some experiences change what you can see afterward, which is a slower and more durable form of value than anything they produced at the time. A period of illness, a failure, a stretch abroad, all install new sensitivities that keep operating for decades. The teaching is in the perception rather than the lesson.

Ask what you notice now that you did not notice five years ago, and where it came from. That inventory usually redeems some periods you had filed as losses.