Read your old journal and you’ll meet a stranger who was doing their best with way less information.

Past you was solving problems without any of the facts you now take for granted, which is exactly why old decisions look foolish from here. Hindsight arrives free and impersonates intelligence. The person in those pages was not stupid; they were working from a smaller map with no way to tell which parts were wrong.

When you catch yourself wincing at an old choice, name what you know now that you did not know then. Then extend the same courtesy forward, because current you is also working on partial information and will look obvious to somebody in five years.