Sometimes, on a long drive, our family will play Wordle in our heads.

One person picks a word (call that person the Puzzlemaster), someone else guesses words. The ‘guesser’ is told, for each letter, whether the color is gray (the letter is not in the word), yellow (the letter is in the word, but in a different spot), or green (the letter is in the word in the right spot).

We have lots of laughs because the Puzzlemaster—especially when it’s me—will inevitably answer incorrectly about one of the letters, sending the person wildly off track (in my defense, I’m often driving the car when we’re playing).

Even when the Puzzlemaster doesn’t mess up, Wordle in Your Head is about a hundred times harder than playing on the screen. Why?

Because the letters you’ve already guessed that were wrong aren’t grayed out.

The power of knowing what we did in the past that didn’t work is hard to overstate.

Imagine it: if we could see, with full clarity, the moves we made in the past; which ones worked, which ones didn’t, with no gaps in our knowledge.

So often, we shy away from looking clearly at ourselves and our actions. It’s hard to admit that, despite our best efforts, we got something wrong.

When we’re courageous enough to do it, and have the curiosity to explore and then internalize what happened and why, the moves that are before us are only the untried ones, and the ones that have a much higher chance of being right.