A few days after my first conversation with mindfulness teacher Mark Molony, he contacted me with a simple message: “I’ve had some more thoughts.”
That message captures something important about the purpose of On Experience. The most meaningful conversations do not end when the recording stops. They continue working on us. New ideas keep coming, distinctions get sharper, and sometimes we have even more questions.
So we reconvened two days later to continue exploring a deceptively simple topic: What is experience?
What followed added several important insights to our earlier discussion and opened up an even richer view of what experience really is.
Experience Is Informative, Not Predictive
One of the central ideas from our first conversation returned in a clearer form: Experience is informative, but not predictive.
This may be one of the most useful ways to think about experience. Yes, it gives us patterns, and it offers orientation. It also helps us recognise possibilities. But it cannot guarantee what will happen next.
The world is constantly changing, the context we’re in shifts, and the technology we use evolves. Plus, every situation contains elements that might look similar but have never appeared in quite the same way before.
Yes, experience can guide us, but it cannot remove uncertainty.
Wisdom Is Larger Than Experience
Last time, we touched on wisdom. But this time, Mark introduced a deeper distinction: Experience is one ingredient in wisdom, but wisdom is larger than experience.
Wisdom also includes:
- Discernment
- Intuition
- Self-awareness
- Emotional regulation
- Values
- Beginner’s mind
Experience says: “I’ve seen something like this before.” But wisdom asks: “Is that experience still relevant here?” And that’s a very different way of relating to your experience and the situation you face.
Memory Is Not Experience
Mark also raised the issue of memory.
When we talk about experience, we often assume we are referring to what actually happened. But in practice, we are usually referring to our memory of what happened.
And our memory is selective. It highlights some details and leaves out others. And most importantly, it helps turn events into a coherent story.
In other words, We do not carry forward the experience itself. We carry forward our story about the experience.
That means experience is never neutral. It is always filtered through interpretation, and it’s always a form of bias about how we see things.
Experience Has a Use-By Date
This may be the most practical insight from the conversation.
In a rapidly changing world, experience can become outdated. What worked twenty years ago may no longer apply.
I know for myself that the ideas and strategies I previously advised my clients 20 years ago about Content Marketing are not very useful anymore. And that’s because the tools and technologies, as well as the expectations and conditions, have all changed.
Yes, experience still matters, but its relevance and usefulness is not permanent.
Mark put it beautifully when he suggested that experience may have a “use-by date.”
That phrase stayed with me because it challenges one of the most common assumptions in professional life: that more experience automatically means greater relevance.
Sometimes experience remains invaluable, but often it also slowly and silently expires.
Watch or read the transcript of this fragment here: Experience has a Use-By Date
Beginner’s Mind
So what is the antidote to our expiring experience?
Mark pointed to a classic mindfulness concept: Beginner’s mind.
This doesn’t mean you forget everything you know. Instead, it means holding what you know lightly enough to see the present situation freshly.
Mark shared a story about the great violinist Yehudi Menuhin. When he was invited to sit at the front of a room and listen to children play, Menuhin asked instead if he could sit on the floor and play with them. Despite decades of mastery, he returned to the basics. That is the beginner’s mind.
And perhaps that is what wisdom looks like in practice.
“I Don’t Know. Let’s Experiment.”
One of the most powerful phrases from our conversation was this: “I don’t know. Let’s experiment.”
This is a remarkable combination of humility and action. And it helps us face uncertainty, especially false certainty. Plus, it gives us permission to learn.
For experienced professionals, this may be one of the most valuable responses available.
Instead of taking a position at the two extreme ends of the spectrum, “I know exactly what will happen” or “I have no idea, so let’s do nothing”, it gives a way to move forward by simply saying: “I don’t know. Let’s explore.”
And it follows that, for this to work, you have to be willing to admit you don’t know.
Experience Is More Than a CV
When most people think about experience, they think about their résumé. That’s the belief I held before I started these conversations with both Michael Henderson and Mark’s first conversation. I thought it was all about the roles you had, the projects you finished and all those shiny achievements that you accumulated.
But as Mark clearly suggests, some of the most important experiences never appear on a CV. What about the failures, the crises, the traumatic events, the moments of doubt and those painful turning points?
These experiences often shape our decisions far more than our official accomplishments.
This changes how we see our experience. It’s not just what we have done, it’s also what has changed us.
A Question Worth Asking
For me, the deeper question that has emerged from this conversation is: Which parts of your experience are still useful, and which may have reached their use-by date?
And for leaders, consultants, coaches, and experienced professionals, this may be one of the most important questions we can ask.
Experience is a tremendous asset, but only when we use it wisely.
More from Mark Molony and On Experience
If you would like to dive deeper into the wisdom of mindfulness from Mark Molony, then read these blog posts next:
- Mark’s first Conversation in full: Experience and the Space Before Reaction
- Why Experience Can Stop You Seeing Clearly with Michael Henderson
- On Experience home page
