Would you tell me about your biggest mistakes?
Given that most of the people who follow this work are 30 and over, I’m guessing that in all of our accumulated lives we’ve done something that stands out as supremely dumb, and which we would like to reverse if it was at all possible. I wonder what your mistakes are…?
Don’t worry, you don’t have to share.
While I’m sure some of yours are humorous, I’m guessing there’s been at least one or two that you look back upon with a significant sadness. Probably something that affected somebody else, or that changed your life in such a way that things would never be the same.
Maybe it’s an opportunity that you didn’t take, or a risk that you took that turned out to be the absolute worst thing.
Maybe it was something that you said in a moment where the filter between your brain and your mouth shut down and took a hiatus, and you found yourself saying something that you realized was bad, and would give anything to take back.
Welcome to humanity, which while beautiful, can sometimes be very difficult.
I made a mistake many years ago, and then kept making the same mistake for almost a decade. During that time I came to loathe myself, and went through some of the darkest times of my life.
Now, several years after that was over, I find myself working through those negative self opinions, and trying to make peace with the concept that I was doing the best that I could at the time.
‘ Working through’ is kind of synonym for ‘struggling with’.
But the interesting thing that I have become aware of as a coach and that I teach and share, is that sometimes I really don’t give myself enough credit for how I struggled with the things that I carried.
The more I work through my own journey, and make changes in my life as well as others, I come to a greater understanding of all that I was burdened with in the times that I made so many mistakes.
And somehow, someway, that’s making it easier to give myself grace for the times that I feel like I didn’t do enough.
I think I speak for many of us when I say that sometimes the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Sure other people have caused me problems, yet I can see in their lives how the things they’ve been through have caused them to act in ways that they probably weren’t proud of, and I find it easier to extend grace unto them than myself.
And I’ve realized that a good portion of that is ego.
When I look back in my past at the times when I think I could’ve carried more, worked harder, been smarter, that’s just my ego whispering to me that I’m better, smarter, more resilient, stronger.
When I’m able to let go of my need to be those things, I find I’m able to be more compassionate with myself, and to give myself the benefit of grace, and forgive myself for the things I’ve done wrong.
How many times have you been hard on yourself because you thought you should have been able to handle something, or known better, or had more willpower?
Sometimes the biggest burdens in the world are the ones that we have no idea we are carrying because they feel normal, and they’ve been there so long that we only notice them when they’re gone.
When I look into my past I realize that there were so many times when I could have fallen and I didn’t, so many times when I could’ve quit and I kept going.
Strangely enough, it’s only when I let go of my ego, the need to be “everything” that I’m able to finally realize just how strong I have been, just how much I was able to carry.
It’s only by letting go of what I wanted to see that I was able to actually glimpse of vision of what I have accomplished.
Funny isn’t it, that all I had to do was stop looking for something and start seeing what actually was.
Please try this for yourself, because I really would like you to extend grace unto yourself, so you might really see just how amazing you are.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings