Let it go

Who here, reading this, is perfect? Can I get a show of hands or, better yet, if you are perfect, please stand up and prepare to be recognized. Hello? Anyone? Take a good look around. Nobody stood up to get congratulated. I think it's pretty clear, but i'll spell it out anyways. Nobody is perfect.

Now that we have that outta the way, what does it mean that nobody is perfect? It means that everyone makes mistakes. We all fail sometimes. No matter how much time and effort go into planning, things are not always going to end up the way we envision them. We all screw up.

This is important news that some of you should re-read. Why? Because every single one of us at one time or another has been guilty of beating ourselves up over something that didn't go the way we had intended it to. We waste both time and energy, two things we have a limited and ever dwindling supply of, on being cross, angry, frustrated, stressed, displeased or whatever you want to call it, with our results.

Should we just lackadaisically traipse through life without a care in the world, never minding whether our plans succeed or fail? Surely not. But we also shouldn't be constantly rehashing our past failures and constantly raking ourselves over the coals because we didn't succeed.

How many times do you think you should be punished for each mistake? If you have negative energy attributed to your mistakes, you punish yourself EVERY time you remember your error. If we only fail once we should only experience the pain once, not every time we think about the incident? We don't need to be punished for it every time we remember. In fact that just leads to low self esteem which leads to more failure in the future.

So how do we balance this? Well, first comes the experience. When you make a mistake or do something wrong, acknowledge it. But instead of getting out the whips and preparing to flog, think about the circumstance, realize exactly what you did that was wrong and why it was wrong. Then decide what you intend to do differently in the future when that circumstance comes up. Doing things this way the negative experiences that you have are actually useful and can make your life better as time goes on.

It is natural to be hard on yourself when you make mistakes. You want to always do your best and when you see yourself not doing so, it creates cognitive dissonance. You believe that you should be doing one thing, but you have just finished doing a contrary thing. It is natural, but not useful.

Through conscious effort and observance you can break the cycle. Acknowledge your errors. Determine the action you will take in the future and then just let it go. Pain and suffering may be a part of the world, but they don't have to be part of your world because of mistakes that you have made.