Mistakes – You Can Let Them Go!
- Jolene Hayes
- Jun 10, 2018
- 4 min read
Mistakes are the portals of discovery. - James Joyce
Let’s face it – we all make mistakes. But, some of us have a much harder time getting over our mistakes. Our own mistakes can eat away at us for days on end, or perhaps months and years! A definition of a mistake is when you did or said something and then, upon reflection afterwards, you would’ve done it differently. If you have a tendency to beat yourself up after making a mistake then I invite you to continue reading.
Our mistakes can play over and over in our heads like a broken record. They can plague us to the point where we become restricted and even stuck in our lives. We can become so afraid of future mistakes that we don’t move at all. Many of us who have been raised to have high expectations of ourself and when we make a mistake it automatically lowers our sense of self-worth. This is why making mistakes can be devastatingly painful.
It would be wonderful if there was no link between mistakes, perfectionism and our self-worth. However, this link was created when we were children by being corrected by adults for our mistakes, particularly if we were corrected in a less than loving way. If you experienced being blamed, criticized, and chastised for things you did as a child there is a good chance your mind has come to the conclusion that you are bad, wrong or not good enough. You may have taken on the subconscious belief that in order to be loved you have to be good. That’s when we begin to internally create ways of dealing with our mistakes. That internal mechanism actually has a term I use in hypnotherapy called a sub-personality. You create a sub-personality that may called your or “inner-critic” or “inner-judge”. This sub-personality is now in charge of self-criticism and self-blame. Your inner critic is lowering your sense of self-worth.
Self-worth really has nothing to do with making mistakes or perfectionism. Self-worth really has to do with recognizing and accepting the value of your Being regardless of making mistakes. When you’ve made a mistake it’s important for you to step back and realize that you made the best decision you thought you could make at the time. You simply made a choice based on what you needed and your level of awareness of the situation. It’s only when you look back that you can see the decision you made was probably not the best one. This is why you can only say something is a mistake in retrospect. Think about it – if you had the same current awareness at the time you made the mistake you wouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place!
You only make a mistake when you don’t think it’s a mistake!
When we make a mistake there is always a consequence. Accepting and learning from our consequences allows us to make better choices in the future. It’s important to realize that the consequences from the mistake actually gave you an opportunity to gain awareness and expand your consciousness.
Think of it this way – if you lower your sense of self-worth by beating yourself up over a mistake it is as if you expected yourself to be aware of something that you did not yet know. If you judge your worth in retrospect you’re actually judging your yesterday-self based on today’s more expanded-perspective self.
Every person does what they think is right at that moment.
Here is an exercise you can try for helping you gain a more positive perspective and for getting you through the pain of making a mistake:
Think of a mistake you made in the past. Take a deep breath and close your eyes. Now in your mind go all the way back to that experience. Try to remember what you were thinking and feeling. Try to fill in all the details you can remember and then ask yourself , “If I were to go back to that time with the lack of my current awareness of the consequences would I have actually done something different? Or would I do the exact same thing?” The key is to change your perspective of the mistake.
Then take time to find new, more positive thoughts in order to let go of self-criticizing or self-blame. You may want to ask yourself, “What valuable thing did I take away from this experience? Did it teach me something I otherwise would not have known about myself, about the other person or about the situation?
Lastly ask yourself, “How can I move forward from here?” Always remember you are lovable. The fact that you are deserving has absolutely nothing to do with your level of awareness at the moment of making a mistake.
When you can let yourself off the hook for making a mistake it makes it so much easier to start moving forward. You can’t take back a mistake, but if you could you really wouldn’t want to because you’d be missing an opportunity to learn a valuable lesson.
~ By Jolene Hayes, CCHT & Soul Realignment Practitioner