I Am Not My Mistakes (Pt. I)

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STEVE MARABOLI said "It is important that we forgive ourselves for making mistakes.  We need to learn from our errors and move on".  He added that "if people refuse to look in a new light and they can only see you for what you were, only see you for the mistakes you've made, if they don't realize that you are not your mistakes, then they have to go."

Mistakes are hard enough to get past on their own, add low self-esteem to the mix and it feels like getting over a mistake is damn near insurmountable and will forever define who we are.  In the book entitled "Self-Esteem", the authors discuss our response to mistakes as having the potential to be paralyzing.  In other words, we begin to limit ourselves and interactions with others because we become afraid of making mistakes.  We do not allow ourselves to live wholly as we were meant to live.  

Before long we end up restricting our interactions for fear of making more mistakes.  Instead of living out loud, we do the bare minimum; that which we know we can do without making mistakes.  In doing so we rob ourselves of new experiences, new job opportunities, and new relationships.  Self-doubt forever looms.

When we make a mistake, we look back and blame ourselves for not seeing what was coming.  "One major problem with assigning blame for bad decision making is that, in hindsight, everything appears to be so obviously wrong."  Thinking this way gets us tied to our mistakes and we become unable to let them go.  We blame ourselves for not knowing better.  We make assumption believing that we could have done better, or that we had more control over a situation than what we exhibited in the moment.  Therefore, we now begin to believe that we should have never made the mistake.

We need to re-frame our mistakes and interpret them from a different viewpoint.  We have to view them as teachers.  The more we embrace our mistakes as a learning experience, the better we become at handling future mistakes.  Life comes with these errors in judgment and we all need to remove the false notion that we can live without making mistakes.  Own up to your mistakes as a way to empower yourself.  Tartakovsky says that "mistakes are essential stepping stones and [they are] vital for growth and creativity."   

Next comes a little introspection.

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Credits:

- Mara, S., (2014). Good Reads: quotes about mistakes. (www.goodreads.com)
- McKay, M., Fanning, P., (2000). Self-esteem (3rd. Ed). Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc.
- Tartakovsky, M. (2013). Rethinking mistakes & learning from your missteps. Psych Central. (www.psychcentral.com)

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