Mistakes

In the wise wise words of a queen herself, “Everybody makes mistakes, everybody has those days!” While that was a song that was a large part of my childhood, I think we can all still agree that Hannah Montana really knew what she was talking about. Although we’re grown now, those lyrics still reign true and honestly probably hold a lot more depth now than they did before. Everybody does make mistakes. A lot of times, we feel awful about them afterwards. If you’re anything like me, you’re sent into a spiral of overthinking after those mistakes have been made. What sucks about mistakes is that we can’t take them back. As much as we wish we could, and as much as we do to try to make up for them, they happened. And that can’t be undone.     

     You and I are human. We make mistakes often. Several a day, honestly. The thing about it is that some are of different natures than others. Some mistakes we make only hurt ourselves. Some are minor and while they might have hurt someone else, they can probably be fixed with a simple apology and a conversation. Other mistakes can hurt others deeply. Those mistakes take a lot more than a simple apology and a conversation to fix. Another kind of mistake? Arguably the worst kind, hurting someone you care about. These mistakes hurt you and the person you love, deeply. They keep us up at night, wishing we hadn't been "so stupid" or "so careless" with our words and/or our actions. The things that we wish so desperately we could take back, but we know, to our own detriment, that we can’t. Not only have you hurt yourself, and you have no one else to blame for that hurt, but to make it worse, you’ve hurt someone you care for as well. These leave us feeling hopeless, alone, and worthless. We’ve all been there before. But what if I told you it does get better?

     It’s so hard to pick yourself back up from being in a place like that. You’re so mad at yourself that it doesn’t feel worth it to get back up, you don’t feel like you deserve to be picked back up. You’re stuck at the bottom of a deep hole, accompanied only by guilt and anger  with no clear way to get out. The hard part of navigating your way out is knowing how to move on. Feeling these things is natural after you’ve made mistakes, and at the least it lets you know that you have morals. It lets you know that because you’re so distraught over it, at your core you understand how badly you messed up and you are far from likely to do it again. Maybe this mistake wasn't the worst of the worst, maybe it just could have been. But these mistakes still have something to teach us, and recognizing that is the first step to moving on.

     When you make a mistake, you have to apologize. It’s something we learned when we were young, but something we still have to remember everyday. That’s step one. Hurting someone damages a relationship, you have to understand and respect that it takes time to heal that. Apologize through your actions. You may show them through one action that you’re sorry and that mistake isn’t who you are, but that may only be a single piece added to a much larger sum of what was broken. It works very similarly when you’ve hurt yourself. You have to work to show yourself day after day that you’re sorry, and that you are not the kind of person who would do that ever again. You can do one good thing, but that isn’t enough. Either for you or for someone else. You have to keep showing up, and keep proving your character. 

     You might think this only applies to mistakes where you hurt someone else. That belief though, would be another mistake! When you hurt yourself, you have to apologize too. You are so valuable. You are worth so much. You probably feel the same way about your mom, or your best friend- that they’re valuable. You love them a lot, and you would never DREAM of hurting them and not sincerely apologizing to them for it. As I’ve preached time and time again, loving yourself is the CORE of being happy and leading a good life. So therefore, because you love yourself- just like you would your mom or best friend- you have to apologize to yourself when you hurt you. 

     This can mean journaling about it- writing about how you know you’ve messed up but you know that and all about why it will never happen again. Think of it like writing a text you would send someone you love that you’d hurt. It can also mean showing yourself through your actions. Just like you would use actions to show someone else you would never make that mistake again. Work on yourself because you love yourself, and while you recognize the mistake you made, you’re actively creating a version of you that would never do it again. Words can only say so much, you have to show the person you’ve hurt that the mistake you made is not who you are. You not only have to show them that, but you have to keep showing them until they believe it. 

     It’s hard to get back up when you feel as if you’ve dug yourself into this deep hole. The one where you’re stuck down there with guilt, anger, and upset- feeling hopeless at the idea of ever making it out. Apologizing to the person you’ve hurt drops a ladder that stretches from the depth you’re at all the way to the top- all the way out! Every action you take to improve yourself is like climbing one more rung of that ladder. Sometimes, you’ll make a mistake and it’ll knock you down a rung or two. It doesn’t knock you off back to where you started though- it’s important to be aware of that. And eventually, when you’ve taken enough action that you ARE a person who would never make that mistake again, you’ll look around and find yourself back at ground level. You’ll feel the breeze and see the sunshine and finally start to feel more at peace.