Erasing Your Mistakes Is Erasing Your Wisdom

There you go again: worrying and regretting about what happened or what you did. The speech is always the same, tedious and repetitive, blaming yourself for the mistakes you made or the decisions you didn’t make.

The images constantly flash by, the words you said are an echo that’s never far behind, your feelings a limiting prison…And meanwhile, the hours pass by without you realizing…

“Maybe, if I told them how I felt, we wouldn’t have drifted apart,” “Maybe if I had chosen another option, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” “I should have taken those credits when I had the chance; now they’re required to do what I want and I don’t have them,” “Why didn’t I ever tell them it bothered me that they didn’t ask me how I was?”

And one by one, the regrets and unknowns can become an infinite spiral: you know where it began, but it’s impossible to know where it’ll end, because it doesn’t.

You can hurt yourself as much as you want, destroy yourself little by little, if that’s what you feel like doing, even though your inner self probably wouldn’t like that very much.

Stop and think: what are you doing it for? Where are your laments and mental clutter taking you? 

If you’re honest with yourself and answer these questions, you’ll discover more than you’ve ever imagined. You can identify your inner needs and desires.

Now, dive into this question: is it useful to regret your mistakes? Do you really think they’re just mistakes?

Before proceeding with your blaming and victimizing, let me tell you something: they’re not just mistakes, they’re opportunities. Focus on all the learning experiences that come from them.

It’s all about wanting to move forward and evolve, instead of staying stuck and trapped, as if we had a ball and chain tied to our ankles, holding us captive in our past.

You can try for yourself, right now, if you want. Choose one of your mistakes, turn it around, and reflect on what you can learn from that situation or experience.

Everything you are today is thanks to something you did or didn’t do in your past. Your successes, and also your mistakes. And probably more so the latter than the former.

After everything you’ve been through up until this point, through the whole process of your life, surely you have a lot of things you feel proud of. And is it not thanks to the adversities and the learning experiences you’ve received, that you were able to achieve them?

I’ll give you a minute to answer that…And really listen, because it’s a message to yourself.

And I don’t just mean successes, dreams, and goals, but also your qualities, traits and personality, your essence. Do you think those have nothing to do with your mistakes?

Everything you’ve been through, everything you’ve felt, thought or done, had external repercussions, but also internal ones. It’s up to you how to use them: you can squeeze them and get out all the juice, or keep the dry and wilted parts, skim the surface or dig deep and find the wisdom that comes along with it.

Every action, thought and feeling you experience has had a series of consequences in your life. The important thing is to be aware that everything you are today is affected by what may or may not have happened in the past. And if were to erase all of our mistakes, we would erase the lessons learned along with them. 

By erasing even one story or experience, we wouldn’t be the same. And for that reason, instead of wasting our time worrying about the possibilities of having done things differently, start worrying about being your best self in every situation, at every moment, every second.