Face it, we all make mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes consist of falling off some sort of wagon or making a really wrong-feeling choices, whether we ate too many cookies at the holidays, or we cheated on our diets, or we hooked up with some person we shouldn't have, or we had a drink when we weren't supposed to, or smoked a cigarette when we're trying to quit.
You can beat yourself up about it, or you can figure out why it happened and make a plan to not have it happen again.
How do you do that? By using these three questions:
- What does this mistake say to me? (Did I feel deprived? Did I feel lonely? Did I feel angry or sad? What circumstances did I put myself in to make myself feel bad enough to choose this route?)
- What could I have chosen to do instead? (Could I have distracted myself? Could I have called someone? Could I have picked a different choice?)
- How can I prevent this from happening in the future? (How will I not put myself in the position to feel this way again? If this feeling is inevitable, how can I channel that feeling into something more positive? How can I prepare myself for this feeling in the future?
And with those three questions, you can get to the real root of what's going on. We really don't make bad choices when we're feeling good. If we do, then we don't tend to see them as mistakes or bad choices. We can easily integrate these experiences into our lives without much guilt. But when we feel bad, that's when they become negative obstacles to overcome.
We see eating too much as something we need to fix. "I will have to eat less tomorrow to make up for what I did today! I am such a pig!"
We see having a cigarette when we're trying to quit as a total failure. "I'll never quit!"
We see seeking out the attention of a past love or someone who doesn't respect us as a weakness. "I must not respect myself if I was willing to be with that person."
We have a drink when we've been sober for years. "I am a complete failure at life."
None of these statements are even remotely true.
What every single person fails to realize is that mistakes are a part of life and we don't make bad choices for no reason. There is always a reason. And it's your job to figure out what that reason is (or reasons), work it out, and fix it. See your mistakes as beacons for change; as your soul crying out for whatever it is that you're suppressing with your negative choices.
The other issue that we all fail to realize is: when our bad choices aren't repeating bad choices, we can just let them go. You can chalk up those to "life experience". Like once, I ate a whole bag of chips myself. I felt like a huge pig afterwards and kind of cried for awhile about it. But then I just moved on. Because that wasn't my normal go-to way of eating chips, I just let it roll off my back (after I was done crying). But when we are stuck in a loop of bad choices, that's when we need those analyzing questions above.
When we can question our mistakes and figure out why we made them? Our entire life can change, because once we get to the source of our issues, we may find ourselves no longer needing that "bad choice loop" anymore. We can eliminate whatever feeling is causing us to make those choices in life and move forward.
Do you have any bad choices or mistakes you make repeatedly? If so, try this technique and let me know if it helped 💗
Also remember, you are not a failure, no matter how many mistakes you've made in life. Mistakes are how we learn, change, and grow. Without them, we stay the same person forever. And who wants that? Not me 😏
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