Mistakes turn into anchors if you donât accept them. Part of accepting them is learning from them and then letting them go. We canât change the past, but we can work to undo the effects itâs had on the future.
The most powerful story in the world is the one you tell yourself. That inner voice has the power to move you forward or anchor you to the past. Choose wisely.
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If you know where a story is going, donât hoard it. Make the story go there, now. But then what? What will you do next? Youâve surrendered your big reveal. Exactly. Often, in our doubt that we have a real story to tell, we hold something back, fearing that we donât have anything else. And this can be a form of trickery. Surrendering that thing is a leap of faith that forces the story to attention, saying to it, in effect, âYou have to do better than that, and now that Iâve denied you your trick, your first-order solution, I know that you will.
Learning occurs most powerfully when you acknowledge fully what you are at this very moment with truthfulness and authenticity, and also compassion. You are your history, in this special sense. If you accept this, then youâll be able to learn and improve your relationships, your self-expression, and your well-being. If you reject this, youâll spend the rest of your life looking for an imaginary ârightâ world of safety.
Tracing forward from these remembrances of things past gives us the chance to re-experience and reframe these beliefs. Doing so liberates us from the confounding forces we label as fate, destiny, orâeven more frequentlyâthe other personâs âfault.â We will never sort through them all, of course, but what we donât sort through impedes our happiness. It tricks us into using the rest of our livesâand the people we love, the professions we choose, the organizations we leadâto try to close the gaping wounds from childhood.
There are points in the process of becoming a chronic victim when people realize theyâre lying to themselves. They realize the story theyâre telling themselves isnât quite true. They know theyâre responsible. But facing reality and taking responsibility is hard. Itâs uncomfortable. Itâs so much easier to hide and to blame other people, circumstances, or luck.
Mistakes present a choice: whether to update your ideas, or ignore the failures theyâve produced and keep believing what youâve always believed. More than a few of us choose the latter.
The biggest mistake people make typically isnât their initial mistake. Itâs the mistake of trying to cover up and avoid responsibility for it. The first mistake is expensive; the second costs a fortune.