We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past.

But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles.

And you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future.

-Steve Maraholi-

When I look back, I realize that the times I learned the most is when I’ve made a mistake. I still remember when I got my answers in class wrong, I was so determined to never make that mistake again. Mistakes made in friendship, family, relationships, they all each hold a valuable lesson for me. 

When we make a mistake that negatively affects somebody else, what we definitely should do is honestly admit what we did wrong, don’t try to deflect the blame or make up excuses, or worse still, deny that we did anything wrong. After admitting our mistake, we should sincerely apologize and make a commitment to be better in the future. That is the mark of a good person with integrity. And it will earn you much more respect and trust from everybody else, than if you were unwilling to admit you made a mistake in the first place. 

Mistakes are unavoidable, we all make them sometimes. But a good mindset to have is that we should strive to never make the same mistake twice. This is obviously easier said than done, there are still some things that I repeatedly struggle with today. For this type of repeated errors, what we should focus on is improving little by little, make that mistake less often and less severely each time, and soon you’ll stop making it altogether.

What’s important is that we don’t dwell on our mistakes. Because that doesn’t help anyone, all it does is make you more miserable for no good reason. That’s something I had to learn the hard way, I was so focused on my past failings and mistakes that it negatively affected my life in the present. And these are things that happened years ago, and when I really think about it, the mistakes I made were really not that big of a deal. I’ve had to learn to let myself off the hook, to accept that those mistakes happened and there’s nothing I can do to change the past, and beating myself up over it doesn’t do any good. What I can do is to learn from them, make sure that experience shapes you into a better person, so at least something good can come off that mistake. 

Everyone makes mistakes in life, but that doesn’t mean they have to pay for them the rest of their lives. Sometimes good people make bad choices. It doesn’t mean they’re bad, it just means they’re human.