Stop Letting Your Mistakes Define Who You Are

Every day you make choices. Some of them are bad, and we call those mistakes. Then the mistake starts haunting you: how will people see me now? How will this ruin what comes next?

It doesn’t have to. Your future depends a lot on how you feel about yourself, and a mistake only shapes it if you let it define you.

Face it instead of running

When a mistake haunts us, we run: scroll, play a game, put the TV on, anything to avoid the thought. But when something is haunting you, you don’t run from it. You face it.

Take time to reflect on it, as painful as that is. Look it in the eyes. It shouldn’t have happened; it did; we move on. If you never look at it, it stays heavy.

Count everything else

Next to that one mistake are thousands, millions, of good choices you’ve made. You’ve already proven to yourself who you are. Why let one mistake decide your worth when a million other things can?

Look at your small daily choices: eating healthier, smoking or drinking less, reading, meditating, learning something new. That’s who you are.

Keep it in your pocket, not on your shoulders

Don’t forget the mistake. Turn it into a lesson: now I know how to deal with these people, where my limits are, when to stop pushing. Keep it in your pocket as a reminder, not on your shoulders as baggage. You are not your failures. You’re the success all around you.