Stop being so hard on yourself.

Unless you’re a sociopath, nobody gets up in the morning intending to screw up. But we all do. Because we’re human. We’re not perfect. We fuck up.

So stop being so hard on yourself. On any given Thursday, you’re doing the very best you can. Shit happens. Move on. Forgive others when they hurt you just like they forgive you. Forgive yourself. Because nobody’s perfect. You’re doing the best you can.

Stop being so hard on yourself.

You overcome them by writing about exactly what you did wrong and exactly how you’re going to avoid it in the future. The more detail the better.

A mistake that still bothers you is, essentially, a mistake you don’t yet understand.

I’m not a psychologist but judging from what you say, you seem to be at the phase of acceptance.

If you haven’t and still can, you should apologise to whoever you hurt, even if that’s yourself.

Recognise what led you there, what where your thoughts and feelings that made you do it. Then try your hardest not to do it again.

Don’t beat yourself up over it, everyone makes mistakes, big and small.

Let the mistake change you for the better, mistakes are the best and most effective teachers if you decide to listen to them.

Move on, but make sure to understand and forgive yourself and to let the mistake improve you.

If you’re aware of the mistake, and what you did wrong, you’re now living with the knowledge on how to avoid making the same mistake in the future. You still exist in the here and now, and are free to continue forward in life, knowing you’re better equipped to overcome adversity than you were before.

I try to think of my past mistakes as vaccines. They may have hurt, caused me discomfort, and even make me feel regret or shame to this day, but I lived through it and it made me stronger because of it. Like a vaccine, it equipped me for something more imposing that might come up later in life. It helps me think of the silver lining- that without these mistakes, I would be much more naive, and far more prone to making an even more disastrous mistake later in life, much like how refusing a vaccine will make you more prone to a deadly disease.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Doing these things is not easy and may take some practice on your part, but for me it boils down to the following process:

• be honest with yourself and others, and own up to it, don’t try to pretend it was somebody else’s fault. Apologise to those impacted if you need to. Accept the consequences.

• figure out what you can learn from it - not necessarily the specific details of this mistake but what you can do next time in similar circumstances to avoid making the same sort of error.

• stop wishing for a better past - it won’t happen, so move on.

Play lots of chess games and it’ll get easier.

Follow the 3 D’s:

1. Deny
2. Downplay
3. Deflect