So, after my recent blog post titled Mummy, I was inspired to write another. You can tell me if you see any links between both topics. Answers on a post...oh, hold, answers in the comments section below or on my Facebook post about this!
I’ve turned another year older today, an no I’m not 45 or older, I’ve hit 35. I don’t think it’s a milestone birthday but I don’t think I could wait another 5 years to publish this blog post!
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become more reflective. Yes, I know, I’ve always been a bit of a reflector. A lot has happened in my life over the last 5 years let alone the last 35 years. I got married to an amazing woman (never thought I’d be lucky enough), we’ve had gorgeous twin girls, I’ve moved house 3 times, changed jobs twice, etc...
It’s also fair to say that I’ve made mistakes along the way, whether that be personally or professionally. At the times I’ve made those mistakes I’ve kicked myself every single time, I’ve to an extent regretted making those mistakes too and in all felt very bad about the mistakes.
It got me thinking (yes, I know it’s dangerous!), that we beat ourselves up when we make mistakes, hold it against ourself for a period of time and generally feel quite crap about it. This is true for me, I do it all the time, but we don’t reflect on how that reaction impacts us. In that, when a similar situation arises do we feel confident enough to deal with it?
For me, I’ve found beating myself up always knocks my confidence. I’ve never been the most confident person in the world, so it majorly affects me.
As I said In previous posts, becoming a father has changed my perspective on things. I look at the mistakes I make in a different way now. Don’t get me wrong, I still beat myself up over them but not to the extent I used to before.
This perspective has changed because I look at my girls growing up, and they do things which you could consider mistakes I.e. during toilet training, accidents will happen, it can be frustrating and you possibly tell your child off. Is that going to help them in the long term? Do they even understand why you’re telling them off? The answer to those questions is probably a No. You find other ways to help them make sense of it all.
So why do we as adults beat ourselves up? Does that really help us? Well, for some it possibly does and for others it probably has the complete opposite effect . I fall in to the latter category, well I did until recently.
I’ve found that understanding why I made a mistake is more important than just saying “Chirag you idiot, don’t make mistakes like that” etc...understanding mistakes and trying to learn from them actually builds confidence, well it does for me anyway.
Mistakes are something I’ve always made in life, and quite frankly always will make. That’s just part of being alive. Hopefully I’m learning from these mistakes and it shows that I’m learning. Who knows, some mistakes I may never learn from some mistakes.
I guess the point of the post was to highlight that whatever your age, mistakes are ok, most people learn from their mistakes. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without making the mistakes I have. Some of you may say “yeah, but you’re an idiot” or something along those lines, and you know what, you are entitled to your opinion.
I’m not saying I’m an amazing human being, or I’m anything special but I’m proud of the journey of my life and will hopefully keep learning and imparting the knowledge of that journey on to my kids (whether they like it or not, haha!).
So tell me, do you think you’ve made mistakes in life? Do you think you’ve learned from them? Has it made you the person you are today? Do you think you’ll keep making mistakes?
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