Your shoulders feel heavy.
Your stomach is in knots.
You wish you had a do-over.
What do you do when you realize you made a mistake, took a wrong turn, or hurt someone with your words or actions?
For most people, guilt is the first sensation that comes up. Guilt is a big shout-out that asks you to listen up, bring awareness to yourself and the situation. It prods you to figure out how you are going to fess up and make this right. Guilt is a great corrector, yet if you use it to hammer at yourself over and over again you will suffer.
Everyone makes mistakes, we are all human and doing our best. Sometimes our desperation, fear and lack of consciousness in the moment take us in a direction that we later regret taking.
“What the heck was I thinking?”
Steps to Make It Right
• Cultivate an Awareness of your offense.
• If you’ve hurt someone, take your heart for a walk in their shoes.
• If you judged yourself, let it go. The very first step is to forgive yourself for judging yourself. Otherwise, your guilt will ask you to pay and pay, again and again. This is not a loving action.
• Have a heart to heart with whomever you’ve disappointed. Acknowledge, Apologize and Ask for Forgiveness and then…
• ACT ~ Set out to “do better”. Take actions that re-build trust. Prove to yourself that you can learn from your mistakes and trust yourself to refine your intentions and actions.
• Drop your Image of Perfection ~ Accept all of you, to include the screw ups. If you hang on to an Image and attempt to get more perfect, your self-love will be conditional and your love for others will be conditional as well.
It is a powerful, courageous and loving act to make amends to yourself and others.
It will Raise The State of Your Life.
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