I am human, I make mistakes. So do you, even if you pretend you don´t.
If you are a person who likes to make decisions, whether they could be good or bad, regardless of the outcome, odds are you will be regreting some of them.
I am one of those people. I prefer to make a choice even when I am not 100% sure that it is the right one, do you want to know why? Because I like to feel that false sense of control over my life. If I am going to succeed or fail, it is going to be because of my own decisions rather than out of someone else´s choices.
Why do I call it a false sense of control?
I am not going to go deep into the phylosphical entanglements within destiny or fate. I am not prepared nor I have the educational aspects to make a post about destiny. But I can speak about it out of my own experience.
My father has a saying: If it is for you, it´ll come even if you try to avoid it; if it´s not for you, it won´t come even if you strive to reach it.
I like that saying, it makes me feel that there is a stronger force above me, it makes me feel calm and relaxed; but on the other side, I don´t fully accept it.
I like to think - even when it might not be true - that I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul (Thanks for the quote Ernest Henley) and that every choice I´ve made since I am capable of reasoning, has taken me where I am today.
And I like where I am today
But I am nowhere near perfection. In fact I am far from it. There is always room for improvement whether it is regarding my soul, my body or my mind.
One thing I learnt over the years is that in order to grow, you have to admit your defeats, you have to recognize your failures, you have to embrace your mistakes and analyze where you might be wrong or where does the step back comes from.
If you identify where can you be better, you are one step ahead of your previous self - which is the only person you should be comparing yourself to - but that is only half the way.
You need to correct your mistakes. You must hold yourself accountable for them.
Think about it, if you don´t suffer the consequences of your actions, how will you be able to know if they were negative or positive deeds?
It is not enough to be able to embrace your failures, you have to accept the consequences that come along those failures, but you also have to man up - or woman up also? - and say sorry when it is the case. After that, you are good to go in the road of improving and correcting those defeats.
Saying sorry is not as bad as it sounds.
Another thing my father says to me very often: If today you made a mistake or did harm to someone else, whatever you do, do not act tomorrow as if nothing happened.
And you know what?
Out of all the advices my old man has given me, that one is the wisest, but also the hardest to follow through. I will admit it. I don´t say sorry very often nor I ask for forgiveness every day.
It is almost impossible to stand up in front of a person and say You were right, I was wrong, I am sorry, I will try to correct my behaviour/thoughts/actions.
But when you do it from the heart, it is one of the most liberating emotions. You feel ready to move on, you think of yourself as someone who is ready to grow, to improve, to become a better version of yourself.
There are a lot of ways to grow as a human being, but out of my own experience, the hardest but most fulfilling way is to accept you still have a lot to grow.
They way I see it, every mistake serves as a step in the ladder of life, you just have to know how to use it.