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Caree Brown L.C.S.W. Psychotherapy

Individual, Couples, & Family Therapy

www.careebrown.com

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Remember the Lesson, Forget the Mistake

Many of us beat ourselves up when we think we have made a mistake. Instead of taking responsibility for whatever damage may have been caused , and learning from the experience, we tend to get stuck in that painful abyss of guilt and shame. We desperately wish we could rewrite history , spinning our wheels and obsessing about this or that and if only we had acted differently. Unable to silence this critical inner voice, we stop the flow of our lives, unable to go forward.

Instead of allowing our mistakes to sap our time, energy and confidence, fueling even more mistakes because our attention is diverted from the task at hand, what if we chose to do something different with them? What if we could lift them up to a higher level of consciousness and ask ourselves what we are being asked to learn?

If we think of our mistake as a lesson, what might it have to teach us? Perhaps it is offering us a new direction of growth or perhaps saving us from something further down the road that we are now unable to see? Did we take certain things for granted instead of checking out our assumptions, or did we fail to consider the big picture when we were weighing in all the details?

Our mistakes may appear to be painful disruptions that create havoc for us without any payoffs. Or ,if we let them, they can become juicy opportunities to learn more about life, as well as ourselves. They have the power to inform, expand and refine us, and ultimately, they can become unexpected gifts of personal growth.

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