Building on Mistakes

I accept my mistakes and let them contribute to my learning and growth...

The price I must pay for any knowledge is to discover it for myself. I must learn my own lessons- I must make my own mistakes. I must pay my own consequences. The knowledge that I gain represents me with a new challenge. I can choose to remain where I am and stagnate or I can choose to grow.

My goal is to be able to look at myself and feel good about my achievements and my mistakes. I understand the choices I have made are neither good nor bad, but wise or unwise. I can neutralize feelings of guilt and shame when I realize that past inadequacies were dependent upon my particular state of awareness at that time. When I look back at past situations with newly-acquired awareness, I wonder how I could have been so naive or unintelligent. I will treat myself kindly today as I realize that I was not as aware then as I am now.

Today I accept that my life is, to date, the best that I can accomplish. I will continue to improve as I grow in success and in wisdom.

I still can't believe I actually proclaimed once I would let everyone else make the mistakes around me, and I would promise to learn from them! That was one of the biggest mistakes I made! While I could observe others' missteps and watch the resulting consequences I actually thought I could avoid making my own mistakes! Nice try. My list of mistakes aka "learnings" is very, very long by now! And I truly am all the wiser now. Our lessons don't always have to be hard but we do have to go through that rather uncomfortable feeling of not knowing something. Nothing pertains to my own recovery as relating to the cliche "the only way out is through." Going through something, experiencing it all firsthand is the best way to learn. Experience is part of what makes us human. When I came to ACA, as every newcomer is warned many emotions arose and I went through a series of feeling embarrassed to elated as I shared with the group my struggles and triumphs. As my healing advanced, I remember sharing in other's pain, tears welling up in my own eyes as they told of their own struggles and triumphs. I've learned that it does no good to fight our emotions.

We are entitled to every one and especially as adult children, many of us grew up having to suppress our thoughts and feelings. I've learned emotions are as important as any other bodily function and to let them pass like ocean waves that swell and subside, hence the expression "waves of emotions." Emotions are the body's way of alerting us to how we feel about a certain situation and accepting and listening to them helps us choose what to do next.