Hello. Happy independence day celebration to Nigerians.
Today, I’ll be sharing on mistakes and ways to retrace our steps and learn from them.
I’ll share using instances of mistakes I’ve made over this past weekend and useful tips you could all use, if faced with similar situations.
1. Understand that sometimes, our emotions face court room trials.
I have written a blog post on vulnerability for several months now which I haven’t uploaded on the blog yet. In retrospect, I feel it could as well have been a sanctimonious post. I thought I was Open, honest and vulnerable because I perceived myself to be so based on certain criteria and also, people’s observation. I went ahead and wrote the post confidently while offering useful points.
Honesty? that’s true.
Openness? that’s very debatable among the people who know me intimately.
Vulnerability? …uh. we have a problem here.
On Saturday morning, I had to expose something I considered quite intimate which got me emotional at a gathering and I guess I wasn’t very pleased with the outcome of the meeting after that. I was a bit hurt. During the day, I looked at the word of God and cried and prayed and looked at the scriptures again, then I slept. I discussed with my sister on the phone later that night.
Today, I wonder what made that incident upset my day terribly. It was my vulnerability on the stand and I took ill emotionally.
If you’re faced with a similar situation, you must recognize that there is a tendency for you to blow the facts of the incident out of proportion because it’s personal to you. If you asked other people, they wouldn’t percieve it as strongly as you do. So, calm your emotions down. Court trials aren’t even as bad as they appear to the lay man.
2. Get what lesson God teaching you and stick to it. Over the next few days or hours, you may want to over-rationalize the issue again. Don’t do that. Stick to what God has told you instead. If you over-rationalize, you tend to justify your own weaknesses too and blame the other party. In case you haven’t realized, the blame game helps no one.
Also, it’s always a wasted experience when you “suffered” so much and you’re still unable to decipher the lesson behind it all.
3. Stick to your plans. Did you schedule plans for the day? Try to stick to them. Your schedule doesn’t have to be overturned if it isn’t a major matter you’re dealing with. You could breathe in and out, literally, then proceed with your responsibilities.
A deviation from your scheduled plans would probably cause more anxiety over the load of work you have to achieve by the next day or cause some other damage.
Trust God for the strength to carry on.
4. Speak to someone who often understands you. I mentioned that I called my sister at night and we spoke. She encouraged me.
I know we all sometimes insist, especially when we’re emotionally spent, that no one truly understands us. No one may understand everything about you but someone understands certain aspects of your life. Why don’t you speak to someone you trust, who would reassure you. This should be done wisely. Don’t speak with someone who will slander the offenders in their quest to ‘help’ you.
5. Don’t downplay what you have/ who you are (because of that error)
I did some reading during the weekend. Mostly blogs- I read new blogs, caught up on old blogs too. I enjoyed doing so. Everyone inspired me richly. It however, didn’t occur to me that I have some people getting inspired by my blog too and that they’re waiting for updates. There was an update I planned to, but failed to make on Friday.
A friend of mine called and asked about my blog. She set me thinking.This post is up to remedy that. I have a good blog, I will remember that.
These lessons are pretty General yet selective. Like I stated earlier though, they’re simply lessons I drew out from my mistakes over the weekend.
Anytime you’re faced with mistakes you’ve made, rather than berate yourself, look out for lessons.
Don’t get stuck in self loathing by realizing all the wrong things you did without realizing what you can do to improve on them next time. Sharing those tips with others around you is also productive. Enough self loathing people. It’s mind over matter. Perspective matters!
Let us hear from you. What lessons have you learnt from your mistakes of late? We could benefit from them so share with us below.
Mistakes and perspective
