Comments on: Forgive Yourself

By: dana

dana — Sun, 31 May 2009 00:19:03 +0000

talk about timely. after doing so well for so long i totally fell off the wagon this month.

my husband is away (military) and i’ve been shopping to fill my time and the void. i now have to dip into our emergency fund to pay off the VISA bill.

i’m hating myself for it but the damage is done – time to buck up, smarten up and move on.

By: Simple Saturday Reads: Coming Home Edition « Common Cents Mom

Simple Saturday Reads: Coming Home Edition « Common Cents Mom — Sat, 30 May 2009 23:24:01 +0000

[...] wrote an incredible post of Forgiving Yourself. It is one of the most important things we can I can do. This is a constant battle for me because I [...]

By: Catherine

Catherine — Sat, 30 May 2009 12:11:20 +0000

Hindsight is a wonderful thing…..I hear my Mom’s voice saying ‘this too shall pass’.

By: Jamie

Jamie — Sat, 30 May 2009 03:42:37 +0000

I think this is the hardest part for me. Instead of fixing the past mistakes, I would just dwell on them and make myself feel horrible for those mistakes, and used shopping to feel better. Its a vicious cycle, for sure.

Instead of dwelling on these mistakes, I’m now concentrating on fixing them and not making them again. EVER!

By: Tara

Tara — Fri, 29 May 2009 22:09:44 +0000

One of my favorite quotes is: “Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.”

Live, learn and move on!

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:08:36 +0000

I am glad to have strong people in my life to get great advice on life and finances. I strongly believe that your network of people in your life is important. The advice you can get from people is invaluable.

By: Annie

Annie — Fri, 29 May 2009 20:10:19 +0000

What a timely post! And this applies to well to not just finances, but life and work in general. I’ve made myself sick the past couple of days over something at work (thinking up scenarios that are most likely much worse than the real thing will end up being…I hope!), but spoke with someone I really respect about it and was told “what was, was.” Let it go, learn from it and move on; do your new job the best you can and for heaven’s sake don’t let it make you sick! I really like what you have to say about this sort of thing, PsychSarah! I am going to write that down and remember it and USE it.

By: Toby

Toby — Fri, 29 May 2009 19:27:37 +0000

As usual Gail, you are bang on!

It will be interesting to see how children of the so-called “helicopter parents” turn out, when they are never allowed to make decisions on their own therefore they never make any mistakes.

I have sure made a lot of mistakes in my life, but I have also made a lot of good decisions from the lessons learned by “grabbing that cat by the tail”!

By: psychsarah

psychsarah — Fri, 29 May 2009 18:22:24 +0000

One of my favourite mentors used to tell me “learning experiences are those which you wish you weren’t having at the time”. I have also found myself saying over the years “as long as you learn something from it, there’s no reason to regret it”. Same sentiment as this post I think. A good reminder for all.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:49:05 +0000

I once lost $1000 on a job. I decided to art direct a photo shoot when I’d never done that before. I thought I’d educated myself properly by asking the photographer every question I could possibly imagine. I also asked her if she thought there was anything else we were missing. I got as much out of the client as I (thought I) possibly could.

In the end, she turned out to be just a high maintenance client who found an opportunity to get out of paying for a whole job by claiming it was only half a job. Being photography, it was entirely subjective.

I still paid my photographer in full. I ate the $1000 because I and two other studios I consulted agreed, the photographer did a fantastic job. There was no reason not to pay her. That $1000 lesson was so worth it. I learned that when your spidey sense goes off, listen to it! Gut! All about the gut! I knew the client was going to be difficult when she started grinding me on the price right from the get go but somehow I wished it away; probably because she’d been referred by someone who was wonderful to work with and because the project sounded exciting.

Moral: live and learn

And if you are dabbling in something you’ve never done before, get and give as much information as you can, and then just when you think you can’t get or give any more, look harder. Or, to ease up on the stress, let someone else do the job and stick to what you do best.

By: Maureen

Maureen — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:10:27 +0000

Making mistakes is all part of the learning curve. I used to beat myself black and blue over every mistake. Now I know that in life you sometimes make the right decision but other times you just have to make the decision right.

By: *pol

*pol — Fri, 29 May 2009 16:09:09 +0000

A fabulous quote from a small book by Joe Calloway:
“With [a] failure, you get a whole new batch of information that sets you on the right course. When you pick a cat up by the tail, you learn a lot about cats. You get scratched up but you learn a tremendous amount about cats.”
I love that analogy, it may have seemed like a stupid mistake to grab the cat by the tail, but it’s the knowledge you get from the unpleasant experiences that can help you grow.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:44:42 +0000

Sally Hogshead – careerist and writer – says “mistakes are tuition”. Sometimes the biggest mistakes are the best learning experiences. The problem is not the making of the mistake. The problem is making the same mistake over and over.

By: Geoff

Geoff — Fri, 29 May 2009 13:53:08 +0000

Thanks for this post Gail. I’m a professional self-beaterup (500 liftime KOs) so have to remind myself that it’s very hard to predict the future and sometimes you just have to do what your gut tells you and live with the consequences. I also like the Aboriginal poem that has the line “These small fears I thought so big” – so often the fear of something is far worse than the reality of it.