How You Benefit Everyday From ‘Being Stupid’ in the Past
Even long after you've forgiven yourself for past mistakes they may still pop into your mind now and again as you find yourself thinking “boy was I stupid”.
A fantastic way to utilise these mistakes is to remember all you learned from them. If you’re not sure what you learned, rack your brain until you identify what you did.
Perhaps you wouldn’t be who you are without them. Perhaps they happened for a reason (even if you never find out what that reason is). Maybe without them you wouldn’t have come to the great place in your life you are at now (or will be at in the future). Some people have stories like recovering from a nasty divorce; they take a holiday and end up meeting the true love of their life. They have the divorce to thank for that – they see their previous marriage had a purpose – to get them on that holiday!
We humans aren’t born with a foolproof mindset. We are left to learn and grow as we go. Nobody makes the best decisions or takes the right actions 100% of the time. It takes stuff ups and experience to learn what works and what doesn’t in our individual lives.
I sometimes think of incidents that happened in my teens and think “boy was I stupid”. I realise that thinking that is totally ridiculous as at the time I was “doing the best I could with what I had” (meaning my mental resources and knowledge). There is no need for me to be hard on myself about things just because I now know better. As a teen it seems I was seriously lacking a sense of self, and an awareness of what I should and shouldn’t tolerate. I’m referring to things like:
*allowing myself to be made a joke of and disrespected by the guys in our ‘group’ (they decided they didn’t like me)
*trying time and again to ‘prove myself worthy’ of being liked by them;
*allowing school peers to impact my views. When I got the smokin’ ‘posh spice’ haircut I got called an ugly lesbian. Instead of realising the people making the comments were a) of no consequence b) bitchy and c) not exactly ‘style guru’s’ I doubted my choice of haircut.
We value and respect the experiences of all of our HERWriters, but everyone is different. Many of our writers are speaking from personal experience, and what's worked for them may not work for you. Their articles are not a substitute for medical advice although we hope you can gain knowledge from their insight.
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