Do Your Mistakes Haunt You? And How to Finally Let Them Go?

Written by: Mirna Dajanović, Dipl. Psych. and Gestalt psychotherapist

From the moment we wake up until the moment we fall asleep, we make choices. Some choices are easy, and some keep us awake all night.

Just think about everyday interactions and all the decisions that affect your relationships with others. The way we greet someone, what we say, the questions we ask, the things we leave unsaid, and much more. Maybe interacting with others comes naturally to you, or maybe you are painfully aware of all the small details that unfold. Whatever the case, the fact is that we constantly face numerous choices, and depending on how we make decisions and on the outcome itself, we may perceive a great deal of it as a mistake.

We all make mistakes, but they don't affect us in the same way. If you tend to overthink, as many of us do, a mistake can lead to a vicious cycle: we make a mistake, we burden ourselves with it, we become more insecure, we second-guess simple decisions, and so on in a loop.

Mistakes can make us want to stay in bed, completely isolated from the world, but there is no completely safe direction in which we can go. People are social beings, interconnected, and choosing a life in isolation has its consequences in the long run.

There is no manual that tells us what to do when we make mistakes. Still, we have a choice to change the way we look at them. These are the steps I have learned to follow.

1. Give yourself time to process what happened

You know the plot of all ghost movies: ghosts wander around because they have unfinished business on Earth.

Little can steal your energy or focus like unfinished business. Our mind needs to process everything that has happened, so when something keeps haunting your thoughts and feelings, it is probably time to make space in your life to face that "ghost" and process your thoughts and feelings.

2. Consider the context

Context is crucial. When you think about a mistake, go back in time to the place and moment when the situation happened. Recall what led you to make the mistake. How did you feel? Was something important happening in your life? Is this something that repeats?

We all somewhat know what we should and shouldn't do, but reality is something else. Understanding why something happened is the first step toward being gentler with yourself and potentially preventing such a mistake from repeating in the future.

3. Think about the things you can change

When I talk about change, I am not talking about major personality changes, but about small habits that guide us toward the right choices. Think about the things that are within your control.

Imagine you forgot a friend's birthday. Our forgetting is influenced by many factors, such as stress, genetics, and everything going on in our lives. We cannot control our memory or guarantee that we will remember a birthday, but we can do a lot to create reminders for birthdays in case we forget them.

There are many tools, ideas, and guides we can use to make the system work for us. You certainly won't apply all of them, but you have the opportunity to explore what suits you.

4. Be realistic

Finally, be realistic with yourself. When we look back, it is easy to see what we should have done in a particular situation. Knowing why we did something, being gentle with ourselves, accepting what we did, and finding a way to prevent it in the future is the harder part.

Looking ahead, it is certain that mistakes will happen, and that can be frightening. Still, we have control over some things. We are the ones who make decisions, and although we can never know what our choices will bring, we can ask ourselves whether the decision we are making is worth the risk.

Because if it is, then we are not really making a mistake at all.