Hyderabad Blues: [HM:258228] Why making a mistake makes us feel bad?

Sunday, 15 November 2015

[HM:258228] Why making a mistake makes us feel bad?

There are many reasons for that, some people when they make a mistake, they feel bad to the extent that they feel bad about themselves, they start to form bad beliefs about themselves because of they made that mistake, some of them can't sleep at night, some of them be convinced that he/she is a bad person and some of them lose their self confident, and that's not a normal thing, it's dangerous because that's when mistakes can destroy us.

People feel this way because they link their self worth to whether they make mistakes or not, in other words the fewer mistakes they make, the more worthy they are and visa verse!

And that's totally madness!! Sure that comes from the way they were treated, for examples when they were children, whenever they make a mistake they get punished and people shout on them, or it may come from a deep belief inside of them that they're bad or worthless and so they try to appear perfect and superior by making no mistakes at all, there could be more reasons, but I guess you get the point.

Some people have no issue with their self esteem and they don't consider making a mistake means that they're less worthy, but even though they feel devastated when they make a mistake, and we can call that guilt.

The guilt feelings can be very intense, and actually that's a normal and a good thing, because we all make mistakes, it's a normal thing, and guilt is our mind way to make sure that we won't be doing this thing again, but when guilt mixes with the feelings of helplessness, that's a real problem, because we'll be living a nightmare.

Guilt from one side wants to move us to change the situation, and helplessness form the other side telling us that we can do nothing about it, so guilt alone may move you to action, but guilt with helplessness, that's a recipe for screwing up yourself.

How to deal with your mistakes

Here are a few tips that can help you out dealing with your mistakes:

1. Stop linking making mistakes with yourself worth: making mistakes doesn't mean that you're worthless or bad, it simply means that you're a human, stop trying to be perfect, we were not designed to be perfect, we make mistakes and we learn from them, I'll say it again, making mistakes doesn't mean that you're bad or worthless, it simply means that you're a human, we humans make mistakes, it's a part of who we are, Believe that you're not your mistakes, you made a mistake, it doesn't mean that you're the mistake.

2. Admit it and do something about it: OK, you made a mistake and you do realize that it's not an indicator of your self-worth, what's next? Now you need to fix it as much as possible, apologize if you had to, fix what can be fixed and avoid this mistake in the future, you need to learn from this mistake so you can avoid it in the future, you acted in a non-confident way? Don't do that the next time, you made a bad investment, learn your lesson and act better the next time.