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Question:

How do I stop beating myself up for past mistakes? I made some bad choices that ruined an important relationship, and I made some bad choices that caused me to miss opportunities, which will never come again. I could beat myself up forever about those choices and what might have been different in my life, if I’d been smarter. How does one get past those kinds of mistakes?

Answer:

“Of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, 'It might have been.' ”

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Kurt Vonnegut penned those words, and they sting every person who reads them. Almost everyone on the planet has regrets (decisions they wish they had made differently over the course of their lives). If you spend too much time here, these regrets could rob you the happiness you should be experiencing today. You can't let this happen.

It doesn’t serve you to punish yourself over and over for past transgressions, especially because you can't change them. Spending time here would mean borrowing suffering from your past and letting it ruin today.

The question is how can you eliminate these feelings of shame and regret?

Here are six things you can do to change the way you feel about your past and change the way you create your future:

1. Choose to let go of shame. It doesn’t serve you to hold onto fear of not being good enough because of past mistakes. You are here to learn and grow, and growing is a process that requires mistakes. You had to make some or you wouldn’t know what you now know. SHAME over past choices is like saying you Should Have Already Mastered Everything. That’s ridiculous, isn’t it? You must give yourself permission be a work in progress and to have been a work in progress all along. When you allow yourself to be a work in progress, you can let go of shame.
2. See mistakes as locations on your journey through life, but don't let them define you. See life as a road trip. You have driven through some bad experiences or locations, but they don't define who you are. You went there, but you didn't move in and stay there. You traveled through and realized that wasn't where you wanted to live. Seeing past experiences this way will make you feel better.

Related:

Your past does not define you

Coach Kim gives some unique advice for leaving your past behind you: Those experiences were locations on your journey; they do not define you.

1. Choose to trust that the choices you made were the right choices for you, even if they didn't end well. I believe if I'd needed a different lesson I would have chosen a different path. Apparently this was my perfect journey and I needed these experiences, even if I can't yet see the reason. Living with trust in the journey will make a huge difference.
2. Give yourself permission to be a student in the classroom of life. At every point on your journey, you were doing the best you could with what you knew at the time. You couldn’t have known more or seen things differently than you did. If you knew then, what you know now, you would obviously have acted differently, but you couldn’t have known it then, because you had to go through everything you’ve experienced (including those bad decisions) to learn it. Just like a painter hangs a sign on his unfinished paintings, reminding all who walk by it is a “work in progress,” you are a human being in process. When you give yourself permission to be a work in progress, you will also give others that permission too.
3. Make a list of the choices you regret over the last 20 years. Then write down 10 positive things that each of those choices has brought into your life. This is an exercise Viktor Frankl (author of "Man’s Search for Meaning”) recommended to his patients. If you can see the positive impact those choices have had on your life, you will feel differently about them. Seeing the lesson will lessen the sting. Often those choices taught you important things about the kind of person you don’t want to be.
4. Focus on the lessons those experiences taught you. What does remembering those bad choices tell you about how you want to live today? Mistakes or bad choices can serve you if they help you create the future you want. Focus on your future behavior and the person you now want to become. That is the only thing in your control. What actions can you take today or this week to put these important lessons to work? Victoria Moran wrote, “In terms of days and moments lived, you’ll never again be as young as you are right now, so spend this day, the youth of your future, in a way that deflects regret. Invest in yourself. Have some fun. Do something important. Love somebody extra. In one sense, you’re just a kid, but a kid with enough years on her to know that every day is priceless.”

Don’t waste another minute of today dwelling in fear over things that are over and gone. Focus on being the person you want to be. Choose to focus on the future only because it's more productive.

You can do this.

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*Kimberly Giles gives her advice in the "LIFEadvice" series every Monday on ksl.com. She is the founder and president of www.claritypointcoaching.com. She is a sought after life coach and popular speaker who specializes in overcoming fear. She offers a free webinar every Tuesday night with info on her website.**

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