How long do your mistakes bother you?
I've been thinking about this lately. For me, it seems around 3-4 years. I'm still annoyed at a few of the larger mistakes I made in 2008, 2009, and 2010. Maybe a couple things from '07. I'm not bothered at anything from from '06 or earlier.
How about you, dear reader - how long do you carry your mistakes with you? I think instantly forgetting and moving on would be pretty dangerous, it's the negative feelings we carry around that helps us burn new patterns into ourselves.
On the other hand, agonizing over something that happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago... there can't be any sense to that, can there? Certainly, you can internalize the lessons after 5-7 years and move on... right?
I'm wondering lately if I should work to speed up the process of not being bothered at mistakes. I make a lot of mistakes. I do so much stupid shit. I say so much stupid shit.
Go ahead and quote me out of context on that, I don't mind. It's true. I'm constantly trying to put myself into new and unfamiliar situations to grow and learn and excel from, for expansion's sake, to develop as a strategist, to build more, to do more, to serve more. I screw up. A lot.
I don't like it. I really dislike making mistakes, and hate losing of any sort.
But I recognize it's necessary to learning how to do things correctly and winning.
I don't get bothered much when I make a mistake when experiencing something for the first time. But when I know better and make a mistake anyways... that's what burns me up. But it seems like it's necessary to do things wrong a number of times on the way to mastery of anything - just the price you have to pay time and time again before things click and sink in... so I keep paying the price
I tend to carry my mistakes with me for 3-4 years before letting them go. That... seems okay, but maybe I ought to get that number down to 1 year or 2 years? The rate I'm making mistakes and losing and failing is increasing, because the amounts of things I'm doing is increasing. So perhaps it's time to learn to let go faster.
How about you? How far back do you carry your mistakes? When do you let them go?