Tough Topics with Dallas

You Are Not Your Worst Mistake

Maybe you've made a decision you're not proud of. Maybe you hurt someone, stayed somewhere far longer than you should have, trusted the wrong person, or said something you wish you could take back.

Maybe you made a choice that changed the direction of your life, and sometimes, we don't just regret what we did. We start believing that what we did says something permanent about who we are. We replay it, pick it apart, and punish ourselves with it.

Eventually, we start using that one mistake as an excuse that we're not good enough, smart enough, worthy enough, or deserving of better, but making a mistake and being a mistake are two very different things. You can do something you deeply regret without becoming the worst thing you've ever done.

One bad decision does not get to define your entire life or everything you are capable of becoming, and no, I'm not saying we shouldn't take responsibility for our actions; we should.

Sometimes we need to apologize, make things right, and accept that our choices had consequences. That's part of being an adult. That's part of growing, but accountability doesn't require you to hate yourself forever.

You can acknowledge what you did without spending the rest of your life punishing yourself for it. You can learn from it, you can make different choices, and you can still believe you're worthy of love, happiness, and a future you actually want.

Sometimes, the version of you that exists because of your mistakes is wiser than the person you were before them. Maybe you learned something about yourself that you wouldn't have learned any other way. Maybe you discovered a boundary you didn't know you needed. Maybe you learned what you will and won't tolerate, or finally realized what you deserve.

That doesn't make the mistake good. It simply means you don't have to let the mistake be meaningless. Your past can be something you learn from without becoming something you live inside; that's where we sometimes get stuck. We think forgiving ourselves means pretending it never happened, which it doesn't.

You can remember something and still stop punishing yourself for it. You can regret something and still move forward. You can wish you'd made a different choice and still choose differently from this point on. You don't have to keep proving that you're sorry by staying stuck, and you don't have to introduce yourself to the world through the worst thing you've ever done.

You get to keep becoming. You get to make better choices. You get to grow into someone your past self wouldn't even recognize.

So if there's something you've been carrying, something you wish you could undo, or something you still use against yourself, remember that you made a mistake, you are not a mistake. Let yourself learn and grow from it, and eventually, let yourself leave it where it belongs, which is behind you.