by Guest Author

Sometimes we make mistakes and we ruminate: why did I do this, why didn’t I do this, what can I do next time, what I wish I did, and the criticism continues. Guess what, it didn’t get better and chances are you, at least I did, continued to make that same mistake. Until I found compassion for myself and tolerated my anxiety towards the mistake and its impact. I like to think that it is humanly not possible to do everything correctly, maybe some. My parents were quick to criticize my mistakes in hopes that I will learn from it. For me, and a lot of children/adolescents I talked to, all we heard was “why are you so stupid” or “you are not good enough”.

Ultimately, I am a human being with emotions, I know I keep talking about  feelings but seriously it runs rampant in our system, it shuts us down, it affects us to be a little or a lot irrational and it confuses others. The more we try to hide it, stuff it, avoid it, the faster and more intense it creeps up on us. Next thing we know, we are making the same old mistake.

When I was growing up, feeling inadequate affected me to feel awful. As I grew older and understood human emotions, I realized that I was just sad, angry, disappointed and lonely. I felt that I always needed to do better, but there never seemed to be an end to it. But as I learned, professionally and personally, with help and guidance I was able to tolerate the difficult emotions. As my colleagues Andre P. said “compassion” and Katie W. said “Okayest” these are great words to make into a habit. We are so quick to forgive and have compassion for our friends, but not so good when it comes to our children, partner and self. Why is that? Most of us can come up with plenty of reasons. However, it might help to think about why we couldn’t do it for our love ones.

Come join me or any of my colleagues in the process of creating compassion, okayest, getting old gracefully, being your self-author or writing a life verse into your daily routine. Or even learning not to say things that might affect others to feel that they are “not good enough”.



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