"A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new."
- Albert Einstein
I make mistakes all the time.
Let me tell me you about this one at work the other day. Being a dutiful employee, I had cleaned the large printer the night before and so when I came into work the next morning I had to put back the parts I cleaned. While replacing the parts, I dropped a piece into the printer, far down where I couldn't see. What resulted was three hours of me trying to find the piece, getting co-workers to help me, and finally calling tech support to help me take the printer apart to find the piece to get it running properly. So it all worked out in the end.
However, I felt incredibly frustrated at first. I was worried that my supervisor would be upset with me for losing a piece. I was worried that the printer wouldn't work anymore and it would be all my fault.
These worries ended up being groundless, though, and the solution was easy to achieve. Most of the time our worries about making mistakes are not worth the stress we put on ourselves. Everyone makes mistakes, not just me. It's part of learning. Take the printer story for example. If I didn't drop that piece inside the printer, I wouldn't know how to take it apart properly. Now if something happens again I will feel much more confident in fixing the machine.
Mistakes can happen anywhere. I make mistakes in my relationships. I get the wrong kind of candy for my girlfriend or forget a special date or change plans unexpectedly. I say something offensive without thinking it through to a friend and hurt their feelings. Mistakes can happen with goals I have for myself, such as goals of not eating too much junk food or not spending too much money. I can beat myself up every time I give in to cravings and buy a bag of chips, or I can move on from the mistake, accept responsibility and resolve to make better choices in the future.
I am not an accumulation of my past actions. I am this person. Here and now.