I've made a mistake. A fairly big one – well, there's been an impact, let's say. It was avoidable, and yet there it is!
🤦🏻♂️
I'll get to what it was in a minute, but first… how do you handle these things?
The inevitability of mistakes
It's funny, minds like to think that there's this sort of gold-standard, mistake-free way of moving through life and the game is to stay as close to that line as possible.
As if there were some kind of badge that gets dished out at the end (or better still, lots of badges that get dished out, regularly)!!
And obviously when we look at what's going on here, there's life's happenstance, there's how we're showing up (which is determined by our mood/level of consciousness, moment-by-moment) and then the mind is looking in on all of that, passing judgment and saying things like,
- 📦🗣️ “Bad!”
- 📦🗣️ “Yes, we did well, there”
- 📦🗣️ “Don't do that again!”
- 📦🗣️ “Poor decision” … and the like.
And all of that judgement isn't really us, or ours, it's more like a recording of our parents and our teachers, our past, our peers and society's rules etc.
(Some of this stuff is enshrined in law; some of it is common decency; most of it is meaningless nonsense we use to torment ourselves.)
The fact that we experience these judgements isn't wrong, or bad. It's just life as a human. It's what unites us – it's going on for every single one of us, yes, even the Dalai Lama!
Here's the key:
Seeing the innocence
I've done some pretty stupid things in my past, and you know what's true of every single one of them?
This 👇🏻
“Everyone is doing the best they can, given the thinking they have that looks real to them.” ~ Sydney Banks
It sometimes seems a bit painful to admit, but what's showing up is what's showing up and couldn't be any different. Its origin was forged in the distant mists of the big bang.
Right there, in that moment of ‘stupidity’ you (me, everybody) was doing what made sense.
So what do we do with that?
Moving on
We've got a saying here at Casa Croft, that is sometimes received with a knowing nod and a visible relaxation of the shoulders, and sometimes greeted with flat-out denial and door-slamming.
Neither response makes it any less true:
“Accept, and move on.”
It's like a real seeing of that Syd Banks quote above – shit happens, what's done is done, learn from your mistakes, move on.
I saw this playing out with a client, just yesterday. They'd made a mistake, done something a bit daft, narrowly avoided a disaster.
They saw it immediately in retrospect (this is the way), as the mind accessed the archive of its very own recordings and piped up with its assessment and its recommendation. (Basically: Make sure you don't do that again!)
But what I loved was the reflection, afterwards. We've had a few sessions together and bit by bit they're seeing things differently now. To the degree that:
“D'you know, I think in the past I'd probably have beat myself up about it for ages afterwards. But this time, I kind of just learned the lesson and got on with my day.”
🎉
This is the difference. In seeing that we live in a thought-created perceptual reality that's a potent mixture of pure-perception and meaningless commentary, you get to work with the mind, instead of fighting against it.
And this is true for stuff that's ‘narrowly avoided’ and total and utter disasters that occur (because they do indeed occur).
Same principles. Same thing going on.
So when the mind-recorder pipes up again, with the exact same judgement (or a variation of it), it's ok, it's doing its job, it just doesn't know that you heard it the first time, logged the lesson and are ready to move on.
It's ok then, to ‘ignore’ your thinking.
The stupid mistake I made
The Daily Reminders do not pay for themselves. I create every single one myself (there's no AI involved). They take huge amounts of time and effort to produce, and nobody's paying me to do it.
I don't run ads, I don't relentlessly try and sell stuff to people, I just aim to share this very simple, but profoundly life-transforming understanding with you all in a way that's accessible, lighthearted and regular. (I don't seem to be able to help myself! 😆)
But I'm utterly dependent on reader-support, to do that.
Since I opened the website and the Daily Reminder emails up completely for free, I've been asking for donations, which are essential to keep things going.
And you know what?
🤨 🤦🏻♂️ 😫
So every time I've asked, at the bottom of each post, for your support, you've not been able to do that. (Thank you to the very kind person who pointed that out to me!! 💝)
It's running-a-business 101, and on that particular measure, I have failed.
But hey ho, it couldn't have been any different and I'm not going to beat myself up about it. I discovered the mistake late last night, rectified it immediately and here I am helping you to move on from your own mistakes, by fessing up.
So…
- If you like the Daily Reminders and have been impacted by them
- If you think their existence is a good thing in the world and should continue
- If you'd like to say thank you and support me in producing them regularly, then
(There's no set amount and if you can't afford it, then for the love of all things good, please don't!!)
Every single bit of support, however small, is really appreciated.
Thank you.
💝
Giles
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