As in the words of the late Notorious B.I.G., "And another one!", welcome ladies and gentlemen to another edition of 'Brad H.'s Perspective'! For those that maybe don't know the formula here, I'm here to give my perspective on various topics and thoughts that I think about in my daily life. I take those thoughts and try to put them into words that will hopefully inspire myself and others to keep on expanding our minds. If this is your first time visiting here, I'd like to say welcome to you. If you're a frequent viewer already, I'd like to say thank you for stopping by once again. I hope everything has been going well in everyone's lives since the last topic. Man, there has been a lot of unfortunate tragedies as of late. First off, and I feel bad for not mentioning this in my last post, my grandmother's oldest brother passed away earlier this month. He had somewhat been out of touch with a good portion of the family for the last few years, but we're all saddened by his passing. He was around 96 years old I believe. I'd like to say rest in peace to you Uncle Wilmer. The yearly trips you made home before you got down were always one of the biggest highlights of the year for me. We also had the tragic death of Miami Marlins pitcher Jose Fernandez a few days ago. For some reason or another, Jose's death really affected me. I think a lot of it has to do with my uncle passing, but also due to the fact that he was such a young guy with a big future ahead of him. I'm not a Marlins fan, but I always enjoyed watching Jose pitch. It was easily recognizable that he had a zest for the game of baseball. Two other tragic deaths that I want to mention before moving on is golfing legend Arnold Palmer, and actor Bill Nunn, whom both passed last weekend. I hope my mentioning of these individuals deaths aren't a downer for you all. I just wanted to be sure and acknowledge them, as well as anyone else who has lost loved ones recently. Alright, lets go ahead and get into this week's topic on the importance of not being too hard on ourselves.
As I always touch on in each of my writings, a person's individual viewpoint on any topic will vary. My objective here isn't to focus on what is considered to be wrong or wrong; that's totally subjective and up to the individual. The goal is to hopefully give the people that read these posts something to think about and consider going further. As always, you don't have to agree with anything that I touch on, and I also encourage anyone that feels differently to leave their thoughts below. All thoughts and opinions aside of my own are always welcome here. So before getting into the topic itself, I want to give some brief insight on why I'm writing on this topic. Personally, I am one of those individuals that I mentioned earlier that often beats themselves up mentally for their mistakes sometimes. Now I don't consider to be someone with an ego that won't admit to his flaws, but I will admit that I can be hard for myself at times. It's a habit that I've gotten better at breaking in the last year or so, and I have some great people that I've come across to thank for that. This week's message is primarily for those that struggle with being too hard for themselves for their mistakes, but it's also a reminder to anyone else that beating yourself up for your failures will not accomplish anything. It's all about what you're able to learn and take away from your mistakes.
As I stated earlier in this post, it's normal for we as humans to develop somewhat of a self-defeating mindset after making mistakes. Now this state of mind normally depends on the severity of the mistake(s) we make. Of course the smaller and more less severe mistakes probably won't affect us as much as a mistake that have more serious consequences. I won't go into what is considered to be smaller mistakes compared to the ones that have a bigger impact on our lives. However, I think we all can agree that a general rule of thumb is that a mistake is a mistake regardless of how big or small it is, and the magnitude or lack thereof can definitely play on our psyche. Now you may wonder how do mistakes affect our state of mind? Take this as an example. Most people associate the making of mistakes as personal failures. Now I personally don't see this as the case, but we cannot overlook the fact that many people think this way. Since failure is associated with not being successful at something in particular, many of us tend to develop a negative state of mind whenever we make mistakes. Again, I personally see failures and mistakes as two different things, but you can see how the two can be viewed as being similar by most. From my perspective, this is exactly why so many people fall into a chronic negative state of mind. It all deals with seeing certain things for something they're really not.
So why exactly is it important to not beat ourselves up for our mistakes? From my perspective, being overly hard on ourselves can aid in putting us into that chronic cycle of having a negative state of mind. See, the thing with us being human is that our emotions and state of mind often depend on the things that happen to us. So naturally, we feel good whenever good things happen, and we feel the opposite whenever things don't go our way. Now the thing with making mistakes is that it's something we cannot avoid. We may be able to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again, but whenever we're tackling something that we're not accustomed to is going to come with some mistakes. Since mistakes cannot always be avoided, there is really no benefit to being hard on ourselves. Now I don't have to tell you the importance of not being negative all the time. This is something that I've discussed many times on here in the past. Now with that said, I want to stress that having a negative state of mind makes us even more prone to mistakes. Being negative all the time doesn't only sap away our energy, it also takes away our confidence and the ability to believe in ourselves. Whenever we're unsure of certain things that we may face, a level of doubt and insecurity in our ability to get through them naturally develops. I believe much of this stems from being constantly negative, thus why I feel it's important to not be too hard on ourselves whenever we make mistakes.
So how do we combat against beating ourselves up for the mistakes we make? Well I believe that there's really no solid answer to that question, mainly because we're naturally going to feel some regret or disappointment from our mistakes. However, there is something that I think can aid in this constant battle, and I stated it earlier in this post. We have to learn to view our mistakes as lessons rather than failures. Instead of being so hard on ourselves whenever we mess up on something, we have to be able to take something positive away from it that we can apply in the future. It's okay to feel a bit of disappointment whenever you make a mistake, but the key is to not dwell on it for too long. We've all heard it before, but the world in general already beats us up for our shortcomings, so there's no sense in adding to it by doing it to ourselves. Again, I know all this sounds more easier said than done, and I myself struggle with this from time to time as I stated earlier. But, as I've also stated before, being aware and conscious of something is half the battle of conquering it. So don't be too hard on yourself whenever you make a mistake at something. It's very important to not develop the habit of thinking negatively every time something doesn't go your way. I'll end with a quote by Robin S. Sharma that relates to this topic: “There are no mistakes in life, only lessons. There is no such thing as a negative experience, only opportunities to grow, learn and advance along the road of self mastery.From struggle comes strength. Even pain can be a wonderful teacher”
Well we've come to the end for this time around folks, so I'm going to go ahead and sign off now. I'd like to say thank you once again to anybody that stopped through for another edition of 'Brad H.'s Perspective'. As I always like to mention, I hope that there was some understanding gained from this post, and I hope that anyone that read it can relate a bit. If you have anything you'd like to contribute on this topic or if you found it inspiration to you, please feel free to drop a comment below. Well we've arrived at the weekend, as well as a new month, so I hope everyone has a safe and happy one. I'll see you all in October. Until next time, I wish you all peace and positive thoughts. See you in the next one!
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