August 3, 2023 • 39 mins
All of us are going to mess up. In our 20s and every decade thereafter. But its what we choose to do with those mistakes that's important. In this episode we explore why we often regret past decisions and actions, looking at the development of our brain and personality, we also explore the distinction between regret and guilt and why both emotions may actually be protecting us from future pain. Part of this is understanding the difference between our actual and ideal self and the psychology behind why we choose to punish ourselves for past mistakes rather than embrace them and move on. Self forgiveness is the most powerful antidote and we'll dive into exactly how to enact this practice and release those painful memories and mistakes from our past through accountability and shared humanity. Listen now!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast, New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is great to have
you here. Back for another episode. Today, we're going to
talk about the incredible power of self forgiveness and how
to embrace our past mistakes. I think we have a
really difficult time accepting the fact that each of us
(00:50):
is innately flawed. We are in innately flawed species, and
we often ruminate on all the things that we've gotten wrong,
sometimes for months or even years after the fact. I
am very much the same, but I've come to realize
recently that not accepting our failures, not accepting our mistakes,
(01:12):
kind of means not accepting the fact that we are
human and putting our behavior on a pedestal that we
would never place someone else on. This is particularly relevant
for our twenties in our early years as adults, because
it is a time of exploration, of learning and growth.
(01:32):
But I think also this weird decade or limbo between
childhood and adolescent feelings and that adulthood maturity where so
many of the things we are experiencing we are experiencing
for the first time, and as frustrating as it is,
we don't really have a guidebook. A lot of it
comes down to trial and error, from impulsive relationship choices
(01:55):
to career plans that don't really work out as expected,
and unfortunately, sometimes mistakes that end up hurting other people
even if we didn't mean to. So how can we
embrace this unfortunate but kind of unavoidable side of ourselves.
I think that's a huge question, because living with regret
(02:18):
and guilt truly gets us nowhere. Unfortunately, I think you
cannot undo the past, but you also can't live with
that remorse forever. The beauty of psychology lies in its
ability to really shed light on our human experience, but
also our capacity to grow despite all the things that
(02:38):
we think have ruined our lives or we think make
us bad people. I promise that those mistakes do not
mean those things we're going to explore in today's episode,
the very neurology and underpinning psychological theories that show why
our twenties are important for making mistakes. Were also going
(02:59):
to at the distinction between feeling regret and feeling guilty,
especially when we do come to acknowledge that we've hurt others.
There's a reason we hold on to those experiences, and
it has a lot to do with social harmony and
social contract theory, but also this conflict between our actual
(03:19):
selves and our idea selves. Beyond that, we're also going
to discuss why it is that some people experience regret
more profoundly than others, particularly due to factors like rumination,
but also on a controversial note, maybe the role of
social media in weaponizing public shame. That is all very
(03:43):
valuable information to understand. But what we're really here for
is to get into a place where we can practice
self forgiveness and learn how to forgive yourself for the
times that you didn't know any better than you do now.
It's part of our shared humanity to mess up, and
I do truly believe that we can learn just as much,
(04:06):
if not more, from our mistakes as we can from
our successes. So I also want to dive into the
four hours of self forgiveness and how accountability. Although initially unpleasant,
can really free you from a lot of lifelong guilt
and negativity. It really comes down to self compassion, and
(04:27):
by releasing ourselves from that kind of chains and those
chains of self blame through genuine, actual introspection and self awareness,
we really do unlock the potential to use the things
in our past for growth rather than letting us all
letting ourselves really be weighed down by that. So a
(04:49):
lot of the advice and the evidence we're going to
explore is probably information that I needed to take on myself.
If you're listening to this, I'm guessing you're most likely
in your twenties and as well. So we are all
learning together and sometimes we're not going to be perfect,
but at least we can be in the same boat.
So I'm excited to get into it. Without further ado,
(05:11):
let's explore the psychology behind self forgiveness and moving on
from our past mistakes. Okay, it goes without saying that
you are going to make a lot of mistakes in
your twenties and probably in every decade thereafter. Unfortunately for us,
(05:34):
humans are highly fallible and flawed creatures. We cannot do
everything perfectly, and that includes life. I think an important
reminder is that none of us have done this before.
This is your first time being alive, experiencing these events
and complex emotions and just the ways of human error
and misunderstanding and learning. And so despite our best intentions,
(06:00):
we are going to mess up, and we might hurt
other people and experience regret. I think despite the unavoidability
of mistakes, we do have a choice to let this
a completely paralyze us and perpetually hate ourselves, or be
embrace the opportunity this provides and embrace our mistakes for
(06:21):
exactly what they are, which is a space for self
awareness and for growth. I think it's important to remember,
as we're discussing forgiving ourselves for past mistakes, that you
were not the same person you were two years ago
or even six months ago. People can grow and change
and realize the error of their ways. There is not
(06:42):
a single person out there who hasn't done something they
wish they could take back. But it's about how you
move forward from that, whether you take on the responsibility
of what you've done of some of the errors of
your ways. Additionally, when applying self compassion in these situations,
(07:02):
I think it's important to recognize that our twenties in
particular are a time when we are going to mess up,
probably more than any other decade for a number of reasons.
This era of our lives involves a very unique blend
of still feeling very much like a child but being
expected to behave like an adult. It's like, as soon
(07:25):
as the clock kind of strikes twelve on your eighteenth birthday,
suddenly we're expected to mature into this whole new version
of ourselves who can pay taxes and own a home,
and it's expected to understand exactly what they want and
how to treat others. But that's not really how maturity
works from a psychological, emotional, social perspective, and so our
(07:48):
twenties are this unique in between time, I would say,
where we're grappling with two different sides of ourselves, the
immaturity but also the expectation of responsibility. We have no
idea what's going on. A lot of the time, we
do not have the hindsight to understand the future consequences
of our current actions. Speaking from a very neurological perspective
(08:12):
as well, our brains also don't completely finish developing and
maturing until like the late to mid twenties, and the
last part of our brain to mature is called the
prefrontal cortex. We speak about this a lot because it
is so such a crucial part of everything that makes
(08:33):
us very human, our personality, our identity. But it's also
the area responsible for things like decision making and impulse control.
It's why when we look back at things that we
did at seventeen, when our prefrontal cortex was not developed,
we kind of internally cringe. I was talking to someone
about this the other day who I think like knew
(08:56):
me or met me when I was maybe nineteen or twenty,
and she was telling me about her first impression of
me and how she thought I was super loud and
didn't really think before I spoke, and I was like, yeah,
that's probably right. I made a lot of mistakes back
then and did things I really regret that I look
back at now with that prefrontal maturity and just cannot fathom.
(09:20):
There's so much in there and so much in our
history that I think we realize we would have done differently.
We're also trying out different versions of ourselves, some of
which may not fit or versions that don't actually reflect
our values. This is also in part because we're trying
to separate from the identity we have cultivated under the
(09:44):
guidance of our family, particularly our parents, and we're trying
to branch out to be our own independent people. Suddenly
the protective kind of shield of parental supervision is taken down,
and you've got to learn all the things they learned
in their twenties, and that is a lot of trial
and error and ultimately a few regrets. Also, when we
(10:08):
combine that with things like the drinking age, you know
that a lot of us start consuming alcohol during this period.
We know that leads to poorer decisions. We also have
a bit more financial freedom, and also the complexity that
develops in our relationships. It's kind of no wonder that
we're going to misstep at times. We are going to
(10:30):
do dumb things. We pass up amazing opportunities, we fail
at things we wish we'd succeeded, We spend too much money,
We embarrass ourselves. However, amongst all of these mistakes, I
think the biggest ones I see people ruminating on have
to do with how they acted in their personal relationships,
(10:51):
how they treated their friends or a former partner, maybe
even their parents. I think without a doubt these other
regrets that sting the most, that leave kind of the
greatest emotional scars. There's a reason why interpersonal regret sticks
with us, perhaps more so than the decisions that could
(11:13):
only hurt us individually. We have evolved as creatures, as
a species who seek the need and the approval of
the group for survival, and part of that is the
need to create social harmony and behave according to the
social agreement that really implicitly dictates how we treat others.
(11:33):
In psychology and also in philosophy, there's this idea known
as social contract theory, and what it says is that
we have been conditioned to live together in society in
accordance with an inherent moral agreement to not hurt others
or to not do unto others as we would want
(11:54):
done onto ourselves. So causing someone else's pain, either due
to things like oversight or selfishness, or even outright cruelty,
it goes against that contract. Those feelings of regret, of
guilt or shame. They are an internal psychological signal that
we have gone against this deeper moral code and that
(12:16):
we need to rectify our behavior to restore a general
sense of cohesion. In that way, things like guilt, as
they relate to past mistakes, are somewhat of a pro
social emotion. It's trying to make us a good person
to be around. It's trying to show us how we
can be agreeable and stick within that social contract. There's
(12:38):
an important distinction here between guilt and regret, because I
think although sometimes we use them interchangeably, as I literally
just did, there is a bit of a difference. In
a study they conducted back in twenty and twelve maybe
twenty eleven, they got people to describe typical situations in
(12:59):
which they felt guilt and situations where they felt regret.
What they found is that guilt specifically occurs for choices
in a social context where we have believed that we
have caused harm, whereas regret is strongly associated with personal mistakes,
with missed opportunities, self sabotage, that kind of broader category
(13:22):
of behaviors, or when we wrong someone else. This is
where we typically experience guilt and we regret the actions
that cause this pain, the actions that we were responsible for.
Regret self pity, that is, for the self, whereas guilt
and remorse is for others. I want to pause and
actually break down the psychology behind regret for a second here,
(13:46):
because I think that is the primary emotion we're discussing
when we examine the long term impact of past mistakes. Regret,
at its core, is a complex emotion that arises when
we feel dissatisfied or disappointed with past choices, and it
often stems from a desire to have done things differently
(14:07):
based on our current perspective. And this kind of occurs
in two directions. So we can regret the things that
we didn't do, which is what we would call in action,
all the things that we did do, which is called
actionable or action regret. And importantly, you're more likely to
experience long term regret for the times when you didn't
(14:31):
act compared to the decisions that you did make. Research
suggests that this action related regrets, although they're painful, they
actually spur people to learn more from their mistakes and
move on because they've given us an experience that we
otherwise wouldn't have had, and we wouldn't have had that
teachable moment. But regret related to an action the things
(14:56):
that we cannot do with the opportunities that we did lose.
It's much harder to fix, and this kind of regret
is more associated with things like long term anxiety, depression,
a feeling of stuckness. So if you want to avoid
future regret, I think it kind of goes without saying
that it's more about making a decision than making the
(15:19):
wrong decision, because even if it's the wrong decision, then
it's better than doing nothing at all, because it will
at least give you a teachable moment compared to just
the regret surrounding the what if, the expectant thinking, the
kind of hypothetical future telling, and what if it had
turned out differently? What if I had actually done this?
(15:40):
You can't really take that back. However, further to this
idea of the mistakes that we make that hurt others,
there's this idea known as discrepancy theory that explains why
these mistakes linger the most. Each of us has an
actual self, which is who we actually are, and then
I deal self the person we would like to be,
(16:03):
and when the actions conducted by our actual self don't
align with our ideal self, that is when we experience
things like regret or negative emotions. Because we are not
acting in accordance with who we feel we ought to be.
When we don't act, we regret our wasted potential. When
we do, we regret the outcome of those actions, and
(16:26):
we experience regret for a few other reasons we already
spoke of the kind of evolutionary explanation, especially from a
social perspective where we don't want to disrupt social harmony,
but regret also serves to prevent us making the same
mistake twice. Past experiences in that way, they kind of
(16:46):
linger in our brains as a cautionary tale. They want
us to make better choices, better decisions, by using the
emotional salience of that memory and the pain of that
memory to dissuade us. Interestingly, psychological research indicates that while
people often you regret to be distressing, it nevertheless is
(17:09):
rated as a positive experience because when we listen to
that remorse or that unpleasant sensation, we only need to
experience the negative outcome once. When we don't listen, we
keep making the same mistake over and over again until
that feeling finally sets in, and by then there is
a lot more to process and a lot more to
(17:30):
reflect on. So we're going to talk about that a
little bit later. How kind of going further into the
belly of regret and acknowledging when you've made a mistake
might actually help you not make future mistakes. But I
also want to speak about why there are some people
in our lives, maybe you are one of them, who
(17:50):
really finds it additionally and extra difficult to move on,
to let these things go. Some people are more prone
to lingering on things of the past. This is a
tendency that we call rumination. So rumination is a thought
processing disorder where we obsess over negative feelings and our distress,
(18:13):
and we repetitively think about all of the consequences, how
awful we are, all the things we could have avoided,
what we've missed out on. Our tendency to ruminate often
comes from our coping style, particularly an individual tendency to overthink,
but also things like emotional intelligence. So emotional intelligence really
(18:35):
exacerbates our mental distress sometimes because we are unable to
shut our brain off. Our brain, especially the brain of
someone with high EQ, is constantly mulling over all of
the emotional impacts and kind of roots and paths and
branches of their actions. People who also constantly ruminate, they
(18:56):
may do so because they're unhappy with the lack of
closure from an experience, and they use overthinking to kind
of soothe that distress. But it actually does the opposite.
It gets us stuck in the negative cycle and unable
to move past our past actions, dwelling upon mistakes. It
(19:16):
has been shown time and time again that although it
might feel like you're doing something about it, what is
actually happening is that you're going to diminish your self confidence.
You're going to diminish your creativity, you're going to diminish
your performance and your productivity, and it's just going to
make you feel absolutely miserable. And they did a series
(19:38):
of studies in the early two thousands, and what they
found was that when you dwell on past behavior, this
can really trigger things like procrastination and perfectionism because you're
so concerned that you might do it again. This is
what makes regret so all consuming. We cannot under the past,
no matter how hard we try. We are thinking as
(20:01):
if we can, that all of that mental energy is
going to change the outcome. I think that sometimes this
stems from our need for self punishment. If we can't
undo our mistakes, then we better make sure we repent
for them or feel the full force of our guilt
once again. Some of that is evolutionary, and most of
(20:23):
it is highly unproductive, and it stems from our deep
sense of shame. So self punishment involves things like forcing
yourself to continually think about your mistakes, avoiding things that
make you happy because you feel like you no longer
deserve them, negative self talk, excessive exercise, or even abusing
(20:45):
things like alcohol. The use of self punishment acts to
relieve our guilt, but also in some ways makes us
feel like we're redeeming ourselves. And when we face regret,
perhaps due to action, we often feel like we lack
a certain agency over our lives, particularly if we've acted
(21:05):
out of character, and so self punishment acts as an outlet,
almost like a productive way to pay for our mistakes.
We feel like it's doing something to counterbalance the negative
experience of regret. Some of that is also imposed on
us by society. For sure. There's a reason why we
(21:27):
may feel the pain of past mistakes more harshly nowadays,
especially if they were things that were perhaps offensive or
really hurt someone. Our society is really good at weaponizing
shame for good and for bad, especially things like online
shaming and even cancel culture. I have a lot of
opinions on this a lot. You know, we see celebrities
(21:50):
being canceled all the time, sometimes for very very valid reasons.
But when we see this play out so frequently, sometimes
we feel that point that media outrage or even that
personal outrage could be turned at us for minor things.
We spend so much about lives online and so what
people think of us in that context is important, and
(22:14):
we've become a lot more aware of how past actions,
which maybe at the time didn't seem so bad, could
now be deemed as really offensive or really hurtful. I
think that role of public humiliation, especially in the modern day,
has a lot of complicated psychological and social origins that
(22:34):
we don't really have time to get into. But what
is definitely being seen, I think, is that it's really
forcing us to reflect more on our actions and make
us ask questions and question the distinction between maybe I've
done a bad thing and I regret it, and I'm
a bad person. I can never be forgiven. Previously, our
(22:57):
mistakes were not up for discussion by you know literally
everyone on the internet in the world now, like you
could do something stupid and it's everywhere someone could film you,
And so we're much better at self policing our behavior
on a micro kind of personal scale away from social
media and the Internet. I find our tendency to not
(23:17):
forgive ourselves for past mistakes really fascinating and also at
times quite ironic, because we are so so willing to
forgive other people when they do us harm. We are
so willing to overlook hurtful behaviors to realize that people
make mistakes and maybe they've changed, maybe they've grown, But
we hold ourselves to such a high standard we don't
(23:40):
give ourselves the same grace that we give others. I'm
definitely someone who is highly forgiving, perhaps as some of
my friends would say, to a fault sometimes, And I
think that's because I would want to have the same
forgiveness that I'm giving to others, because of that sense
that we are a bad person and we're going to
(24:00):
need others to forgive us, so we'd better be very,
very forgiving of them without thinking of how we can
forgive ourselves. But it's a lot deeper than that. We
see others as very complex beings. We are very aware
that they are flawed and they are nuanced, But we
see ourselves as needing to be perfect and needing to
have all the answers, And that's what makes it so
(24:21):
hard to move forward, especially since we're kind of the
only ones who can personally and deeply feel all of
the negative outcomes of our past, you know, especially that guilt,
and we don't really see the private lives of others
and how much they may themselves be self punishing self
forgiveness is really tricky, but it's also truly the only
(24:44):
way to move forward in such a positive character attribute.
You've got to remind yourself that you truly did the
best you could with the information you had. No one
wants to make their lives worse. Most people don't want
to hurt others or do we experience regret. We don't
want to be in this position. So if we knew
(25:05):
the outcome of our decisions, we probably wouldn't have done it.
We would have chosen differently, But we didn't. We didn't
know what the consequences were going to be. We had
to do what we thought was best or at the
very least, or very worst, what was convenient, and now
you know, as the saying goes, the bet has been made.
You can't change it, but you can replace that bitterness
(25:29):
and regret with compassion and with love for yourself. So
I want to explain how how can we move on
from past mistakes, but also how can we actually learn
from them rather than just sweeping it under the rug.
All of that and more after this short break, I
(25:53):
think the first step towards self forgiveness is realizing, like
we said before, that you are not the same person
you were a few years ago. You are not perpetually
stuck at the age and the time you were when
you made that mistake, especially if you're under the age
of thirty, like I'm sure many of you are. Your brain,
(26:16):
like we said, wasn't even fully developed yet you were
in some ways still a child in an adult's body.
Not only are you allowed to grow from that version
of you and the version of you that may have
been misguided, but psychology basically demands that you do. One
way to show this is by examining personality. Our personalities
(26:38):
were often thought to be quite fixed and quite stagnant.
Who you were at eighteen is who you would be
when you were eighty, but we've now seen that that's
totally false. Researchers have continuously proven over the last few
decades that we are not the same person our whole life.
In particular, we become as we get older alone more conscientious,
(27:01):
a lot, more altruistic and agreeable, even more empathetic. Part
of that change is also brought on by our past mistakes,
whatever the nature of those may be. One of the
biggest parts of forgiving yourself is choosing to accept the
lesson from your decisions, rather than only accepting the guilt.
(27:24):
You can learn equally as much from the things you
did wrong as you can from the things that you
did right, and what that involves is an acknowledgment of
what went wrong and the ways you may have acted
in a manner that was not aligned to that ideal self.
So think about it in terms of making a mistake
at a new job. You send that email to the
(27:46):
wrong person, Well, you know from now on you're going
to triple check those email addresses. You said something really
hurtful to a friend, Well you're now going to check
yourself every time you're in a heated discussion because that
regret is a very salient emotional reminder of what you
don't want to feel, which is that terrible, dull ache
(28:09):
of remorse. That's why we say regret is an important
signal because it shows us when we've stepped out of
line or acted in a way that we don't really
agree with. So you need to listen to that feeling
because it's telling you something important. And further to that,
examine where the root of your behavior or that tendency
(28:31):
has come from. Maybe it's emerged from how you were raised,
how you were taught to treat others past trauma, especially
in romantic relationships. I hear about this all the time,
people who lash out and push others away because of
that fear of being hurt, only to realize that that
person may have been really special. Maybe it's more pathological,
(28:55):
like a compulsive tendency to lie or to oversell your
case abilities. There are so many possibilities, but really examining
the origins of your mistake before you commit to fixing
it is important because otherwise, how can you kind of
identify a repeat pattern? How can you learn from that?
(29:16):
Part of that involves taking accountability and responsibility for your actions.
That's really hard because the first step is to admit
your mistake, and that is difficult because we are very
good at finding ways to protect our ego and maintain
a positive self image. So we unconsciously search for excuses
(29:39):
as to why we've acted in a certain way, both
exogenous and endogenous, or you know, we say things like
they started it, I just lost my call, I didn't
think things through, I was drunk. Yes, those are all
valuable explanations, but at the end of the day, you
still made a choice, and that's okay. You just have
to own up to it. Everyone struggles with admitting that
(30:03):
they've done something perhaps bad. It's only natural because if
we truly thought that we were a terrible person or
a failure, it would be very difficult to move on
because of that all or nothing thinking. And that's where
we get into trouble because you can mess up and
still have a lot of redeeming qualities, but one of
(30:23):
those qualities cannot be ignorance, because denial is kind of
how you get yourself into deeper trouble. I think a
big part of maturing is realizing that you can embrace
accountability rather than being scared of it, and it will
probably leave you better off. I was having this discussion
with a friend the other day who was telling me
(30:45):
how she made a mistake at work and her boss
kind of called her out for it, and her first
reaction was to be like, oh my god, he's such
an asshole. He's so cranky, so uptight. But we had
this discussion of being like deciding that here's the problem.
Isn't going to make your life easier. It's not going
to change the outcome. You kind of have to take
(31:07):
it on the nose, absorb the feedback, and choose to
be better. The saying goes for more serious things like cheating.
As an example, if you cheat on someone and obviously
not speaking from personal experience, but if you do, you
can either choose to put that guilt and that shame
back onto your partner, or you can choose to be better.
(31:29):
You can say to yourself, Okay, I messed up here,
I feel guilty. What is that telling me about my
actions and make the conscious choice to not be that person,
to not be that version of yourself in the future,
Or you know, you can avoid the regret, you can
move on to the next person, do it again, break
someone else's heart be the villain. It doesn't eradicate the
(31:51):
original mistake. And the thing is nothing will. The only
thing that matters at that point is the future. So
you want to make sure the future version of yourself
is one that takes accountability and does better. And part
of that is this really simple equation for self forgiveness
that I think we should all be following because it
(32:13):
really allows us to humanize our mistakes and show self
compassion and move forward. It's called the four hours of
self forgiveness. So they are responsibility, remorse, restoration, and renewal.
We've already spoken about responsibility, which I think is very
(32:33):
much synonymous with accountability, but basically, you have to be
honest with yourself or with others that you made a
mistake and you are responsible for your own actions. Secondly,
there's remorse. This is particularly important if the decisions that
you made have impacted someone else. Express what you're feeling,
(32:56):
say that you feel bad that you know you made
the wrong choice, that you don't like how the outcome
has turned out, but you take responsibility that you are
the one who's caused it. Or if it's a mistake
that's impacting you and you alone, that you know you
made a mistake and you feel sorry. Allow yourself to
feel those negative feelings associated with responsibility, whether it's kind
(33:19):
of letting go of guilt or shame. Both of those
things need to be channeled into remorse. You cannot forgive
yourself or move on if you suppress those negative feelings
because you haven't fully accepted what's happened and your role
in the outcome. This is when we get to restoration,
(33:40):
which is kind of like the beginning of the healing phase.
An important part of forgiving yourself is making amends for
your mistakes if it's needed, make a genuine apology to
those people or that person that you've heard. This takes
away the feeling of wishing that you could have done
more in the field future. The worst feeling is knowing
(34:02):
that you've messed up and burying your head in the sand,
being like, I don't want to feel like a bad person,
so I'm going to forget this ever happened. And then
six months a year goes by, that feeling still there.
You haven't actually taken accountability. And I think it also
is really important because at this stage, like we said,
(34:23):
you can't change the outcome, but you can change how
you conclude the story, how you make someone else feel,
and leaving things better than before also allows you to
close that chapter knowing that you've done the right thing
and that you do deserve to move on from it.
Or if it's a mistake that's impacting you, you can
apologize to yourself, acknowledge the context in which the decision
(34:46):
was made, and that you did what felt right and
now you know better it's time to move forward. So
finally we have renewal. What are you going to change
about yourself, your motivations, and your actions to do better
next time. An important part of that, I've found is
to really articulate what you want your ideal self to be.
(35:09):
Who does this person look like? Knowing what you know now,
write down how they act, how they make others feel,
how people respond to them. Are they honest? Are they
more empathetic? Are they more cautious? Do they ask for
help when they need it? I really want you to
visualize this person and question how you can align your
(35:31):
current behavior with what your best self, your ideal self,
would be doing. It's even better if you can make
those thoughts tangible by writing them down or even typing
them into your notes app someplace that you can revisit
and return to, kind of when you want to receive
your own wisdom or guidance, because typically we trust our
(35:52):
opinion the most. There's no point punishing yourself forever at
this stage. It's not going to fix the situation. In fact,
it's just going to keep you stuck in those memories
in that moment. It goes without saying that it's not
up to you to decide whether someone else forgives you
as well. Your emotional reaction and theirs do not have
(36:12):
to be aligned for you to acknowledge that pain and
move forward. Let them say their peace, let them have
their response, and actually listen. It's uncomfortable, I know, but
you owe it to them, and also you owe it
to yourself. No feeling can be passed, No feeling can
be processed without being felt. Finally, it's valuable to think
(36:35):
about how you treat others when they make mistakes, and well,
treat them how you would want to be treated, and
then treat yourself accordingly. It's this idea known as shared humanity,
acknowledging that some parts of the human experience are very
much universal. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone experiences setbacks. You are
(36:58):
not the only one going through this, probably at this
very moment, and imagining how you would treat a good
friend in this situation or a younger sibling, you would
probably do so with a lot of compassion. So it
kind of goes without saying, why don't you deserve the same?
I think that's a beautiful reminder to end on. As
(37:20):
someone who also struggles with feeling a lot of guilt
and regret over the past, I really do understand how
mentally exhausting it is to feel like your identity is
no more than your past mistakes. But it is more.
It is so much more, especially when we choose to
learn and grow and be better rather than overwhelm ourselves
(37:42):
with self pity and the what ifs. No one has
had a go at being human before. There is no
guidebook and human emotion. A lot of things in life
are tricky, So just do the best you can with
what you have, have an open mind about accepting failure
and accountability, Recognize that you will grow. You are a
(38:02):
different person now. I just really think you can't do
more than that. You really can't. You just kind of
have to live with it and know that in time
it will pass, you will have a greater perspective on
why maybe this mistake needed to happen, why you needed
to mess up, the lesson that you needed to learn.
It all comes together in the future. So thank you
so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope
(38:25):
you took something valuable from this, and if there is
someone else who you think would take something from this,
please feel free to share it with them. I think
radical self compassion, self forgiveness are really important. We cannot
punish ourselves forever. Like I keep saying, I think that
is a huge part of my daily philosophy these days.
(38:46):
So hopefully that resonated with you as well as always.
If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave
a five star review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever
this episode is coming to you from. It really helps
the show to grow and reach a new audience. I've
spoken about my Patreon before as well, but like I say,
(39:08):
it does take a lot of work to make this show.
It is just me writing these episodes, researching them, recording them,
editing them. It's a lot of work and I really
do appreciate the additional support and you also get bonus
content from me all the time. I do sometimes span
people there with bonus episodes and newsletters and transcripts. So
(39:28):
check it out if you would like, and if you
have an episode suggestion, send me a DM at that
Psychology podcast. I love hearing what you guys are going
through and how that relates to some of the universal
psychology and experiences of our twenties. So thank you for listening,
and we will be back next week with another episode.
Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties,
the podcast where we talk through some of the big
life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they
mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show.
(00:27):
Welcome back to the podcast, New listeners, old listeners. Wherever
you are in the world, it is great to have
you here. Back for another episode. Today, we're going to
talk about the incredible power of self forgiveness and how
to embrace our past mistakes. I think we have a
really difficult time accepting the fact that each of us
(00:50):
is innately flawed. We are in innately flawed species, and
we often ruminate on all the things that we've gotten wrong,
sometimes for months or even years after the fact. I
am very much the same, but I've come to realize
recently that not accepting our failures, not accepting our mistakes,
(01:12):
kind of means not accepting the fact that we are
human and putting our behavior on a pedestal that we
would never place someone else on. This is particularly relevant
for our twenties in our early years as adults, because
it is a time of exploration, of learning and growth.
(01:32):
But I think also this weird decade or limbo between
childhood and adolescent feelings and that adulthood maturity where so
many of the things we are experiencing we are experiencing
for the first time, and as frustrating as it is,
we don't really have a guidebook. A lot of it
comes down to trial and error, from impulsive relationship choices
(01:55):
to career plans that don't really work out as expected,
and unfortunately, sometimes mistakes that end up hurting other people
even if we didn't mean to. So how can we
embrace this unfortunate but kind of unavoidable side of ourselves.
I think that's a huge question, because living with regret
(02:18):
and guilt truly gets us nowhere. Unfortunately, I think you
cannot undo the past, but you also can't live with
that remorse forever. The beauty of psychology lies in its
ability to really shed light on our human experience, but
also our capacity to grow despite all the things that
(02:38):
we think have ruined our lives or we think make
us bad people. I promise that those mistakes do not
mean those things we're going to explore in today's episode,
the very neurology and underpinning psychological theories that show why
our twenties are important for making mistakes. Were also going
(02:59):
to at the distinction between feeling regret and feeling guilty,
especially when we do come to acknowledge that we've hurt others.
There's a reason we hold on to those experiences, and
it has a lot to do with social harmony and
social contract theory, but also this conflict between our actual
(03:19):
selves and our idea selves. Beyond that, we're also going
to discuss why it is that some people experience regret
more profoundly than others, particularly due to factors like rumination,
but also on a controversial note, maybe the role of
social media in weaponizing public shame. That is all very
(03:43):
valuable information to understand. But what we're really here for
is to get into a place where we can practice
self forgiveness and learn how to forgive yourself for the
times that you didn't know any better than you do now.
It's part of our shared humanity to mess up, and
I do truly believe that we can learn just as much,
(04:06):
if not more, from our mistakes as we can from
our successes. So I also want to dive into the
four hours of self forgiveness and how accountability. Although initially unpleasant,
can really free you from a lot of lifelong guilt
and negativity. It really comes down to self compassion, and
(04:27):
by releasing ourselves from that kind of chains and those
chains of self blame through genuine, actual introspection and self awareness,
we really do unlock the potential to use the things
in our past for growth rather than letting us all
letting ourselves really be weighed down by that. So a
(04:49):
lot of the advice and the evidence we're going to
explore is probably information that I needed to take on myself.
If you're listening to this, I'm guessing you're most likely
in your twenties and as well. So we are all
learning together and sometimes we're not going to be perfect,
but at least we can be in the same boat.
So I'm excited to get into it. Without further ado,
(05:11):
let's explore the psychology behind self forgiveness and moving on
from our past mistakes. Okay, it goes without saying that
you are going to make a lot of mistakes in
your twenties and probably in every decade thereafter. Unfortunately for us,
(05:34):
humans are highly fallible and flawed creatures. We cannot do
everything perfectly, and that includes life. I think an important
reminder is that none of us have done this before.
This is your first time being alive, experiencing these events
and complex emotions and just the ways of human error
and misunderstanding and learning. And so despite our best intentions,
(06:00):
we are going to mess up, and we might hurt
other people and experience regret. I think despite the unavoidability
of mistakes, we do have a choice to let this
a completely paralyze us and perpetually hate ourselves, or be
embrace the opportunity this provides and embrace our mistakes for
(06:21):
exactly what they are, which is a space for self
awareness and for growth. I think it's important to remember,
as we're discussing forgiving ourselves for past mistakes, that you
were not the same person you were two years ago
or even six months ago. People can grow and change
and realize the error of their ways. There is not
(06:42):
a single person out there who hasn't done something they
wish they could take back. But it's about how you
move forward from that, whether you take on the responsibility
of what you've done of some of the errors of
your ways. Additionally, when applying self compassion in these situations,
(07:02):
I think it's important to recognize that our twenties in
particular are a time when we are going to mess up,
probably more than any other decade for a number of reasons.
This era of our lives involves a very unique blend
of still feeling very much like a child but being
expected to behave like an adult. It's like, as soon
(07:25):
as the clock kind of strikes twelve on your eighteenth birthday,
suddenly we're expected to mature into this whole new version
of ourselves who can pay taxes and own a home,
and it's expected to understand exactly what they want and
how to treat others. But that's not really how maturity
works from a psychological, emotional, social perspective, and so our
(07:48):
twenties are this unique in between time, I would say,
where we're grappling with two different sides of ourselves, the
immaturity but also the expectation of responsibility. We have no
idea what's going on. A lot of the time, we
do not have the hindsight to understand the future consequences
of our current actions. Speaking from a very neurological perspective
(08:12):
as well, our brains also don't completely finish developing and
maturing until like the late to mid twenties, and the
last part of our brain to mature is called the
prefrontal cortex. We speak about this a lot because it
is so such a crucial part of everything that makes
(08:33):
us very human, our personality, our identity. But it's also
the area responsible for things like decision making and impulse control.
It's why when we look back at things that we
did at seventeen, when our prefrontal cortex was not developed,
we kind of internally cringe. I was talking to someone
about this the other day who I think like knew
(08:56):
me or met me when I was maybe nineteen or twenty,
and she was telling me about her first impression of
me and how she thought I was super loud and
didn't really think before I spoke, and I was like, yeah,
that's probably right. I made a lot of mistakes back
then and did things I really regret that I look
back at now with that prefrontal maturity and just cannot fathom.
(09:20):
There's so much in there and so much in our
history that I think we realize we would have done differently.
We're also trying out different versions of ourselves, some of
which may not fit or versions that don't actually reflect
our values. This is also in part because we're trying
to separate from the identity we have cultivated under the
(09:44):
guidance of our family, particularly our parents, and we're trying
to branch out to be our own independent people. Suddenly
the protective kind of shield of parental supervision is taken down,
and you've got to learn all the things they learned
in their twenties, and that is a lot of trial
and error and ultimately a few regrets. Also, when we
(10:08):
combine that with things like the drinking age, you know
that a lot of us start consuming alcohol during this period.
We know that leads to poorer decisions. We also have
a bit more financial freedom, and also the complexity that
develops in our relationships. It's kind of no wonder that
we're going to misstep at times. We are going to
(10:30):
do dumb things. We pass up amazing opportunities, we fail
at things we wish we'd succeeded, We spend too much money,
We embarrass ourselves. However, amongst all of these mistakes, I
think the biggest ones I see people ruminating on have
to do with how they acted in their personal relationships,
(10:51):
how they treated their friends or a former partner, maybe
even their parents. I think without a doubt these other
regrets that sting the most, that leave kind of the
greatest emotional scars. There's a reason why interpersonal regret sticks
with us, perhaps more so than the decisions that could
(11:13):
only hurt us individually. We have evolved as creatures, as
a species who seek the need and the approval of
the group for survival, and part of that is the
need to create social harmony and behave according to the
social agreement that really implicitly dictates how we treat others.
(11:33):
In psychology and also in philosophy, there's this idea known
as social contract theory, and what it says is that
we have been conditioned to live together in society in
accordance with an inherent moral agreement to not hurt others
or to not do unto others as we would want
(11:54):
done onto ourselves. So causing someone else's pain, either due
to things like oversight or selfishness, or even outright cruelty,
it goes against that contract. Those feelings of regret, of
guilt or shame. They are an internal psychological signal that
we have gone against this deeper moral code and that
(12:16):
we need to rectify our behavior to restore a general
sense of cohesion. In that way, things like guilt, as
they relate to past mistakes, are somewhat of a pro
social emotion. It's trying to make us a good person
to be around. It's trying to show us how we
can be agreeable and stick within that social contract. There's
(12:38):
an important distinction here between guilt and regret, because I
think although sometimes we use them interchangeably, as I literally
just did, there is a bit of a difference. In
a study they conducted back in twenty and twelve maybe
twenty eleven, they got people to describe typical situations in
(12:59):
which they felt guilt and situations where they felt regret.
What they found is that guilt specifically occurs for choices
in a social context where we have believed that we
have caused harm, whereas regret is strongly associated with personal mistakes,
with missed opportunities, self sabotage, that kind of broader category
(13:22):
of behaviors, or when we wrong someone else. This is
where we typically experience guilt and we regret the actions
that cause this pain, the actions that we were responsible for.
Regret self pity, that is, for the self, whereas guilt
and remorse is for others. I want to pause and
actually break down the psychology behind regret for a second here,
(13:46):
because I think that is the primary emotion we're discussing
when we examine the long term impact of past mistakes. Regret,
at its core, is a complex emotion that arises when
we feel dissatisfied or disappointed with past choices, and it
often stems from a desire to have done things differently
(14:07):
based on our current perspective. And this kind of occurs
in two directions. So we can regret the things that
we didn't do, which is what we would call in action,
all the things that we did do, which is called
actionable or action regret. And importantly, you're more likely to
experience long term regret for the times when you didn't
(14:31):
act compared to the decisions that you did make. Research
suggests that this action related regrets, although they're painful, they
actually spur people to learn more from their mistakes and
move on because they've given us an experience that we
otherwise wouldn't have had, and we wouldn't have had that
teachable moment. But regret related to an action the things
(14:56):
that we cannot do with the opportunities that we did lose.
It's much harder to fix, and this kind of regret
is more associated with things like long term anxiety, depression,
a feeling of stuckness. So if you want to avoid
future regret, I think it kind of goes without saying
that it's more about making a decision than making the
(15:19):
wrong decision, because even if it's the wrong decision, then
it's better than doing nothing at all, because it will
at least give you a teachable moment compared to just
the regret surrounding the what if, the expectant thinking, the
kind of hypothetical future telling, and what if it had
turned out differently? What if I had actually done this?
(15:40):
You can't really take that back. However, further to this
idea of the mistakes that we make that hurt others,
there's this idea known as discrepancy theory that explains why
these mistakes linger the most. Each of us has an
actual self, which is who we actually are, and then
I deal self the person we would like to be,
(16:03):
and when the actions conducted by our actual self don't
align with our ideal self, that is when we experience
things like regret or negative emotions. Because we are not
acting in accordance with who we feel we ought to be.
When we don't act, we regret our wasted potential. When
we do, we regret the outcome of those actions, and
(16:26):
we experience regret for a few other reasons we already
spoke of the kind of evolutionary explanation, especially from a
social perspective where we don't want to disrupt social harmony,
but regret also serves to prevent us making the same
mistake twice. Past experiences in that way, they kind of
(16:46):
linger in our brains as a cautionary tale. They want
us to make better choices, better decisions, by using the
emotional salience of that memory and the pain of that
memory to dissuade us. Interestingly, psychological research indicates that while
people often you regret to be distressing, it nevertheless is
(17:09):
rated as a positive experience because when we listen to
that remorse or that unpleasant sensation, we only need to
experience the negative outcome once. When we don't listen, we
keep making the same mistake over and over again until
that feeling finally sets in, and by then there is
a lot more to process and a lot more to
(17:30):
reflect on. So we're going to talk about that a
little bit later. How kind of going further into the
belly of regret and acknowledging when you've made a mistake
might actually help you not make future mistakes. But I
also want to speak about why there are some people
in our lives, maybe you are one of them, who
(17:50):
really finds it additionally and extra difficult to move on,
to let these things go. Some people are more prone
to lingering on things of the past. This is a
tendency that we call rumination. So rumination is a thought
processing disorder where we obsess over negative feelings and our distress,
(18:13):
and we repetitively think about all of the consequences, how
awful we are, all the things we could have avoided,
what we've missed out on. Our tendency to ruminate often
comes from our coping style, particularly an individual tendency to overthink,
but also things like emotional intelligence. So emotional intelligence really
(18:35):
exacerbates our mental distress sometimes because we are unable to
shut our brain off. Our brain, especially the brain of
someone with high EQ, is constantly mulling over all of
the emotional impacts and kind of roots and paths and
branches of their actions. People who also constantly ruminate, they
(18:56):
may do so because they're unhappy with the lack of
closure from an experience, and they use overthinking to kind
of soothe that distress. But it actually does the opposite.
It gets us stuck in the negative cycle and unable
to move past our past actions, dwelling upon mistakes. It
(19:16):
has been shown time and time again that although it
might feel like you're doing something about it, what is
actually happening is that you're going to diminish your self confidence.
You're going to diminish your creativity, you're going to diminish
your performance and your productivity, and it's just going to
make you feel absolutely miserable. And they did a series
(19:38):
of studies in the early two thousands, and what they
found was that when you dwell on past behavior, this
can really trigger things like procrastination and perfectionism because you're
so concerned that you might do it again. This is
what makes regret so all consuming. We cannot under the past,
no matter how hard we try. We are thinking as
(20:01):
if we can, that all of that mental energy is
going to change the outcome. I think that sometimes this
stems from our need for self punishment. If we can't
undo our mistakes, then we better make sure we repent
for them or feel the full force of our guilt
once again. Some of that is evolutionary, and most of
(20:23):
it is highly unproductive, and it stems from our deep
sense of shame. So self punishment involves things like forcing
yourself to continually think about your mistakes, avoiding things that
make you happy because you feel like you no longer
deserve them, negative self talk, excessive exercise, or even abusing
(20:45):
things like alcohol. The use of self punishment acts to
relieve our guilt, but also in some ways makes us
feel like we're redeeming ourselves. And when we face regret,
perhaps due to action, we often feel like we lack
a certain agency over our lives, particularly if we've acted
(21:05):
out of character, and so self punishment acts as an outlet,
almost like a productive way to pay for our mistakes.
We feel like it's doing something to counterbalance the negative
experience of regret. Some of that is also imposed on
us by society. For sure. There's a reason why we
(21:27):
may feel the pain of past mistakes more harshly nowadays,
especially if they were things that were perhaps offensive or
really hurt someone. Our society is really good at weaponizing
shame for good and for bad, especially things like online
shaming and even cancel culture. I have a lot of
opinions on this a lot. You know, we see celebrities
(21:50):
being canceled all the time, sometimes for very very valid reasons.
But when we see this play out so frequently, sometimes
we feel that point that media outrage or even that
personal outrage could be turned at us for minor things.
We spend so much about lives online and so what
people think of us in that context is important, and
(22:14):
we've become a lot more aware of how past actions,
which maybe at the time didn't seem so bad, could
now be deemed as really offensive or really hurtful. I
think that role of public humiliation, especially in the modern day,
has a lot of complicated psychological and social origins that
(22:34):
we don't really have time to get into. But what
is definitely being seen, I think, is that it's really
forcing us to reflect more on our actions and make
us ask questions and question the distinction between maybe I've
done a bad thing and I regret it, and I'm
a bad person. I can never be forgiven. Previously, our
(22:57):
mistakes were not up for discussion by you know literally
everyone on the internet in the world now, like you
could do something stupid and it's everywhere someone could film you,
And so we're much better at self policing our behavior
on a micro kind of personal scale away from social
media and the Internet. I find our tendency to not
(23:17):
forgive ourselves for past mistakes really fascinating and also at
times quite ironic, because we are so so willing to
forgive other people when they do us harm. We are
so willing to overlook hurtful behaviors to realize that people
make mistakes and maybe they've changed, maybe they've grown, But
we hold ourselves to such a high standard we don't
(23:40):
give ourselves the same grace that we give others. I'm
definitely someone who is highly forgiving, perhaps as some of
my friends would say, to a fault sometimes, And I
think that's because I would want to have the same
forgiveness that I'm giving to others, because of that sense
that we are a bad person and we're going to
(24:00):
need others to forgive us, so we'd better be very,
very forgiving of them without thinking of how we can
forgive ourselves. But it's a lot deeper than that. We
see others as very complex beings. We are very aware
that they are flawed and they are nuanced, But we
see ourselves as needing to be perfect and needing to
have all the answers, And that's what makes it so
(24:21):
hard to move forward, especially since we're kind of the
only ones who can personally and deeply feel all of
the negative outcomes of our past, you know, especially that guilt,
and we don't really see the private lives of others
and how much they may themselves be self punishing self
forgiveness is really tricky, but it's also truly the only
(24:44):
way to move forward in such a positive character attribute.
You've got to remind yourself that you truly did the
best you could with the information you had. No one
wants to make their lives worse. Most people don't want
to hurt others or do we experience regret. We don't
want to be in this position. So if we knew
(25:05):
the outcome of our decisions, we probably wouldn't have done it.
We would have chosen differently, But we didn't. We didn't
know what the consequences were going to be. We had
to do what we thought was best or at the
very least, or very worst, what was convenient, and now
you know, as the saying goes, the bet has been made.
You can't change it, but you can replace that bitterness
(25:29):
and regret with compassion and with love for yourself. So
I want to explain how how can we move on
from past mistakes, but also how can we actually learn
from them rather than just sweeping it under the rug.
All of that and more after this short break, I
(25:53):
think the first step towards self forgiveness is realizing, like
we said before, that you are not the same person
you were a few years ago. You are not perpetually
stuck at the age and the time you were when
you made that mistake, especially if you're under the age
of thirty, like I'm sure many of you are. Your brain,
(26:16):
like we said, wasn't even fully developed yet you were
in some ways still a child in an adult's body.
Not only are you allowed to grow from that version
of you and the version of you that may have
been misguided, but psychology basically demands that you do. One
way to show this is by examining personality. Our personalities
(26:38):
were often thought to be quite fixed and quite stagnant.
Who you were at eighteen is who you would be
when you were eighty, but we've now seen that that's
totally false. Researchers have continuously proven over the last few
decades that we are not the same person our whole life.
In particular, we become as we get older alone more conscientious,
(27:01):
a lot, more altruistic and agreeable, even more empathetic. Part
of that change is also brought on by our past mistakes,
whatever the nature of those may be. One of the
biggest parts of forgiving yourself is choosing to accept the
lesson from your decisions, rather than only accepting the guilt.
(27:24):
You can learn equally as much from the things you
did wrong as you can from the things that you
did right, and what that involves is an acknowledgment of
what went wrong and the ways you may have acted
in a manner that was not aligned to that ideal self.
So think about it in terms of making a mistake
at a new job. You send that email to the
(27:46):
wrong person, Well, you know from now on you're going
to triple check those email addresses. You said something really
hurtful to a friend, Well you're now going to check
yourself every time you're in a heated discussion because that
regret is a very salient emotional reminder of what you
don't want to feel, which is that terrible, dull ache
(28:09):
of remorse. That's why we say regret is an important
signal because it shows us when we've stepped out of
line or acted in a way that we don't really
agree with. So you need to listen to that feeling
because it's telling you something important. And further to that,
examine where the root of your behavior or that tendency
(28:31):
has come from. Maybe it's emerged from how you were raised,
how you were taught to treat others past trauma, especially
in romantic relationships. I hear about this all the time,
people who lash out and push others away because of
that fear of being hurt, only to realize that that
person may have been really special. Maybe it's more pathological,
(28:55):
like a compulsive tendency to lie or to oversell your
case abilities. There are so many possibilities, but really examining
the origins of your mistake before you commit to fixing
it is important because otherwise, how can you kind of
identify a repeat pattern? How can you learn from that?
(29:16):
Part of that involves taking accountability and responsibility for your actions.
That's really hard because the first step is to admit
your mistake, and that is difficult because we are very
good at finding ways to protect our ego and maintain
a positive self image. So we unconsciously search for excuses
(29:39):
as to why we've acted in a certain way, both
exogenous and endogenous, or you know, we say things like
they started it, I just lost my call, I didn't
think things through, I was drunk. Yes, those are all
valuable explanations, but at the end of the day, you
still made a choice, and that's okay. You just have
to own up to it. Everyone struggles with admitting that
(30:03):
they've done something perhaps bad. It's only natural because if
we truly thought that we were a terrible person or
a failure, it would be very difficult to move on
because of that all or nothing thinking. And that's where
we get into trouble because you can mess up and
still have a lot of redeeming qualities, but one of
(30:23):
those qualities cannot be ignorance, because denial is kind of
how you get yourself into deeper trouble. I think a
big part of maturing is realizing that you can embrace
accountability rather than being scared of it, and it will
probably leave you better off. I was having this discussion
with a friend the other day who was telling me
(30:45):
how she made a mistake at work and her boss
kind of called her out for it, and her first
reaction was to be like, oh my god, he's such
an asshole. He's so cranky, so uptight. But we had
this discussion of being like deciding that here's the problem.
Isn't going to make your life easier. It's not going
to change the outcome. You kind of have to take
(31:07):
it on the nose, absorb the feedback, and choose to
be better. The saying goes for more serious things like cheating.
As an example, if you cheat on someone and obviously
not speaking from personal experience, but if you do, you
can either choose to put that guilt and that shame
back onto your partner, or you can choose to be better.
(31:29):
You can say to yourself, Okay, I messed up here,
I feel guilty. What is that telling me about my
actions and make the conscious choice to not be that person,
to not be that version of yourself in the future,
Or you know, you can avoid the regret, you can
move on to the next person, do it again, break
someone else's heart be the villain. It doesn't eradicate the
(31:51):
original mistake. And the thing is nothing will. The only
thing that matters at that point is the future. So
you want to make sure the future version of yourself
is one that takes accountability and does better. And part
of that is this really simple equation for self forgiveness
that I think we should all be following because it
(32:13):
really allows us to humanize our mistakes and show self
compassion and move forward. It's called the four hours of
self forgiveness. So they are responsibility, remorse, restoration, and renewal.
We've already spoken about responsibility, which I think is very
(32:33):
much synonymous with accountability, but basically, you have to be
honest with yourself or with others that you made a
mistake and you are responsible for your own actions. Secondly,
there's remorse. This is particularly important if the decisions that
you made have impacted someone else. Express what you're feeling,
(32:56):
say that you feel bad that you know you made
the wrong choice, that you don't like how the outcome
has turned out, but you take responsibility that you are
the one who's caused it. Or if it's a mistake
that's impacting you and you alone, that you know you
made a mistake and you feel sorry. Allow yourself to
feel those negative feelings associated with responsibility, whether it's kind
(33:19):
of letting go of guilt or shame. Both of those
things need to be channeled into remorse. You cannot forgive
yourself or move on if you suppress those negative feelings
because you haven't fully accepted what's happened and your role
in the outcome. This is when we get to restoration,
(33:40):
which is kind of like the beginning of the healing phase.
An important part of forgiving yourself is making amends for
your mistakes if it's needed, make a genuine apology to
those people or that person that you've heard. This takes
away the feeling of wishing that you could have done
more in the field future. The worst feeling is knowing
(34:02):
that you've messed up and burying your head in the sand,
being like, I don't want to feel like a bad person,
so I'm going to forget this ever happened. And then
six months a year goes by, that feeling still there.
You haven't actually taken accountability. And I think it also
is really important because at this stage, like we said,
(34:23):
you can't change the outcome, but you can change how
you conclude the story, how you make someone else feel,
and leaving things better than before also allows you to
close that chapter knowing that you've done the right thing
and that you do deserve to move on from it.
Or if it's a mistake that's impacting you, you can
apologize to yourself, acknowledge the context in which the decision
(34:46):
was made, and that you did what felt right and
now you know better it's time to move forward. So
finally we have renewal. What are you going to change
about yourself, your motivations, and your actions to do better
next time. An important part of that, I've found is
to really articulate what you want your ideal self to be.
(35:09):
Who does this person look like? Knowing what you know now,
write down how they act, how they make others feel,
how people respond to them. Are they honest? Are they
more empathetic? Are they more cautious? Do they ask for
help when they need it? I really want you to
visualize this person and question how you can align your
(35:31):
current behavior with what your best self, your ideal self,
would be doing. It's even better if you can make
those thoughts tangible by writing them down or even typing
them into your notes app someplace that you can revisit
and return to, kind of when you want to receive
your own wisdom or guidance, because typically we trust our
(35:52):
opinion the most. There's no point punishing yourself forever at
this stage. It's not going to fix the situation. In fact,
it's just going to keep you stuck in those memories
in that moment. It goes without saying that it's not
up to you to decide whether someone else forgives you
as well. Your emotional reaction and theirs do not have
(36:12):
to be aligned for you to acknowledge that pain and
move forward. Let them say their peace, let them have
their response, and actually listen. It's uncomfortable, I know, but
you owe it to them, and also you owe it
to yourself. No feeling can be passed, No feeling can
be processed without being felt. Finally, it's valuable to think
(36:35):
about how you treat others when they make mistakes, and well,
treat them how you would want to be treated, and
then treat yourself accordingly. It's this idea known as shared humanity,
acknowledging that some parts of the human experience are very
much universal. Everyone makes mistakes. Everyone experiences setbacks. You are
(36:58):
not the only one going through this, probably at this
very moment, and imagining how you would treat a good
friend in this situation or a younger sibling, you would
probably do so with a lot of compassion. So it
kind of goes without saying, why don't you deserve the same?
I think that's a beautiful reminder to end on. As
(37:20):
someone who also struggles with feeling a lot of guilt
and regret over the past, I really do understand how
mentally exhausting it is to feel like your identity is
no more than your past mistakes. But it is more.
It is so much more, especially when we choose to
learn and grow and be better rather than overwhelm ourselves
(37:42):
with self pity and the what ifs. No one has
had a go at being human before. There is no
guidebook and human emotion. A lot of things in life
are tricky, So just do the best you can with
what you have, have an open mind about accepting failure
and accountability, Recognize that you will grow. You are a
(38:02):
different person now. I just really think you can't do
more than that. You really can't. You just kind of
have to live with it and know that in time
it will pass, you will have a greater perspective on
why maybe this mistake needed to happen, why you needed
to mess up, the lesson that you needed to learn.
It all comes together in the future. So thank you
so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope
(38:25):
you took something valuable from this, and if there is
someone else who you think would take something from this,
please feel free to share it with them. I think
radical self compassion, self forgiveness are really important. We cannot
punish ourselves forever. Like I keep saying, I think that
is a huge part of my daily philosophy these days.
(38:46):
So hopefully that resonated with you as well as always.
If you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave
a five star review on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, wherever
this episode is coming to you from. It really helps
the show to grow and reach a new audience. I've
spoken about my Patreon before as well, but like I say,
(39:08):
it does take a lot of work to make this show.
It is just me writing these episodes, researching them, recording them,
editing them. It's a lot of work and I really
do appreciate the additional support and you also get bonus
content from me all the time. I do sometimes span
people there with bonus episodes and newsletters and transcripts. So
(39:28):
check it out if you would like, and if you
have an episode suggestion, send me a DM at that
Psychology podcast. I love hearing what you guys are going
through and how that relates to some of the universal
psychology and experiences of our twenties. So thank you for listening,
and we will be back next week with another episode.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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