If you are like most people, then you have probably lost quite a bit of sleep to ruminating on past mistakes. Everyone does that. They lay in their bed at night and just as they are about to sleep, they start dwelling on some mistake they made.
Sometimes the mistake was yesterday and sometimes the mistake was a decade ago. Thankfully, there are a lot of different strategies that you can try to make getting over a mistake a lot easier. In this article, you will find out a few different ways that you can get over mistakes, no matter how severe.
Look for Some Positives
No matter how severe a mistake is, there is a good chance that it may have some positive aspects to it. You have to try and look for a silver lining in any mistake and focus on that, instead of the negatives. A good example of this would be mistakes that cause you to learn something.
We all make mistakes, but we also all learn from our mistakes as well. Focus less on the mistake, and more on what you learned as a result of the mistake.
Look at the Mistake in Context
One thing about humans is that we tend to really overinflate the impact of mistakes in our mind. Sometimes it can be helpful to try and distance yourself from a mistake and ask yourself “did it really matter in the end?”
This happens a lot with social gaffes. People say the wrong thing to someone and assume that the other person was very offended by it and is thinking about it; however, the reality is often that the person has forgotten about the conversation entirely. So, it is worth distancing yourself from a mistake and asking if the mistake is really as bad as you are making it out to be.
Do Something to Make Amends
A big reason why so many people dwell on mistakes is that they don’t ever do anything to make up for the mistake. Making up for the mistake, if that’s possible, can really help you to stop dwelling on it.
Obviously, this doesn’t apply to every mistake, but if you can think of a way to try and repair the damage done by a mistake that you made, that will go a long way towards helping you to overcome the mistake and move on.
