Submitted by Jacob H on Sat, 03/01/2008 - 7:24pm.
A Beautiful Day
I began my beautiful day with the objective of, "allowing myself to make mistakes". I didn't really want to plan out my day with the mistakes I would make, since I felt it would limit the exercise.
I often find myself being very self critical about everything that I do. I need to do everything to perfection or it isn't good enough. I feel that I had a great day and let me tell you, I made a lot of mistakes.
At work, I allowed myself to be less guarded in my interactions with coworkers and joked around a bit with them. I found that repeating in my head the phrase, "mistakes aren't bad if you look at them as opportunities" helped a lot.
My day ended with giving a haircut to a friend. I am by no means a beautician, but I do find it fun to cut hair and well, in the past I have given really short haircuts in order to get it "just right". Allowing myself to make mistakes enabled me to be more relaxed and I did a better job at cutting hair than I had in the past.
On an interesting side note, one of the things I incorporated into this particular response paper was the principle of not over-editing and doing perfectionistic behaviors (other than spellcheck). It actually feels nice to give myself room to just say what I need to say instead of treating every sentence like it's a matter of life or death to be grammatically correct.
In any case, I feel I was successful in living my day with my objective of allowing myself to make mistakes. I feel that I could use this activity to help in other areas of my life where I feel so very highly self critical. Being able to let go enabled me to appreciate life more and relax a bit.
Forgiveness and Forget About Forgetting
Since the start of class and reading from authentic happiness, I have not been looking forward to applying forgiveness. I don't feel like a person who has deeply held onto wrongdoings, but I fear letting go of them. Intellectually, I know I need to forgive, but emotionally, I haven't been able to let go. My hope in starting this exercise is to obtain the sense of "freedom" that comes with forgiving.
I needed to forgive a person from my last work place who I felt went out of their way to hurt me a lot and in a very personal way. By not forgiving, I have allowed this person to have control over my happiness; I'll be doing great, thinking things are fine and suddenly I'll remember the hurt and it ruins the moment. I wrote out my forgiveness process.
I was hurt because this person, I shall refer to as P., had been a person I considered a trusted friend and I felt deeply betrayed when he turned on me and (following his promotion to a position supervisory in relation to mine) began to use bullying behaviors towards me when he found out I was gay.
I think if I could imagine what his thoughts were they would be something like this:
"Jake, I was really struggling with my job and it felt like you were trying to make it harder for me. I really needed support and instead it felt like you turned the other employees against me. I felt the best way for me to gain the support I needed was to get rid of those who posed a threat to me and made me feel uncomfortable. If I had the skills to talk to you directly about what was bothering me, I wouldn't have had to bully and sabotage you."
Particularly when I was younger, I have had my share of immature dealings with others where my own behavior was hurtful, and I have been given second and even third chances. To hold anyone to an unswerving standard of perfection is unrealistic and a recipe for disappointment. Forgiveness enables me to be happy in spite of mistakes which may hurt me and it allows personal growth to continue despite injury.
I have written myself a note that I put in the mirror to remind me that I have forgiven P. I feel it is in my best interest to stick to letting myself forgive him. It happened in the past and there is nothing I can do about it other than learn. I feel that I can let go of the hurt by reminding myself that I don't have to repeat the experience.
I feel a slight lifting of weight off my mind, but I am still processing the experience and healing may not happen overnight. For me, imagining what a person who had hurt me would say to me if they had the opportunity was the most beneficial aspect of this exercise.
if we could utter the words " I forgive you" and all the painful, hurtful memories would evaporate? I think you are on a very good path toward forgiveness. I especially like the idea of posting the note on the mirror to "remind" yourself. Isn't that a wonderful word; re - mind. I'm going to make my mind up all over again with an adjustment.
I was talking to my friend the other day about the "good" things that come with getting older. We decided one good thing is that your idea of "perfection" changes over time. I used to have to have my house "perfectly clean and organized". Now, perfection is a lot less clean and organized.
I have enjoyed talking to you and reading your posts over the quarter. Thanks for sharing deeply.