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.