Life is much bigger and longer than any ‘mistake’. We can’t let our mistakes stop time. We move forward by seeing mistakes for what they are: things that happened. Information. Past tense.
These decisions and actions were not a manifesto of who we are, what we deserve or are worthy of. They simply showed us how beliefs/old-voices had a foothold in us: the collected debris picked up along the way and dutifully swung over our shoulders to carry onwards. Those wounds we wished to prevent re-opening, modifying how we interacted with and viewed the world.
Unfortunately, we don’t automatically treat our mistakes that way. The word itself is loaded with blame. The judgement landing back on ourselves as we unwittingly repeat them and form patterns. We could look at patterns as behavioural coding – an unconscious ‘seeking’ programme – but how we interpret our tendencies, when we recognise them, is often a matter of warped perspective, distorted by the multitude of contradicting values we have inherited. Cultural, familial, and gender-normative conditioning, forming the basis of recurring sequences.
While unpacking a systemic pattern is complex, the point attempted here is simple:
The noise within does not belong to us.
It’s a million old records on loop. An unmelodic mash-up of family, friends, old partners, communities, cultures – all so enmeshed that we often can’t pinpoint who they’re coming from (excepting trauma/abuse). Yet we carry them with us for reference; automatically recalibrating to them, then wondering why the patterns keep occurring. The people and situations we thought were ‘different’, all Scooby-Doo revealing themselves at the end as the same perpetrator in a different guise.
Our patterns are laden with the unconscious bias of others. Each offering their own filter as the lens through which we view and ‘grade’ ourselves. Views we have absorbed at vulnerable and formative moments of our lives and given precedence to. And in a bid to ‘test’ whether these beliefs are true, we subconsciously seek/create/end-up in situations which will confirm and validate them. But the premise we (automatically) are basing this on is a senseless one – implied by the vitriolic, pained, or simply careless pronunciations of other people. People who themselves have no sure footing. Who, in a good case, are doing their best with emotional/educational limitations, and at worst, are so deeply damaged they attack and dissemble those over whom they have influence. Ensuring ‘their’ way is confirmed by obedience. And whether it is a narcissistic agenda for control, or a simplistic handover of unquestioned cultural beliefs, the message still lodges.
Loyalty and love, mixed with self-doubt, gives these opinions weight. Forming how you calculate your value and validity, based on any disparity between your actions and their expectations. They become the foundation of the patterns you follow. The stories they tell us can become the stories we live.
Our misfortune, yes. But not our life sentence.
By default, we often put ourselves AT fault: ‘I should have seen that coming’, ‘I knew better than that’, ‘That was a stupid thing to do/believe/try/want’. But if we could take a moment, when the noise kicks off, to look at ourselves point-blank – bringing no past experience to bear – we could practice how to hone in and recognise our own voice, muffled underneath the discordant, tuneless chorus.
If we get caught up in ‘reactionary’ behaviour – trying to reason with, disprove, ignore, or fight the rising clamour – we can end up out of sync and out of energy. ‘Hyper-vigilance’ is often a result: scanning for warning signs, afraid you won’t see them/it coming this time. But really what you end up doing is tightening your borders. Control is the consequence, but it’s unsustainable and unsuccessful in preventing what it wishes to prevent. It restricts freedom, it doesn’t enhance it.
Patterns of ‘mistakes’ don’t have to be the sword we fall on. To look at them with a detached eye – a curiosity – you unhitch yourself from reactionary action, i.e – having the natural emotional response without being led by it to some distorted ‘truth’ about yourself. We can’t spend every moment pondering the deep ‘truth’ of every troubling thought that arises, but we can ask: ‘’Is this USEFUL? Does it help or hinder me?’
Naming ‘The Others’, we see how influential they’ve been in moments when we were about to leap in faith, or follow a path we suspected could be fulfilling, and we can begin to untangle their unsolicited two-cents from our personal decisions. The more willing we become to look at our patterns as simply information, the less they bind us and blind us.
I did the best I could with what I knew at the time.
I know more now, because of those ‘mistakes’.
We can all theoretically agree with this, but it’s bumper-sticker philosophy. We must move beyond benign and generic slogans if we want the message to fuse with us in any meaningful way. The world is made up of a myriad of personalities. Not only will we have differing values, but we will have incongruous sensibilities to how we approach/see life. Some find it useful to ‘smash’ a target, some need to walk a little more tentatively. And while it’s true one person can simply say “f*ck that noise”, and thrash on regardless, the idea of having to constantly fight and vanquish, for another, isn’t conducive to a fulfilling life. Nor does it foster a well of resilience. It drains the well.
Gentleness is the balancing force between the severe reactions of ‘I am hopeless’, and ‘Stop feeling sorry for yourself’. Because if we set out to ‘defeat’, to ‘prove wrong’, we are still at war with the noise. To make it an ‘opponent’ is an instinctive reaction, but that doesn’t make it effective in the long-term.
We can’t break patterns with a hammer. They are as intangible as they are real. The key to dismantling patterns and learning from mistakes is by honing in on your own particular voice, and finding its tune underneath all the jumbled noise. To consistently disarm self-doubt and move forward, find which voice belongs to you, point your microphone at it, and “Turn it up to 11’’.