Mistakes are life’s tuition
When I worked as a therapist, a common theme I heard often from clients was regrets and missed opportunities from their past: the “if onlys.” If only I had gone to college. If only I hadn’t taken this lousy job. If only I hadn’t moved to this area.
It was the “if onlys” for whom I had the least patience some days. Depending on the day, it was the “if onlys” who bit the hardest (figuratively speaking, I was never actually bitten in my work as a therapist, unlike some of my colleagues).
These folks were stuck; saddened and wrestling with choices they themselves had made, or choices others had made that affected them. They believed that “if only” this or that had happened, their lives today would be so much better. “If only” this or that had not happened, their lives today would be so much better. I listened to spouses who refused to process, and therefore move beyond, emotional injuries — whether real or perceived — that had been inflicted by their partner years ago. I listened to clients in their 50s who stubbornly insisted they were “too old” to look forward into their future, so they continued to marinate in all the painful dysfunction of their past.
To be clear, I am not referring here to survivors of serious abuse or trauma. Those kinds of issues require extensive work and grieving to begin the healing process and move forward.
For the if onlys, all my suggestions, logic, attempts to reframe the narrative, and convince them to stop wasting precious time by wallowing in what can never be changed, and start today to make different choices, seemed to fall on deaf ears. It was easier to hold onto that anger and regret. As most mental health professionals will tell you, we tend to gravitate toward the familiar, even when it makes us unhappy.
And just like a child, as anger gets older, it grows bigger. Their anger had become a security blanket, in some cases, a fortress, as in: “As long as I hold onto this anger, it will protect me so that no one can ever hurt me again.”
It is not easy work encouraging clients who are, at their core, a scared little kid, to start thinking about letting go of that security blanket and take the first scary step into an uncertain future for which they are solely responsible. But standing still, looking back, rehashing mistakes, and constantly second-guessing one’s past choices isn’t living.
Living is realizing the mistakes you’ve made are life’s tuition, and finding a way to learn something for the price you paid. Living is enjoying the present as much as possible, with an eye toward a future of more informed choices because you’ve learned from the past.
It’s stating the obvious, but it’s still a helpful reminder: we cannot change the past or forget it, but we can learn from it. All of our past experiences, good or bad, inform who we are today, whether we want them to or not. What’s that saying? “Good choices come from experience; experience comes from bad choices.” Yes. That.
