Learn how to stop beating yourself up for your mistakes, the small things you forget to do, the things that slip your mind?
“You’re early” the receptionist said, as I was checking my teenage son into his doctor’s appointment.
It had been one of those days. Not the worst ever, and not the best, but one full of stress and surprises.
I smiled inwardly. Congratulating myself on getting us there early. No small feat, as I am known for being ‘just on time.’
My trampled confidence rose and bloomed. The dials on the wall said I was ten minutes early.
“Great,” I smiled.
I anticipated reading my book.
“I mean you are way too early.”
Luckily, my book had a lot of unread pages. “How early are we talking?”
“You came on the wrong day.” She says. “Right time; wrong day.”
This didn’t sound like good news. Had I pulled my son from school for a non-existent doctor appointment?
My confidence was deflating faster than a balloon whistling around the room, flattening itself to the floor.
“How early are we?”
She taps her fingernails against the desk. “Exactly one month to early.”
When it’s hard to accept forgiveness?
I apologized on the way home. He is calm. Accepting.
But not me. I am upset. Silent and angry at myself.
For wasting time. For inconveniencing him and me. For rushing to get there a whole month early.
I have done this before. But it has been years. With a different kid. And a different doctor.
I know when my husband calls to ask about the appointment later today, he will laugh when I tell him I was a month early.
Only I don’t feel like laughing right now. I feel like a failure.
Can’t I get something as simple as a doctor’s appointment, correct?
I get lots of things correct, but right now, only the things I get wrong or have gotten wrong are marching through my mind. Each holding a sign saying look at me and see your failures.
As trees speed by, my son tells me not to worry.
I ask his forgiveness again. And he again gives it to me.
But the truth is, I don’t accept it. I don’t feel like I should be let off the hook so easily.
If it was just me showing up a month early, it would be easier to laugh at and shrug off. But when I have inconvenienced others, when someone else besides just me is involved, it is harder. I feel I have not only let myself down, but them as well.
And maybe it’s because I like to think I am in control of my life, and my mess up shows I have less control than I think I should have.
Why do we beat ourselves up over the small things?
Maybe you can relate.
Is it hard sometimes to shake off your mistakes?
The choices you didn’t mean to do?
The intentions left undone or forgotten?
The things you didn’t get to?
The outcomes you didn’t foresee.?
I know for me it can be.
Sometimes it is the small things I beat myself up for. Feel dread and responsibility for. Refuse to accept forgiveness for.
Why we can’t accept forgiveness.
I don’t know what lie you believe, or what lie keeps you stuck in angst over the small things you get wrong. The things you find hard to let go and receive forgiveness about.
Is it because you believe the lie that:
- You should have known better.
- You shouldn’t make mistakes.
- You should be more observant, more thoughtful, more (fill in the blanks)?
- You should have this down by this time?
- You deserve to be punished and hung on the hook for X amount of time?
- You deserve to suffer and feel the consequences.
- You should have more control over your life.
The truth is we are human. And human’s fail and make mistakes in so many ways. Big and little.
The truth is you deserve freedom and forgiveness.
The truth is we need to start accepting the free gift of forgiveness and grace.
It’s not about what we have done or deserve. It’s about what He has done and the gifts He gives us.
We can spend copious amounts of time and mental energy beating ourselves up and standing ourselves in the corner, or we can see it as an opportunity to learn from and extend ourselves some grace. One will leave us and those around us wrung out, and the latter one will model healthy coping techniques and God’s character.
Where do you spending your energy and time?
Maybe we need to just start accepting grace and forgiveness.
And not just for the big things we do, but for all the little things we do and leave undone.
Have you noticed, we are often hardest on ourselves over the smaller things?
Maybe because we have such exceptionally high standards for ourselves.
In God’s economy, he doesn’t beat us up, but lavishes us with what we don’t deserve or can even earn. Grace and forgiveness. New starts. Multiple times.
It’s our enemy who beats us up. Bases our worth on our actions. Tells us our tries are up.
Let’s live in God’s economy.
It is as simple as accepting and applying the forgiveness and grace that is always waiting for us. Even when we feel we don’t deserve it.
Can we accept it (even when others don’t offer it to us) and release the stigma, pain, and anger we are carrying against ourselves?
God is there with hands full of grace and forgiveness.
Can we just accept it and not beat ourselves up?
Even for the small things?
Quit punishing yourself over the small things.
Open your heart and receive grace for:
Not closing the garage door before bed so its mouth stretched open all night.
Tuning the tighty-whities pink in the laundry.
For waiting to long to go grocery shopping.
For getting dinner on the dinner table so late.
Shrinking the already to short dress pants.
For waking your sleeping mate up and then them not being able to fall back to sleep for the rest of the night.
For forgetting to sign and turn in the field-trip slip.
Open your arms and receive forgiveness for.
Picking up the kids late.
Not calling your mother.
Not keeping a promise made to someone.
Saying you are fine when you are not.
Yelling at the kids and dog.
Finding the pet’s water bowl desert dry.
Forgetting to pick up the dry cleaning.
Leaving the freezer door open.
Not believing your child when they were telling the truth.
Judging a friend and then hearing the truth and realizing you were wrong.
Accept that you don’t need to carry guilt around, and receive grace and forgiveness for:
Gossiping about the neighbor.
Killing the house plants.
For not really listening when you needed me to.
For misjudging your family.
For letting people take advantage of you.
For being a people pleaser, thinking you needed to earn love from others.
For believing lies about yourself, God, and others.
For waiting so long to do what you should have done long ago.
For being so selfish.
For beating yourself up.
For believing your harsh words over your loving words.
How to stop beating yourself up.
Take responsibility and learn from life’s opportunities.
Receive forgiveness and grace.
Wash the list clean of things big and small.
And start again.
Fix what you can. Apologize often. Learn from life’s opportunities. Allow yourself to be human. Accept that your mistakes are not failures. Accept what happened and don’t tie it into your self-worth. Take steps to correct the consequences of your actions. Know that the penalty for sin has been paid. Extend grace and forgiveness to others. And learn to laugh at yourself.
Don’t beat yourself up, and in the process, reject grace and forgiveness. Or you are missing out.
Embrace the truth: Beating yourself up does not change the reality that you are forgiven and clothed with grace.
He has enough for everything big and small.
All we have to do is set down our pride and accept it.
Thanks for stopping by. Keep remembering what’s important.
Theresa
Join the discussion: Do you have a harder time accepting grace and forgiveness for the small things or the bigger things?
May link up at Crystal Storms (#HeartEncouragement), Maree Dee (#Grace & Truth), Anita Ojeda (#inspirememonday), InstaEncouagements ((IE Link-Up), and Jeanne Takenaka (#tellhisstory).
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What great reminders for all of us with control issues!
Yes. We do think we control more than we really do.
I think a lot of times we don’t forgive in ourselves tiny mistakes we would easily forgive in others. We need to give ourselves more grace. Others telling us to relax, it’s no big deal doesn’t help when we are chastising ourselves for not being perfect. God’s grace is there for us always. He doesn’t expect perfection, he expects humility and a servant’s heart. Thank you for the wonderful reminders.
I agree, what we would pass off and give grace for in others, we often don’t do the same for ourselves. I think maybe because we hold ourselves at a higher standard. It is much easier to excuse and see how someone else can forget to do something, but it is harder when I am the one doing it. If the tables had been reversed, I would have said it is no big deal. Just a simple mistake. Part of it is we do want to be as perfect as possible. Yes, God is looking for a servant heart and humility.
Dear Theresa, I buzzed over to snag your site badge to share on my website (hope you don’t mind), saw the title of this post and had to hurry back. Oh, those tiny things that become big tormentors! A few years ago, I read about how making and keeping lists about ourselves and others is a form of bondage. Believe me, my lists must have been a mile long each, and they were hard to trash. Thing is, most of the items were “small things”. Letting go of them has brought freedom like I’d never known. And you’re so right, sometimes the hardest one to forgive any offenses is ourselves. Blessings and thanks for a gentle reminder to grab a little grace for ourselves!
Dear Alice. Love the idea of letting go of the list. Because whether we know it or not, we often do keep a list. Walking in freedom, that is what we are after. And no, grab a site badge.
Theresa, such a good post! I am so prone to beating myself up over silly errors or for simply being human! I appreciate the encouragement here, thank you!!
Yes, that’s what they often are, silly errors.
Theresa, I did something not long ago that I was really kicking myself for. The funny thing is, I can remember kicking myself, but I can’t remember why! I feel like many (not all) of these things that we beat ourselves up about would become non issues if we didn’t take ourselves so seriously. Like you said, learn to laugh at yourself. Not in a demeaning way, but in a life’s-too-short-and-in-a-week-nobody’s-gonna-care-anyway way. Grace is a beautiful thing, when we give it to others and when we give it to ourselves. Wonderful post, my friend.
Yes, Lois, grace is a beautiful thing when we give it to others and ourselves. And yes, to laughing at ourselves because life is to silly to stand ourselves in the corner for half a day. It’s like we think we can reform ourselves by beating ourselves up, but we can’t. We will keep making silly mistakes.
What an uplifting post to extend grace to ourselves for those little errors that can ruminate in our minds! I have done all the mistakes that you listed at least once! Lately, I have made a few work errors including not following up on something when I ‘should’ have (and consequences have happened). So important not to make any errors our identity. Still working on that!
Lynn, you sound like me. I make silly mistakes on a regular basis. So thankful God never holds our errors against us and or ties them into our identity.
Powerful post, Theresa. With my type A personality, it’s easy to be hard on myself over even the small and insignificant things…those that don’t really matter in the grand scheme of life. Love this, “In God’s economy, he doesn’t beat us up, but lavishes us with what we don’t deserve or can even earn. Grace and forgiveness. New starts. Multiple times.”
Hi Karen. It has taken me years to realize that God doesn’t beat us up for the big or small mistakes. Others do. We do. But he doesn’t. He doesn’t tie our identity to our actions, choices, or our behavior. But loves us unconditionally. It’s hard for our human mind to grasp. But a beautiful thing to know and try to imitate.
As ever, Theresa, you pack so much wisdom and beauty into each post you share. Oh that we would be free-er to show ourselves more lovingkindness and grace, asking God to erase those tired old tapes that play in our heads that don’t reflect who we are in His eyes.
You are so right, Linda. Often the tapes that play in our head are often the voice of a parent, coach, teacher, or someone from our past. When we beat ourselves up, often these voices are their voices, expressing disapproval over something we did wrong or failed to do. And then we continue adding to and repeating their voices. It takes awareness and replacing the old tapes with the truth and with how God sees us. He can help us and give us new tapes. And new eyes.
Pretty sure you wrote this for me. 😉 Just kidding—kind of. I’ve been so bad about beating myself up over the little things. Just recently I had another one of those things. It’s amazing how something so relatively small can shake my self-confidence. Your post is a real encouragement to me, and I will be keeping it in mind for a long time to come. Thank you.
Ashley, you are so correct. Those little things can shake our self confidence. We focus on the one thing we get wrong, and forget about the multiple things we got right. May God help us to rewrite our habits and help us focus more on what he has done, than what we have done.
Good thoughts! I used to beat myself up quite a lot. But as you said, we need to extend the same grace to ourselves that we extend to others. We’re not perfect–we’re going to fail many times before it’s all over. The disappointment or frustration or even grief are parts of our failures and mistakes, but we can feed ourselves truth and carry on in faith instead of being defeated by our feelings. We can try to learn from them to hopefully avoid the same problem.
So well said, Barbara. We don’t want our mistakes to defeat us. They can be turned into learning experiences, which is different than a beat-myself-up session.
Oh, my goodness! Thank you for this post. I do this all the time and I know it is not in line with how the Lord thinks of me. The way you shared this story and details really spoke to my heart. I love your writing style.
Thank you Carrie. It’s good to have you here. I know I really dislike hearing one of my children beating themselves up over something. And I imagine God might feel the same way. He does think of us differently than we think of ourselves.
What a great article, I love ‘let’s live in God’s economy’ with His mercy and grace – I will take that thought away with me, thank you!
Yes, Hazel. His economy is so much better than ours.
Oh, how I love and appreciate this so much. Your lists of permission and forgiveness are exactly what our hearts need!
Thanks Rebecca. It is amazing how much we hold onto these small things. Keeping a scorecard against ourselves.
Whew, this is just what I needed this morning, Theresa. Sometimes I beat myself up for just being a regular ol’ human being. So crazy! lol. I need to accept God’s forgiveness and grace and keep moving forward.
I’m going to feature your post at the Grace & Truth linkup this Friday at my blog. Thanks for always sharing such good stuff with us there!
Hi Lisa! It’s crazy, this idea that we can’t be a human and instead need to be perfect. And then beating ourselves up when we are human. But its a game we all play. We can get better, though. God gives us a way. Thanks for featuring my post.
Theresa,
The timing of your post was perfect. I know someone who needs to hear your words today. Oh, I did too.
In answer to your question, I am not sure if it’s those small things or the big ones that I struggle to offer myself grace. Maybe both! I have come a long way, but it’s easy to fall back into unforgiveness.
Thank you for linking up with Grace & Truth. I see Lisa is going to feature you. Hurray! Otherwise, I certainly would have considered your posts to feature on Friday.
Maree
Thanks, Maree. Progress over perfection, that’s what we strive for. We will fall back into beating ourselves up, and then we start the process of receiving grace and forgiveness again.
My mantra during my child-raising years: Will this matter 5 years from now?
But unfortunately, I didn’t often apply that to myself. (I believe it’s a pride issue … ouch!)
I’m glad you included leaving the freezer door open in your list of things to receive forgiveness for. I may or may not have done this … more than once!
I am laughing with you, Jerralea. About the freezer door. My husband checks to make sure it is closed every evening during his house walk through. Yup, we need to accept the grace we give to others and our kids. Because most things won’t matter in 5 years from now. Not even the freezer door.
Right?! I didn’t realize how often I castigate myself for little things until I read this post. We are human, we make mistakes. We don’t have to hold ourselves to some impossibly high standard of perfectionism. The big picture matters, not the little ones.
So right Anita. Those high standards of perfectionism don’t serve us or others.