Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.
I'm Dr.
Robert Puff.
Mistakes.
Do you ever make mistakes?
I sure do.
Have you ever done things in the past,
Which,
Right after you do them,
You wish you hadn't?
I sure have.
Or what about something you wish you wouldn't do,
But then you keep doing it?
Have you ever done that?
I have.
It really is one of the perplexing things about being human.
The mistakes we make,
Because we all make them,
And sometimes they are small,
But sometimes they are just devastating.
But the question that I've tried to ponder over the years is,
When we make mistakes,
Because we're going to,
What's the best approach to deal with them so that we don't keep doing them?
Well,
In our world today,
What is the tendency when people mess up?
How do other people tend to respond to these mess-ups?
Now,
I know I'm being very light with my words when I say messed up,
Because sometimes messed up means they've killed someone,
They've raped someone,
They've done horrible damage to someone else.
But even when it's on the lighter note,
Let's say they said or did something that didn't cause any permanent damage,
But definitely did hurt another person,
What do we tend to do?
Well,
If you keep up with social media,
Which I'm sure most of us do,
Often after a post,
A tweet,
Or a news article,
There's the comment section.
And again,
If you've ever had a chance to look at the comment section,
I think we can agree that the majority of people tend to be very harsh toward the antagonist,
The person that caused the damage or the harm.
Rarely,
If ever,
Do we see comments about,
Yes,
This person did something wrong,
But they're still a human being and we need to love them and help them to get better,
Because there's something wrong with them and they need help.
You don't see that very often in the comment section.
I think when people mess up,
There's a real tendency to really have a lot of loathing towards that person.
And mind you,
What people do these days sometimes is pretty unconscionable.
But today,
I want to focus on the person that actually commits these acts.
Now,
I know some of us may be thinking,
Well,
People like that should be damned to hell and burned for eternity.
Well,
There's not much I can do with that if that's your belief system.
But let's say in life that we have messed up and done things that if other people knew or since we know would be considered unethical and wrong,
And how the world would respond to us would be similar to what happens to most people in the world when they mess up.
There's a lot of loathing and hatred.
But the question I have for us is,
When we mess up,
Because the only person that can control our behavior is ourselves.
When other people mess up,
That's their responsibility to treat themselves and get better.
But when we mess up,
It's our responsibility to heal and move on.
And mind you,
When we mess up,
It's a lot harder to heal than when someone has hurt us.
And that's what we're going to explore today.
What do we do when we mess up that effectively helps us get better so that we stop messing up?
Well,
First off,
Why is it harder to heal from hurting someone than being hurt?
And this is really the crux of today's podcast.
If we return to social media,
Again,
Think about when one person hurts another.
If we look at the comments section,
Most of the people are going to be very angry and upset,
And say very harsh things towards a perpetrator.
But the victim is going to be consoled,
Sent love,
And a lot of positive messages will go their way.
I don't think it's any different when we mess up,
Which is why it's so much more challenging to heal from hurting someone than being hurt.
What happens is,
When we're hurt,
Yes,
It's very painful,
But we need to heal from it.
And mostly,
After we feel our feelings,
The way we heal is working towards forgiving the other person,
Or at least setting boundaries so they can't keep hurting us.
But when we hurt another person,
We have to forgive ourselves.
And that is much harder.
And again,
Going back to my comments section,
In the media,
The comments when we mess up are very harsh,
And pretty relentless,
And often never go away.
When people hate someone,
We all probably know people like this,
We can hate someone till our dying breath.
So the real tendency that happens with us when we mess up is to shower ourselves with self-loathing and hatred,
And criticism.
We think it's correct,
We think it's helpful,
But the question today that we want to look at,
If this is true,
Is it really helpful to create change by having self-loathing for the behavior that we do?
But before I go forward and explore how we can heal from making mistakes,
I'm not saying that when people mess up,
Or we mess up,
That there aren't consequences.
Yes,
There are consequences,
And these consequences can actually be helpful.
They can protect society from someone who's hurting others.
They can help us to do penance or make up for the mistakes we've made.
But today we want to explore the aspects of healing from the mistakes we've made.
How do we move forward and have a beautiful life,
Even when we've made mistakes?
Well,
Why do we mess up?
Why do we make mistakes?
Mostly,
If not totally,
It's really our conditioning.
The upbringing we've had,
The experience we've been exposed to,
The environment that we were raised in,
All these things together shape us.
Our thoughts,
Our reactions to what we do,
Put this all together.
And if we were like someone else,
We often would do what they had done,
Because the whole combination of our entire life creates who we are.
And that combination,
These experiences shape us.
So,
What we do is,
If we want to change is we realize,
Okay,
I am a product of my environment,
And if I want to change the way I'm behaving,
I need to change the environment and what I'm being exposed to,
Which we're actually doing right now,
By exploring ways to be happy on the Happiness Podcast,
We're changing our conditioning.
The reason why we've done things in the past that have caused us suffering is because of our conditioning.
If we change our conditioning,
Our behavior will change.
But what we tend to do,
Getting back to the comment section on the media,
Is we tend to do what we do to others.
We tend to annihilate ourselves,
Criticize ourselves,
Attack ourselves,
Loathe ourselves for the mistakes that we make.
And that actually doesn't help.
That keeps us stuck.
And let me use an example to illustrate this.
Imagine over the years,
We put on an extra 50 pounds,
And we notice it,
And other people notice it,
And our body is feeling the effects of the extra 50 pounds that we've been carrying.
Well,
What if,
And mind you,
I think a lot of people do do this,
But what if every time we looked in the mirror,
We said,
You fat slob,
You're such a pig,
You're disgusting.
Or when we go in public,
Our thoughts go immediately to,
These people must think I'm disgusting.
Again,
I think we often do do this,
But is it helpful?
Will these words of self-loathing motivate us to lose weight?
I think sometimes we think it will,
But does it?
Does it really help us?
Do people lose weight by self-loathing,
Or do people stay stuck because of self-loathing?
I think it's the latter.
How much more rewarding and helpful would it be if instead of hearing this self-loathing,
We did things like,
Yes,
I do need to lose weight.
Well,
How am I going to do this?
Perhaps I'll go to the gym.
Perhaps I'll get a personal trainer.
Perhaps I'll learn about diet and nutrition,
And then I'll surround myself with people that support me on my goals to lose weight.
And when I look in the mirror,
And I feel that self-loathing come on,
I'll say,
That isn't helpful.
I'm doing a lot to change my conditioning so that I can be better.
I'm going to keep working out and keep getting healthy and get this weight off because that's my goal.
Let us ask this question.
If we're working towards creating change in our behavior,
Something that we've done in the past that we don't like,
And we want to do it differently,
Would it be easier to change that behavior by thinking about what we did and hating ourselves?
Or would it be easier to change that behavior,
Saying,
I'm sorry I did that.
That's part of my conditioning and my background,
But I am going to change my behavior,
And I'm going to keep working towards doing better.
I know this sounds so basic,
And yet,
Why don't we do it then?
If it makes sense,
Which I'm pretty sure it does to most of us,
Why do we hate others so much when they mess up?
And why do we hate ourselves when we mess up?
Is it going to help us change?
Is it going to help them change?
Again,
I'm in no way negating that there aren't severe,
Sometimes,
Consequences to the choices that we make.
If we drink and drive and kill someone,
We may spend the rest of our lives in prison.
But if,
As a human being,
We want to grow and change our behavior,
Then self-loathing is not going to be the path to getting there.
Again,
Could we lose weight if we constantly attacked ourselves for the way we looked?
I don't think we'd have much luck in that arena.
And if you really study the behavior of change,
It's not about self-loathing.
And yet,
For so many people,
That is the knee-jerk response.
But we're here to grow.
We're here to improve our lives.
And the truth of it is,
As long as we're human,
We're going to make mistakes.
We're going to hurt people.
We're going to say things that others wish we hadn't.
We're going to do things that just sometimes aren't that good and hurt others.
Sometimes we just get in cycles where we're just not doing well.
So what do we do?
Do we look in the mirror and shower ourselves with self-loathing?
Is that really going to help us?
Or do we instead encourage ourselves and start thinking about ways that we can grow and change our behavior?
But since our behavior is conditioned,
If we want to change it,
We do have to change the conditioning.
And we can do that.
Again,
We're doing that right now by realizing that self-loathing and being critical of ourselves is not helpful and actually will keep us stuck.
But if we say instead,
You know,
I'm not doing so well right now.
I'm not making the best choices.
And I want to start doing better.
I'm going to start making the changes that will help me do that.
And one of the biggest ways I'm going to do that is stop hating myself or hating the behavior that I'm doing.
If I'm going to hate anything,
Hate my conditioning that got me here.
And then let's change that conditioning.
And there's really a couple of really good things that we can do to change it.
One is watching how we talk to ourselves.
That's pivotal.
That's probably 90 percent of what we do.
We begin to really pay attention to our self-talk and say,
Am I learning from this?
Am I growing?
Or am I being self-critical?
Because if we're being self-critical,
We're going to stay stuck.
And that's the most important thing we can do is really be kind to ourselves,
Be gentle to ourselves,
Learn from our mistakes,
And then change.
Change comes through love,
Not through self-hatred.
Forgiveness helps us to change.
Growing helps us to change.
Self-loathing,
Self-hatred keeps us stuck.
And then the second thing we can do is make sure we're surrounding ourselves with people that encourage us,
That support us,
That help us with our change.
We need others to help us,
To help us change,
To grow,
To improve,
To learn.
People help us change.
We need them.
I don't know if you've ever known anyone that's struggled with an addiction,
But 12-step really is the solution to people that struggle with addictions.
It helps them because they surround themselves with people that support and love them.
We need others to help us change.
And the choice we can make in life is who do we want to surround ourselves with?
Do we want to be around people that hate us,
That loathe us?
Or do we want to be around people that support us and encourage us?
Of course,
I'm hoping we all choose the latter because life can be hard.
And sometimes we really do mess up.
So,
To do well in life,
We have to be kind to ourselves when we mess up,
Forgive ourselves,
Learn from our mistakes,
And move forward,
And also make sure we're surrounding ourselves with people that support us and love us too.
But before I end,
I want to present a challenge that's going to be hard,
And you definitely do not have to do it,
And you may not even agree with it and think,
This is a really dumb idea,
Dr.
Puff,
And you may be right.
But just think about it.
Perhaps try it and let me know how it went because I do think it can be helpful in creating change towards ourselves when we mess up.
And this is it.
Think about someone that's either hurt you or in public you know as a public figure,
Or another person,
Or a lot of people.
I mean,
Think of someone that you really do not like.
And do this.
Say,
I don't agree with what you did,
But I do hope that you find change and that you learn to grow from the mistakes you've made.
And if you do that,
That your life may improve,
And you may find beauty in your life,
Even after you've done the things that you've done.
May your life find forgiveness.
May your life find growth.
And if you ever do reach a point where you seek forgiveness for what you've done,
May my heart be willing to give that forgiveness.
And someday,
May I be able to look in the mirror and see that person who has also made mistakes,
And forgive them.
Thank you for joining me on the Happiness Podcast.
Until next time,
Accept what is,
Love what is.
