Do you tend to beat yourself up for making mistakes? Do you use personal development sometimes to overanalyze and beat yourself up for doing it “wrong” again? I feel you. I think many of us do. Because we think that the point of personal development, healing and therapy is to learn how to not make mistakes. Without realizing it, we go on this spiritual and healing path thinking that we will learn all these tools and transform and THEN we won’t make ANY MISTAKES EVER AGAIN. Subconsciously, we hope that if we learn all we can then we won’t eff up again and then life will be perfect and smooth sailing.

Well my loves, here’s the thing – making mistakes is here to stay.

I repeat. Making mistakes is here to stay. Let’s laugh at ourselves a bit. We thought we could perhaps make them go away forever, or get smart enough to avoid them, but making mistakes is part of the gig we have as humans in this physical body. So we must truly accept this, and LOVE this.

Let’s reframe “making mistakes.” Making mistakes is actually just being human. We need them. They lead us to magical places. They lead us to the depths of our psyches and souls. They lead us to our to our shadow sides, and by going to the underworld of the darkness, we rise to the surface with new knowledge and growth. We then appreciate and feel we have earned our growth. We can’t thrive UNLESS we make “mistakes.” So, we better start loving up our nature and accept that there are actually no “mistakes.” It’s all a process and all of it leads us to our highest selves. Doing good all the time actually would BLOCK you from your highest truth. If you try to be perfect you stop the flow of being human. Allow yourself permission to just be. Be gentle as much as you can as you learn to accept mistakes.

Think about how you feel when you are doing something over and over that is no longer serving you. If mistakes are becoming compulsive behaviors that are ruling you, acknowledge this behavior and make steps to change it.

But know that even those difficult, compulsive, hard-to-break patterns are part of your story, and serve a divine purpose. Your job is just to keep on being open to growing and learning, not to avoiding making mistakes. Your job is to continue to LEARN from all the obstacles that come your way. Obstacles are opportunities just waiting for you on the other end.

All of it is part of the divine plan. The sooner we accept these things, I believe the deeper we develop more compassion and faith in the divine timing of it all. Flow is birthed when we accept our nature fully as humans.

Don’t thrive to be perfect, just be. @CosmicChristine (Click to Tweet!)

What is one “mistake” that you have found that you keep beating yourself up for? I want you to share in the comments below, and then I want you to perceive this “mistake” as actually a divine gift, showing you a part of yourself that needs to be seen in order for miracles and transformation to happen.  Assume this “mistake” is here actually as a gift. For example, if you keep eating bad food and you really want to lose weight, so you beat yourself up and think you are “making a mistake.” But now that I told you there are no “mistakes” what could be the gift here? Perhaps to show you DEEP in your bones what it feels like to not love your body so you can learn to appreciate how to love your body. Sometimes we need to know how bad something is to appreciate the other side of it even more.

I can’t wait to hear from you all in the comments below.

Sending massive love, Christine


Christine Gutierrez is a psychotherapist, advice columnist, speaker, author, poet, and founder of CosmicLife.com, an online hub that features psychologically-savvy and soulful advice, articles, videos, private consultations, workshops, retreats (both live and virtual), radio appearances, and television projects. “Ancient wisdom with a modern twist” is the motto. She has been featured in TimeOut NY Magazine, Latina Magazine as “The Future 15: The Healer,” Yahoo Health, Ebony Magazine, Cosmopolitan for Latinas, The Conversation, Cosmopolitan Magazine, Ricki Lake, Lifetime TV, and more. You can also follow Christine on Twitter and Facebook.

Join Christine for her 2014 Goddess Retreat July 18-21 here. Get your free meditation Vibing With Nature here.


Image courtesy of Paula Bailey.