Dear friend,
There is a silent burden most of us carry: the fear that we are not good enough. We wrestle with guilt, replay our mistakes, and convince ourselves we will never measure up to some grand ideal.
A client of mine recently called me in tears after a breakup, declaring she must be an awful person who cannot get anything right, and in the very same breath insisting she was a good and moral human being. As contradictory as that sounds, it is exactly how most of us live: trying so hard to appear good while secretly believing we are terrible. (She is, for the record, an awesome person.)
So here is my recommendation. Own it. Go ahead and admit, “Yes, I am bad and wrong.” And if someone else hints that you are bad and wrong, do not defend yourself. In a mood of humility and humor, just say, “Yeah, and you don’t even know the half of it.”
We have all broken promises. We have let people down. We have run from hard situations. That is completely normal. It is called being human. The problem is not that you are bad and wrong. The problem is pretending and proving that you are not. Once you stop fighting reality as it is, and fully accept who you have been, you find the freedom to choose who you will be.
And here is the key. You can only give something up if you fully own it. If you do not fully own it, you cannot release it. Only in total ownership, without judgment, without worrying about looking good, without reservation, can you really begin to let it go. As a human being, there is nothing fundamentally wrong with you. We are simply messy, complicated, contradictory. Owning our bad and wrong is the first step toward becoming something different.
That is the humor of it. When we embrace the absurdity of our mistakes, they begin to lose their grip. You are bad and wrong. And you know what? So am I. Accepting that, strangely, gives us permission to choose who we want to be next. We no longer have to keep up the exhausting facade of perfection. You can finally say, “I own who I have been, and I am done with that version of myself.” And the moment you let it go, like dropping a weight you have carried for years, you may find enormous possibilities of being alive waiting for you.
With care,Saqib