Being okay with failure

I wish I could write this blog in the past tense, I wish the words would flow off my fingers and say "I used to..." Unfortunately, as strongly as I wish my fingers would write those words, they cannot.  Because I can't write what is not true.  This will make sense in a bit.

When it comes to self-deprecation I am a master.  I hold a PhD in beating myself up when I feel like I've made mistakes in life.  It's something I am naturally good at.  Sammy Sosa was a baseball player.  Ray Lewis was a football player.  Stephen King is a writer.  Peter Jackson is a movie director.  Anthony Tringale is a self-depreciator.

When I feel like I've done something wrong, when I feel like I screwed up, I beat myself up to the fullest extent.  When I do something wrong, or when I have a relationship that's on the rocks, it consumes me.  I walk around thinking about every aspect of the situation and what could have happened that would've given me a happier result.

Call it divine intervention, call it fate, or call it my past experiences.  Whatever you want to call it, I've been experiencing something strange lately.  A few hours before I do something stupid, before I make a mistake, or something unfortunate happens to me, I've felt a warning in my gut.  I'll have a feeling that something is going to turn upside down on me.  I've noticed this happening enough times recently that I began to verbalize it when I get these feelings.  It feels like a super power of some sort.  I'm being warned something is going to try and ruin my day, or there is a situation coming up and it could ruin a relationship.  As often as I've had these feelings I haven't been wise enough to realize them happening and prevent them from taking place.  And it make me feel pretty shitty about the whole thing.

There was a good stretch of time when I didn't allow myself to get dragged through the mud.  I'd make a mistake, I'd fail, something would go haywire and I wouldn't beat myself up over the situation.  Sure I would think about everything that happened, but I wouldn't allow myself to become dejected over the situation.  I would simply make it right and move forward.

I am not entirely sure how that happened, how I stopped beating myself up.  I don't remember reading any specific books on the subject, I didn't say any specific prayers to help me treat myself better, it just happened one day.  Unfortunately I'm beginning to slip back into the old ways, and that's okay because I know it's a process of working out all the bugs.  I'm going to screw up, things are going to happen in my life that I wish didn't happen, I can't allow those things to drag me down.  The worst thing I could do is allow myself to waste days of my life beating myself up for something I could or couldn't control.  The last thing I want to think about on my death bed is the days I wasted living this way.

I don't believe there is a magic formula for living a happier, less self-abusive life.  It's simply making a decision to not allow negativity into my thinking.  Sure, I can wish things had gone a different way, I can wish I had made the opposite decision than I did in the situation.  However, I can't beat myself up because of something I did wrong, I can't allow my thinking to be consumed with the wrong decisions I made.  I have to change my thinking and move forward.

I don't believe there is a key to living a happy life.  I don't believe there is a set plan I can follow that will ensure I never experience pain or hurt.  I do believe that not allowing myself to beat myself up over situations and choosing to move forward from perceived defeat will result in me living a happier life and a life without many regrets.

Paul, the guy from the bible, was in jail when he wrote his letters to the churches found in the good book.  He wrote in Philippians chapter 4, "I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances.  I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little.  I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty.  Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes who I am."