Year in Review: My Biggest Mistakes
Forgiving myself for the mistakes I made in 2023 and learning to move on with grace.
In life, it’s easy to brag about success, while it is vulnerable and scary to talk about failure. Similarly, it’s easier to talk about everything that went right in our journey but difficult to admit the mistakes we made along the way.
One of the reasons I decided to start this two-part series by sharing the mistakes I made this year is because I wanted to seize the opportunity to reflect on the more difficult parts of my journey first. Also, most of us usually struggle to admit our mistakes when we make them.
Summarised below is a list of mistakes I made in 2023.
You may choose to prepare a similar list or reflect on your experiences,
but I hope you always remember that these mistakes did not make you weak.
And while you are bound to slip up every now and then,
I hope you choose to accept these experiences with kindness towards yourself and move on with grace.
In 2023, I made the mistake of:
Delaying peace, thinking that it will always wait for me at the end of the road.
Not putting enough effort into making time for rest in my life. When you are trying to balance self-care and ambition on your journey to success, sometimes it’s okay to let self-care dominate for a while. It certainly does not make you less ambitious.
Forgetting friends’ birthdays because I was too caught up in the chaos of my life. I associate a lot of love and intention with simple and sweet birthday wishes so it felt terrible when I couldn’t contribute to that happiness for some close friends of mine.
Wasting my time thinking about how I want to be where people who are a few steps ahead of me are in life right now while ignoring how far I’ve come on my own. It’s totally okay to feel this way because we are only human. Take this moment to down and appreciate yourself for all that you’ve done till now.
Feeling like I need to run as fast as I can and finish as many tasks as I can before I ‘allow’ myself to slow down. It’s probably the weirdest concept I am trying to let go of in my life right now.
This week, I encourage you to spend some time reflecting on what mistakes you think you made this year, if some of these turned out into great learning experiences and how they shaped you into your present self.
See you next week!
Nice! Keep it up and keep it simple !
Your mistakes are not unique. That’s what I like about reading people’s stories. I have discovered lots of people like me so I feel better about myself. I like to think in terms of choices. I’m always making choices then I evaluate them later. I can make bad choices but not mistakes. A bad choice I made last year was to create a housework routine based on what I thought was expected of me from society. After wearing myself out I stopped and I now have a great list of tasks I can dip into when I want to. Rather than a routine.