You screwed up big time and there’s no getting around it. Left wallowing in the ruins of your own mistake, the overwhelming urge to scream “It’s all my fault!” into your bedroom pillow is almost too powerful to withstand.
I get you. I've been there and we all screw up at some point or another. We forget things, we break things, we lie, we cheat, we do things we aren't proud of. We fail. I think it's a part of the human condition, a small price to pay along with our opposable thumbs. We aren't perfect and sometimes we're really far from it.
And yet, no matter what you did, it’s probably not as bad as the worst thing you’ve never done.
If you think about it, at this very moment in time there are bound to be a few dozen things you’ve never done. Slapping an ice cream cone out of a baby's hand or running around crushing butterflies. Have you ever fed bacon to pigs? No? Well, that’s a reason to celebrate.
No matter what deplorable decision you made, you could have made a choice that was a little bit worse. You watched Netflix for three hours instead of working on your paper? At least you didn't tell a four year Santa wasn't real and then proceed to steal that kids cookie.
I like to think of this thought process as the physical manifestation of the saying “things could be worse." Most everyone knows that no matter how bad you’ve got it, it could start raining or you could step in dog poop and then your problems would be that much worse.
Realizing that you could be worse, too might just be the idea that frees you. The simple thought that whatever you did is only half as bad as what you could have done might take you from hopelessly guilt ridden to cloud 9 as you come to the realization that you’re not so bad after all. And you’re not so bad after all.
That isn’t to say that what you did wasn’t wrong. I’m not writing you off, or giving you a pass. Realizing that you're not Hitler or Gaddafi or the chick who cut everyone in line at Chipotle, isn’t meant to be a cop out. Hopefully, though, realizing that you could have done worse will give you the self confidence you need in order to brush yourself off, quit feeling like such a failure and try again.
This temporary relief from guilt should be a gap just wide enough to give you the power to fix whatever you did wrong. Forgive yourself and realize that while you might have screwed up, at least you didn’t punch a puppy or something. Now, breath in, breath out and begin again.
