Free Pass

I try very hard in life to be considerate of other people's feelings, schedules, etc. Majority of the time I do pretty well at it, I believe. But other times my emotions/life get too overwhelming for me and it spills over onto other people.

Even though I know perfection is an "illusion" sometimes it still sounds really good to me! Telling myself things like, "If I just tried harder..." etc. For that reason when I do make choices that affect other people (ie taking out my moods on them) it can be very hard for me to let it go, move on, etc., even after I have made ammends.

I had one of those experiences recently. I don't remember the events that led up to it but I was emotional, my emotions did spill over to other people. I apologzied but I still felt embarassed and had a hard time letting it go, would those people I had affected really forget about it??? Discussing this with a friend the phrase was used, "Sometimes you need to cut yourself some slack." The word "need" really struck with me and helped me realize that it really was OK!

Further, I remembered that we all have bad days. We all have choices we would like to redo. No one is immune to challenges in life and sometimes it just feels like it's too much! It happens. Truly I hadn't meant to say the things that I had, I was just going through a really bad time.

With that in mind, I developed the strategy of giving myself a "free pass" For those when I was struggling and just needed to remember that it was all OK! Not to exclude myself from responsibility or making ammends, just to remember to ease up on myself and move on. For the next few hours whenever I was tempted to relive those events in my mind, I told myself, "Free pass, free pass, free pass." And it worked! To the degree that now, a couple weeks later I don't remember a thing about the situation, just that it was a time to give myself a "free pass" to cut myself some slack and move on!

Questions? Comments?